Chansonnier (i).

A manuscript or printed book containing principally chansons (i.e. lyric poetry in French) or monophonic or polyphonic settings of such poetry. The most important medieval chansonniers date from the 13th century and contain the monophonic songs of the troubadours and trouvères (for summary list of principal monophonic chansonniers, and illustration, see Sources, MS, §III). Apart from Machaut’s complete works, secular music was mixed with sacred music in 14th-century manuscripts. From about 1420 the two genres began to appear in separate sources, sacred music in large choirbooks and secular music in small chansonniers, many of them prepared for princes, courtiers, or other well-born music lovers or bibliophiles. Chansonniers, some of them elegantly decorated, were compiled in Italy and Germany as well as in France and the Low Countries during the 15th century, but no matter where they were written, they contain mostly French polyphonic chansons. Obviously French culture was foremost in courtly circles everywhere in western Europe at the time, at least as far as secular music was concerned. The chansonniers are true miscellanies, however, and also reflect local tastes and customs. Along with chansons they include song motets in Latin, compositions with Italian, German, Spanish, English or Dutch texts, and even a few compositions apparently originally conceived for instruments. Summary lists of the principal 15th-century chansonniers appear in a number of studies (see Droz and Piaget, Atlas, and Fallows), and in various modern editions of complete chansonniers (e.g. Perkins and Garey, and Brown).

Many sources from the 15th and 16th centuries contain courtly texts without their music. Lachèvre listed and described many of the printed sources. Two manuscript chansonniers that contain popular monophonic tunes survive from the late 15th or early 16th centuries (see Reese and Karp). Beginning in the early 16th century, collections of popular song-texts were printed, many of them to be hawked on the streets of Paris and other French cities; Brian Jeffery republished almost all this material to 1543. Such popular anthologies, which include poems on currently popular topical subjects meant to be sung to traditional tunes, were the ancestors of 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century song collections, such as La clef des chansonniers and La clef du caveau, which contain the entertainment music of the urban population.

For information on the polyphonic chansonnier see Sources, MS, §IX, 8.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Droz and A. Piaget, eds.: Le jardin de plaisance et fleur de rhétorique (Paris, 1910–25)

F. Lachèvre: Bibliographie des recueils collectifs de poésies du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1922)

G. Reese and T. Karp: Monophony in a Group of Renaissance Chansonniers’, JAMS, v (1952), 4–15

B. Jeffery: Chanson Verse of the Early Renaissance (London, 1971–6)

A.W. Atlas : The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier (New York, 1975–6)

L.L. Perkins and H. Garey, eds.: The Mellon Chansonnier (New Haven, CT, 1979)

H.M. Brown: A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Chicago, 1983)

Lyrique romane médiévale: la tradition des chansonniers: Liège 1989

D. Fallows: A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999)

HOWARD MAYER BROWN