Flemish painting from around 1530 depicts a musical ensemble: transverse flute, lute and voice.
And if you look closely, you can make out the notes of the chanson “Jouissance vous donneray” by Claudin de Sermisy (c. 1490-1562), who set a poem by Clement Marot (c. 1496-1544) to music.
Sermisy is best known today for his highly refined chansons, most of which were printed in Paris by Pierre Attaignant between 1528 and 1533.
The chanson genre became extremely popular in Western Europe during the 16th century, as evidenced by numerous instrumental arrangements.
The dialogue between Sermisy’s chansons and Marot’s texts forms the core of the programme and represents a rich spectrum of human emotions.
Ivo Haun voice, renaissance lute, declamation, direction
Johanna Bartz Renaissance traverso
Ryosuke Sakamoto renaissance lute, renaissance gamba
Trio of Musicians, by the "Master Of The Female Half Lengths", c1530, Flamish © Ermitage, St. Peterburg
Why I’ll be there!
David Fallows
If only Franco-Flemish painting of the sixteenth century had an equivalent of Vasari, who named enormous numbers of Italian painters and described their work, as a result of which almost all Italian paintings have named authors (even if they can vary for a single painting and not everybody believes what Vasari tells us in any case). With Franco-Flemish painting we have almost no names but instead a series of absurd titles, including the absurdest of the lot, the ‘Master of the Female Half-Lengths’. This apparently because he never painted anybody’s legs. There was a television news-reader in England in the 1960s who always sat behind a desk to read the news. And it was the funniest joke of the year when a couple of comedians showed her legs.
In any case the master of the female half-lengths counts as one of the purest painters of the mid-sixteenth century. And although he was probably working in Antwerp he always counts as the painterly equivalent of the most controlled and (mostly) chaste song-composer of the century, Claudin de Sermisy, court musician to King François I, and the most controlled and (mostly) chaste poet of the century, Clément Marot, court poet to King François I.
Regular readers of my columns will know that I absolutely love concerts devoted to one composer, particularly one as restrained as Claudin. They may not know that Clément Marot was the most often set poet of the century, at least until the advent of Ronsard. Actually I don’t have the figures to hand for Ronsard, but something like a hundred and twenty poems of Clément were set to music, many of them ten or a dozen times. Their style harks back very much to the fifteenth century, so there is something super-controlled about the settings. I really can’t wait for this concert.
Barfüsserkirche
Historical Museum Basel
Martinskirche
Basel
Barfüsserkirche
Historisches Museum Basel
Barfüsserkirche
