(Fr., from Lat. natalis: ‘of birth’ or novus: ‘news’).
Like the English ‘nowell’ or ‘nouell’, the French ‘noël’ (or Burgundian ‘noé’) was used as an expression of Christian joy, especially during Christmastide. Since the 15th century the term has designated non-liturgical, strophic verse of popular character written in the vernacular or in patois and often sung to the tunes of chant, popular songs or dances.
The tradition of popular hymns or canticles for Christmas and other Christian feasts is ancient and most probably stems from sung celebrations at pre-Christian festivals. Christmas tropes appeared in the liturgy from the 9th century (e.g. Puer nobis nascitur – resjoissons nous aujourd’hui) and by the 13th century were affected by the popular chanson, especially in the increasingly lay liturgical drama. Although the plainchant repertory provided melodies, the shepherd scenes favoured in medieval mystery and miracle plays were often treated in a popular vein. In 13th-century France the Christmas song Hui enfantez fu li fiz Dieu was sung to the melody of the Letabundus, but the Anglo-Norman Seignors, or entendez à nus is of more secular inspiration. Macaronic Christmas songs, using Latin and patois (e.g. In dulci jubilo) or the vernacular (e.g. Célébrons la naissance–Nostri Salvatoris), were more frequent in the 14th century, when the first polyphonic settings are found (e.g. Adam de la Halle’s three-voice rondeau Dieus soit en cheste maison). While the related carol flourished in England in the 15th century, often using the joyful exclamation ‘noël’ in its burden (refrain), Christmas pieces are rarely found in the Burgundian or Netherlandish polyphonic repertories. (There is a four-voice piece by Busnoys which repeats the word ‘noël’ as its sole text.) But towards the end of the century many collections with French texts appeared in both printed and manuscript sources (the latter include Louis XII’s book of noëls by Jehan Tisserand – F-Pn fr.2368 – and Pn fr.2506 and Pa 3653).
During the 16th century there was an astonishing proliferation of printed collections: the contents of Les grans nouelz nouveaux reduitz sur le chant de plusieurs chansons nouvelles (Paris, Pierre Sergent, n.d.), Les grans noelz nouveaulx composez sur plusieurs chansons tant vielles que nouvelles (Paris, n.d.), Les noelz nouveaulx reduys sur le chant de plusieurs chansons (Paris, n.d.) and Les noelz nouvellement faictz & composez en l’honneur de la nativité de Jesuchrist (n.p., n.d.) reappear in numerous similar collections. These noëls enjoyed a long vogue and provided models for similar anthologies published at Lyons, Paris, Le Mans and Geneva, or newly composed collections by S. Bedouin, Christofle de Bordeaux (Paris, 1581), François Briand (Le Mans, 1512), Jehan Chaperon (Paris, 1538), Jean Daniel (c1525–30), Nicolas Denisot (1545 and 1553), L. Le Moigne (Paris, 1520), M. Malingre (c1540), Nicolas Martin (Lyons, 1555) and L. Roux (Angers, 1582). In addition to strophic pieces in popular style (with or without refrain) on the subject of the Nativity, some collections include New Year songs (aguillanneux). Translations of traditional Latin hymns (e.g. A solis ortus cardine, Ave maris stella, Conditor alma siderum, Mittit ad virginem, Rex mundo gloriae, Ut queant laxis and Veni Redemptor gentium) were sung to metrical versions of the original plainchant. Other liturgical or trope melodies were proposed as timbres (e.g. Kyrie fons bonitatis for Kyrie le jour de noël), but more frequently secular chanson melodies from both popular and polyphonic sources were suggested, occasionally with two or three alternative possibilities. Many noëls in fact paraphrase secular chanson texts, in the manner of the chanson spirituelle, following the same verse structure (sometimes interposing the word ‘noël’ as a refrain) and retaining or lightly modifying the first line for recognition. For example, Briand, Le Moigne and others begin different noëls with ‘Réveillez vous cueurs endormis’ (the first line of Janequin’s Le chant des oiseaux). Chaperon’s Noels (1538) are all modelled on secular poems (including single-stanza épigrammes by Clément Marot and King François I) found in recently published polyphonic settings (e.g. by Sandrin, Sermisy and Peletier). So too is a nativity play by Barthélemy Aneau, Chant natal contenant sept noelz … composez en imitation verbale et musicale de diverses chansons (Lyons, 1538). Another sequence of noëls by Aneau following the Christmas story in dialogue is the Genethliac Noel musical et historial … pars vers et chants divers (Lyons, 1558), which includes newly composed music for four voices by Didier Lupi Second, Goudimel and others.
