29 September 2019, 15:00
Waalse Kerk - Noordeinde 25 Den Haag
28 September 2019, 15:00
Waalse Kerk - Noordeinde 25 Den Haag
Description
Clément Janequin (1485-1558) is probably the most famous chansonnier of the 1500. He was known in all Europe and his music has travelled through the ages inspiring generations of composers. La guerre, The War, is considered one of his most celebrated music. The genre of the battaglia, songs dedicated to warfare, was not a novelty in the 1500: in 1487 Heinrich Isaac (1487), flemish composer working for the Medici family in Florence, wrote a well known Battaglia. However Jannequin’s La guerre became so famous especially for the use of onomatopoeia, which Jannequin employed extensively in his music, imitating the singing of birds as well as the roaring of cannons!
La guerre, also known as La battaglia di Marignano or La bataille, is dedicated to the battle of Marignano (1515) won by the young French king Francis I army against the old Swiss Confederacy. The battle took place in the north of Italy for the control of Milan, important gateway towards the Italian peninsula. It was considered a glorious victory not only because it ended the war itself but especially because it was the first victory by the French army after the numerous defeats against the smaller Swiss army, considered in those times to be the strongest army in Europe.
La Guerre is a musical description of the battle. In the first part, the French army, surprised by the enemy, prepares to engage the foes. In the second part of the song, the onomatopoeia sounds of the war mixed with the exclamations of the soldiers until the last cry echoes in the field … “Victoire!” and the battle as well as the song ends.
As in many other famous songs of those times, La guerre motives were used in sacred music, especially in parody masses, the musical setting of the mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music. In fact Janquin himself would write a mass called Missa super la Bataille, a mass about the battle, on 1532, only three years later to be the first publication of the song itself.
Numerous parodies masses based on La guerre were composed in the 1500, some great examples might be found in the Roman catholic area by composers like Escobar de Morales, Tomas Luìs de Victoria and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. For example in the Morales mass “Batalla Escoutez” the motives of La guerre are totally absorbed in the rich and well structured polyphony of the mid 1500 Roman polyphony.
La battaglia genre was still used in Venice between 1500 and 1600 by well known musicians like Andrea Gabrieli. Very interesting is the version of battaglia by Jacob Handl (also called Jacob Gallus). In his Heroes pugnate a mix of classic and renaissance Latin and onomatopoeia describes a ferocious battle in which gloria, fama et triumphus (glory, fame and triumph) are the “rewards” of the victorious, as all the epic tales teach us.