The Loire Valley chansonniers are a related group of songbooks

Chansonnier

A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...

 copied in the Loire Valley

Loire Valley

The Loire Valley , spanning , is located in the middle stretch of the Loire River in central France. Its area comprises approximately . It is referred to as the Cradle of the French Language, and the Garden of France due to the abundance of vineyards, fruit orchards, and artichoke, asparagus, and...

 region of central France c. 1465-c. 1475 and produced in the context of the French royal court

Ancien Régime in France

The Ancien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social and political system established in France from the 15th century to the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties...

. They consist of five chansonniers: Copenhagen, Dijon, Nivelle, Laborde and Wolfenbüttel. The songbooks, smaller than a modern paperback, personalized and lavishly decorated, are the earliest surviving examples of a new genre which offered a combination of words, music, and illuminations.

History

The chansonniers of the late 15th century were objects of leisure, offering artistic, musical and textual aspects to form a multidimensional reading experience. Previous to the 1470s, words were written first by scribes, and then musical symbols were aligned to them. But in the 1470s, melodies were set out first, followed by their words, but not in systematic alignment, only in proximity. The books contain secular vernacular songs in three or four voice parts with text that drew upon the poetic tradition of courtly love

Courtly love

Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....

, written by composers that were active in the Loire Valley region at approximately the same time. Each voice part is introduced by decorated initials. Out of a total 273 songs, 107 are songs surviving in just one source.

Two of the chansonniers (Dijon and Laborde), have quasi-alphabetical indexes. Unlike those of Antoine Busnois

Antoine Busnois

Antoine Busnois was a French composer and poet of the early Renaissance Burgundian School. While also noted as a composer of sacred music, such as motets, he was one of the most renowned 15th-century composers of secular chansons...

, Firminus Caron

Firminus Caron

Firminus Caron was a French composer, and likely a singer, of the Renaissance. While highly successful as a composer and influential, especially on the development of imitative counterpoint, and while numerous compositions of his survive, he is almost unique in there being an almost complete...

's songs are poorly represented in the Loire Valley chansonniers. Of the two song attributed to Josquin des Prez

Josquin Des Prez

Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...

, one is "Adieu mes amours".

Chansonniers

The Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée is located at the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Bibliothèque nationale de France

The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...

 in Paris. It contains many small-scale corrections and crossed-out notes which gives insight into its principal scribe as well as several instances of large-scale erasures, post-binding, where entire voice parts were erased. Seven works of the composer Johannes Delahaye appear in it. It is widely accepted as being the earliest of the group.

The Dijon Chansonnier is located in the Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon. The composers are Barbiguant, Gilles Binchois

Gilles Binchois

Gilles de Binche , also known as Gilles de Bins , was a Franco-Flemish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian School, and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century...

, Busnois, Caron, Compere, Convert, Delahaye, Guillaume Dufay

Guillaume Dufay

Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...

, Hayne van Ghizeghem

Hayne van Ghizeghem

Hayne van Ghizeghem was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance Burgundian School.While many of his works have survived, little is known about his life...

, Jean Molinet

Jean Molinet

Jean Molinet was a French poet, chronicler, and composer. He is best remembered for his prose translation of Roman de la rose.Born in Desvres, which is now part of France, he studied in Paris...

, Robert Morton, Johannes Ockeghem

Johannes Ockeghem

Johannes Ockeghem was the most famous composer of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most...

, and Johannes Tinctoris

Johannes Tinctoris

Johannes Tinctoris was a Flemish composer and music theorist of the Renaissance. He is known to have studied in Orléans, and to have been master of the choir there; he also may have been director of choirboys at Chartres...

.

The Laborde Chansonnier contains over a hundred songs by Binchois, Busnois, Dufay, Ockeghem and others. Many of the songs are unique and the pages are illustrated. The songbook first came to scholarly attention in 1857 at the "Comité de la langue, de l'histoire et des arts de la France", the manuscript having been presented by a Comité member, count Léon de Laborde, and having been sent to the Comité by L'abbé Jacques-Rémi-Antoine Texier. In 2011, Goldberg

Emanuel Goldberg

Emanuel Goldberg was born in Moscow and moved first to Germany and later to Israel...

 Stiftung

Carl Zeiss

Carl Zeiss was a German maker of optical instruments commonly known for the company he founded, Carl Zeiss Jena . Zeiss made contributions to lens manufacturing that have aided the modern production of lenses...

 made available their transcription of it in both modern and original clef

Clef

A clef is a musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes. Placed on one of the lines at the beginning of the staff, it indicates the name and pitch of the notes on that line. This line serves as a reference point by which the names of the notes on any other line or space of the staff...

ing. It was the last to receive close musicological attention.

The Copenhagen Chansonnier is a parchment manuscript containing 33 three-voiced songs from the late 15th century; one song, "Lactens secours", which was added in the 16th century; as well as modulation essays. It has been characterized as the perhaps most valuable medieval manuscript of music in the Royal Danish Library.

The Wolfenbüttel Chansonnier Codex Guelf 287 Extrav is related to the Laborde Chansonnier. It is located at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel

Wolfenbüttel

Wolfenbüttel is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, located on the Oker river about 13 kilometres south of Brunswick. It is the seat of the District of Wolfenbüttel and of the bishop of the Protestant Lutheran State Church of Brunswick...

, Germany.