Although the noëls of the organist Jean Daniel (Maître Mitou) were published with texts alone, a few 16th-century noël collections include music. The Noelz nouveaulx by Briand published in 1512 include four whose first stanzas are notated for two voices (one of which is ‘le plainchant’); the remainder propose suitable timbres. The anonymous Fleur des noelz nouvellement notés en choses faictes (Lyons, c1535) contains 22 pieces, the first ten of which include notated tenors. The 13 Cantiques du premier advènement de Jésuchrist by Nicolas Denisot were printed with monophonic melodies at Paris in 1553. The Noelz & chansons nouvellement composez tant en vulgaire françoys que savoysien dict patoys (Lyons, 1555) by the Savoyard musician Nicolas Martin include 16 noëls (eight in French and eight in patois), all preceded by notated monophonic melodies. Other collections of noël texts in patois survive, as in Noelz nouveaulx en poetevin (Paris, n.d.).
In his Recherches de la France (Paris, 1571), Etienne Pasquier described noëls as ‘chansons spirituelles faictes en l’honneur de nostre Seigneur’; he explained that in his youth it was customary for every family to sing them each evening but that the tradition survived only at Christmas eve, when children and adults sang them in the streets and in church during the offertory at Midnight Mass. They had figured in the Mass at Christmas since the late 12th century; during the 16th century polyphonic Christmas motets were composed for the professional choirs of the larger churches and courts (e.g. Jean Mouton’s Noé, noé, psallite noé, Francesco de Layolle’s Noé, noé, noé, Sermisy’s Noé, noé, magnificatus est rex pacificus and Noé, quem vidistis pastores and Le Heurteur’s Noé, noé, noé, hodie natus est Christus; the exclamation ‘Noé, noé’ recurs in Hodie Christus natus est, set by Marenzio, G.M. Nanino, Rore, Palestrina, Sweelinck and others). Vernacular noëls also figure occasionally in collections of polyphonic chansons (e.g. Costeley’s five-voice Or est venu Noé, 1570) and airs (e.g. Pierre Bonnet’s eight-voice Nouel en dialogue beginning ‘Bergers je vous fay scavoir’, 1585); Du Caurroy’s Meslanges, published posthumously in 1610, includes fifteen noëls for four or five voices.
Inexpensive editions of popular anthologies of anonymous noël texts, with suggested timbres, continued to proliferate throughout the 17th and 18th centuries; the title Bible des noelz (first used by the Lyons printer Benoit Rigaud in 1554) recurs frequently, as does the old repertory. But more collections appear in the regional patois of the Auvergne, Brittany, Bresse, Burgundy, Gascony, Le Mans, Poitou and Provence; several minor poets specialized in the genre: Jacques Brossard, Jean le Houx, Natalis Cordat (in Auvergnat dialect), François Colletet, Nicolas Saboly (in Provençal), Françoise Pascal and Jean Chapelon during the 17th century; La Monnoye and Aimé Piron (in Burgundian), G.M. Pellégrin and Antoine Peyrol (in Provençal) during the 18th. No 17th-century printed collections survive with notated music, although a few manuscript sources include melodies; arrangements of these melodies survive in art music such as Marc-Antonie Charpentier’s Messe de minuit, Sébastien de Brossard's Missa quinti toni pro nocte Die festi natalis Domini (1700) and Jean-François Le Sueur's Messe-Oratorio de Noël and in instrumental transcriptions. The Chants des noëls anciens et nouveaux, printed for solo voice and basso continuo by Ballard in 1703, notate old timbres as well as new ones from the contemporary vaudeville repertory. The 18th-century texts are also more updated with topical references than those of the 17th century and are often completely new.
