Claude Le Jeune

Claude Le Jeune (* around 1530 near Valenciennes , † before September 26, 1600 in Paris ) was a Franco-Flemish composer and lutenist of the late Renaissance .

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Claude Le Jeune

In some publications with works by the composer after his death he is referred to as "natif de Valentienne"; there are also archival documents about the existence of a “Le Josne” family in Valenciennes who adhered to the Calvinist religion. No information has been passed on about the early days of Claude Le Jeune and his education, but music historians assume that he was born either in Valenciennes itself or in its vicinity and that he received his education there. Evidence of his career is available from the 1550s. Four secular chansons , which were published by the publisher Pierre Phalèse in Leuven in 1552 , are attributed to him. Two years later he published the first volume of psalm settings in French , based on the new translation by Théodore de Bèze , entitled "Dix Pseaumes de David en forme de motets avec un dialogue". This work was dedicated to two members of the Protestant nobility who had promoted him. Dedications of later works ( Meslanges from 1585 and Dodecachorde from 1598) also reveal his connection to the Protestant prominence of his time.

In 1570 had Jean-Antoine de Baïf and Joachim Thibault de Courville († 1581) under the auspices of the French royal family ( Charles IX. In) Paris the cultural, humanistic oriented institution Académie de poésie et de musique founded; Le Jeune joined this circle and became one of its most important composers. The Academy's publications were subject to a strict selection process, so that most of Le Jeune's compositions for this group were only published after his death. Le Jeune contributed a number of compositions to the courtly celebrations on the occasion of the wedding of Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite de Vaudémont-Lorraine on September 24, 1581. The following year he worked as a lutenist in the service of Duke François d'Anjou, brother of King Henry III. entered and worked with him as a teacher of the choirboys ( Maistre des enfants de musique ). After the Duke's death in 1584, he may have been in the service of Duke Heinrich von Bouillon and taught noble Huguenots . In 1590 it came after the assassination of King Henry III. violent confrontations in Paris, and Claude Le Jeune was just able to leave the city with the help of the musician Jacques Mauduit and take his valuable collection of unpublished compositions with him. This also included Dodecachorde , a cycle of psalm settings that was later published in La Rochelle (1598) . This work is dedicated to the aforementioned Prince Heinrich, Duke of Bouillon.

In 1594 the composer returned to Paris and then entered the court chapel of King Henry IV , who was another patron of Claude Le Jeune. There he was appointed chamber composer in 1596, which was also noted in the dedication of a dodecachorde from 1598. Claude Le Jeune died after mid-September 1600 and was buried on September 26th in the Protestant cemetery of the Paris community of La Trinité . Because the composer was reluctant to have his own works published in print during his lifetime, a series of compositions under the supervision of his sister Cécile and niece Judith Mardo were only published after his death, according to Le Printemps (1603), several books with psalm settings (1602 –1610), the Octonaires de la vanité et inconstance du monde (1606), the Pseaumes en vers mesurés (1606), the Books with Airs (1608) and the Second Livre des melanges (1612).

meaning

Claude Le Jeune's complete works of around 650 pieces show a broad spectrum of compositional forms; his works show great contrapuntal skills and a recognizable preference for the techniques of cantus firmus and canon . After he has dealt very thoroughly with the humanistic view that sounds can move a listener deeply, the literary and spiritual texts selected for setting are carefully considered in his music. His “Airs en vers mesurés à l'antique”, composed in the 1570s, represent a special form of polyphonic song, chansons in which he adheres closely to the rules of the musique mesurée for French poetry established by Jean-Antoine de Baïf . According to these rules, these chansons have a strictly homorhythmic sentence, which is based on the long and short syllables of the individual lines.

Another important part of his work consists in the numerous settings of psalms. In addition to his work "Pseaumes en vers mesurés", several collections of psalm compositions have been created, all of which are based more or less on the texts and melodies of the Calvinist Geneva Psalter and have found wide distribution. These compositions were not intended for church singing, but represent a large collection of private devotional music. The edition of the Complete Psalter that appeared after Le Jeune's death was published in 1646 in Amsterdam , 1669 in Basel (with the German text by Ambrosius Lobwasser ) and Published in 1733 in Strada in the Swiss Lower Engadine with a Romansh text.

A few other works by Claude Le Jeune are based on compositions by Adrian Willaert , Clément Janequin and Jean Richafort . Italian influences can also be seen in some works; The musicologist Isabelle His was able to prove in 1991 and 2000 that many of the chansons in the Les Melanges collection from 1585 go back to Italian canzones and villanelles , which were known in print in the mid-16th century. In addition, the composer evidently studied the writings of contemporary music theorists , especially Gioseffo Zarlino, very carefully . The new numbering of the modes had a significant influence on Le Jeunes Dodecachorde (12 psalms, each representing an example of a mode) and Octonaires (36 pieces, grouped according to the 12 modes).

Works

• measure up
  • Missa ad placitum for four to seven voices, published in 1607
  • Mass for 5 voices (authorship unsecured)
• Psalms
  • “Dix Pseaumes de David en forme de motets avec un dialogue” with four to seven voices, published in 1564
  • "Dodecachorde" for two to seven voices, published in La Rochelle in 1598 (contains 12 psalms)
  • “Les 150 Pseaumes” with four to five voices, published in 1601
  • “Premier Livre, contenant 50 pseaumes de David mis en musique” for three voices, published in 1602
  • “Pseaumes en vers mesurés” for two to eight voices, published in 1606
  • “Second Livre contenant 50 pseaumes de David” for three voices, published in 1608
  • “Troisieme Livre des pseaumes de David” for three parts, published in 1610
  • Two psalms with five to six voices in the “Second Livre des melanges”, published in 1612
• Other sacred vocal works
  • Magnificat, eight motets and a spiritual chanson with three to ten voices in the collection “Modulorum ternis vocibus […] volumen primum”, published in 1565
  • “Livre de meslanges”, published in 1585
  • “Second Livre des meslanges”, published in 1612
  • "Octonaires de la vanité et inconstance du monde" with three to four voices, published in 1606 (contains 36 sacred songs)
• Secular vocal works
  • "Livre de meslanges" for four to ten voices, published in Antwerp 1585 (contains 26 chansons, 36 canzonets and 1 Latin echo motette)
  • "Airs mis en musique" for four to five voices, published in 1594 (contains 33 airs)
  • "Le printemps" for two to eight voices, published in 1603 (contains 33 airs mesurées and 6 chansons)
  • "Airs" for three to six voices, published in 1608 (contains 59 airs)
  • "Second Livre des melanges" with four to eight voices, published in 1612 (contains 31 chansons, 3 airs, 2 airs mesurées and 7 canzonets)
  • Chansons, airs, and canzonets for four to five voices in various separate editions, published between 1552 and 1605
• Instrumental music
  • Three fantasies for four to five voices in the “Second Livre des melanges”, published in 1612

Literature (selection)

• DP Walker: The Aims of Baïfs Académie de poésie et de musique. In: Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Music No. 1, 1946/47, pp. 91-100
• François Lesure, Daniel P. Walker: Claude Le Jeune and musique mesurée. In: Musica Disciplina No. 3, 1949, No. 2-4, pages 151-170 ( access from JSTOR ).
• K. Levy: The Chanson of Claude Le Jeune , Dissertation Princeton / New Jersey 1955
• DR Lamothe: Claude Le Jeune, le psautier huguenot et la musique religieuse à la cour pendant les règnes de Charles IX, Henri III et Henri IV , dissertation at the University of Strasbourg 1980
• Isabelle His: Claude Le Jeune et le rythme prosodique: la mutation des années 1570. In: Revue de musicologie No. 59, 1993, pages 201-226
• R. Freedman: Claude Le Jeune, Adrian Willaert and the Art of Musical Translation. In: Early Music History No. 13, 1994, pages 123-148
• Marie-Thérèse Bouquet-Boyer, Pierre Bonniffet (editor): Claude Le Jeune et son temps en France et dans les États de Savoie, 1530-1600: musique, littérature et histoire , congress report Chambéry 4-7 November 1991 , Lang, Bern 1996 , ISBN 3906754421
• Isabelle His: La Renaissance à défaut d'Antiquité: Olivier Messiaen analyste du Printemps de Claude Le Jeune , Paris 1998, pages 235-250
• Isabelle His: Claude Le Jeune (verse 1530–1600). Un compositeur entre Renaissance et baroque , Actes Sud, Arles 2000

Web links

• Works by and about Claude Le Jeune in the catalog of the German National Library
• Sheet music and audio files by Claude Le Jeune in the International Music Score Library Project
• Sheet music in the public domain by Claude Le Jeune in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
• Claude Le Jeune in the Dutch online encyclopedia ENCYCLO.NL

swell

1. ↑ The Music in Past and Present (MGG), Person Part Volume 10, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Basel 2003, ISBN 3-7618-1120-9
2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 5: Köth - Mystical Chord. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1981, ISBN 3-451-18055-3 .