Contrafacta of airs de cour and other secular pieces by G.G. Gastoldi, Guédron and La Tour are found in Amphion sacré (Lyons, RISM 16157, for four or five voices) and by Gabriel Bataille, Antoine Boësset and Antoine Moulinié in Le despouille d’Aegipte (Paris, 16297). The Ballard press also issued anonymous four-voice settings of noëls in Airs sur les hymnes sacrez, odes & noels, pour chanter au catéchisme (Paris, 16234, repr. 16552) and in Cantiques spirituels et noëls de différents auteurs (Paris, 16991, for solo voice and basso continuo); one noël for two voices by Denis Macé was included in his Cantiques spirituels (Paris, 1639) and several by Artus Aux-Cousteaux in his two sets of Noëls et cantiques spirituels (Paris, 1644). No original vocal settings from the 18th century are known, and in the 19th century they took the form of the romance (e.g. Augusta Holmés) or operatic air (Adolphe Adam’s Minuit, chrétiens). The subsequent interest in folk music and poetry revealed the importance of the noël to the popular tradition; 20th-century examples, such as Georges Migot’s Noël pour chant ou quatuor a cappella (1954), reflect this simplicity.
Just as the greater liturgical freedom of Midnight Mass permitted the singing of noëls from the late 12th century, so too in the second half of the 17th century did it provide the organist with the opportunity to introduce variations on the currently popular tunes. Numerous keyboard transcriptions have survived by Lebègue (1676), Nicolas Gigault (1682), C. Geoffroy (c1690), Raison (1714), J.-F. Dandrieu (c1720), Daquin (c1745), Michel Corrette (1753), Balbastre and J.-M. Beauvarlet-Charpentier (c1783). The vogue affected instrumental ensemble music at the same time; thus Charpentier arranged noëls for four instruments and basso continuo as well as for solo voices, choir and instruments. Lalande arranged 19 pieces as two suites under the title Symphonies des noëls. C.-H. Gervais followed with a suite for seven instruments and basso continuo, and Corrette with five Concertos de noel (c1730–50) for flute, violin and musette (the fourth adding a viol and basso continuo). The latter, like E.P. Chédeville’s collection of noëls for two musettes or vielles (hurdy-gurdy), reflect the mid-18th-century attitude as expressed in Rousseau’s definition of noëls (Dictionnaire, 1768): ‘Tunes intended for certain canticles which the people sing at Christmas: these types should have a rustic and pastoral character consistent with the simplicity of the words and of the shepherds who were supposed to have sung them while paying homage to Christ in the crib’. The writing for oboes and horns in Gossec’s two orchestral Suites de noëls (c1774) reveal the same rustic spirit, as does Balbastre’s Recueil de noëls formant 4 suites avec des variations pour le clavecin ou le fortepiano, whose contents imitate the sounds of musettes and horns. With the French Revolution the genre fell from favour but was revived by the Schola Cantorum in Paris in the late 19th century with more symphonically conceived examples for organ by Franck and Guilmant (four books, 1886), followed in the 20th century by Tournemire (12 noëls anciens pour orgue, 1938).
J. Tiersot: Histoire de la chanson populaire en France (Paris, 1889/R)
P. Aubry: ‘Le Letabundus et les chansons de noël au XIIIe siècle’, Tribune de Saint Gervais, iv (1898), 276–86
F. Hellouin: Le noël musical français (Paris, 1906)
P. de Beaurepaire-Froment: Bibliographie des chants populaires français (Paris, 1906, enlarged 3/1910)
A. Gastoué: Le cantique populaire en France (Lyons, 1924)
H. Bachelin: Les noëls français (Paris, 1927)
J.R.H. de Smidt: Les noëls et la tradition populaire (Amsterdam, 1932)
A. Gastoué: ‘Sur l’origine du genre noël’, Guide du concert, xxii (1935–6), 327
A. van Gennep: Manuel de folklore français contemporain, iv (Paris, 1938/R), 805ff
H. Poulaille: La grande et belle bible des noëls anciens (Paris, 1942–51)
A.F. Block: The Early French Parody Noël (Ann Arbor, 1983)
FRANK DOBBINS