Gilles Mureau, Tant fort me tarde ta venue

Tant fort me tarde ta venue 3v · Mureau, Gilles

Source:

*Florence 176 ff. 71v-73 »Tant fort me tarde ta venue« 3v G muream (unicum) · Edition

Text: Rondeau cinquain; Florence 176 has text incipits only for the song’s 1st and 2nd sections, “Tant fort me tarde ta venue” and “Je ne prens plaisir”, which are in agreement with the complete poem in the Laborde chansonnier (ff. 34v-35) in the setting by Philippe Basiron.

After Laborde:

Tant fort me tarde ta venue
pour compter ma desconvenue,
mon plus qu’ame, que sur mon ame
je ne prens plaisir en nul ame
qui soit aujourduy soubz la nue.

De joye mon plaisir se desnue,
si douleur t’est puis souvenue;
mille foiz le jour te reclame:

Tant fort me tarde ta venue.

Or est ma sante certes nue,
je ne scay quel est devenue,
desconfort m’assault que point n’ame
et me veult mectre soubz la lame;
je suis mort, s’il me continue.

Tant fort me tarde ta venue
pour compter ma desconvenue,
mon plus qu’ame, que sur mon ame
je ne prens plaisir en nul ame
qui soit aujourduy soubz la nue.

Your appearance so strongly holds me back
from explaining my disappointment,
my more than beloved, that by my soul
I do not get pleasure from any love
that today might be found under the sky.

My pleasure strips off any joy,
if you still bring back the pain;
thousand times a day I cry to you:

Your appearance so strongly holds me back.

Certainly my sanity is gone,
I do not know what has happened to it,
worry assaults me that (he) does not at all love (me)
and will put me below the tombstone;
I shall die, if this continues for me.

Your appearance so strongly holds me back
from explaining my disappointment,
my more than beloved, that by my soul
I do not get pleasure from any love
that today might be found under the sky.

Evaluation of the source:

The main scribe copied his exemplar without any errors while omitting the poetic text.

Comments on text and music:

It is most likely that Mureau is the author of this artful poem written in a female voice and in an intimate tone (cf. the use of “tu / ta” and “mon plus qu’ame”). It is in rime equivoque, and its construction demands a one-line refrain following the couplet, not the half refrain as is usual in poems made for music. The sense of the unhappy love song does not permit a stop in the refrain after three lines. The first line alone (bb. 1-11) makes with its cadence to the mode’s fifth degree a fine, varied bridge to the tierce.

All three voices relate to the text, especially in the refrain where the musical segmentation of the lines fits. This does not work nearly as well in the couplet and tierce – here Basiron’s ‘chopped’ fashioning of the lines is more effective (see the edition). The song is in a ‘normal’ tessitura (B-c’’) with tenor and contratenor in the same range. Contratenor often crosses above the tenor and takes the fifth at several cadences. The sound of the setting is quite old-fashioned, even if the upper voices abound in parallel thirds and sixths.

The setting is varied: Superius and tenor declaim the first line with an effective postponed entry of the contratenor. The second line contrasts by using canonic imitation of a sequencing motive in the upper voices, while the 3rd line has staggered declamation leading to the open medial cadence. The second part of the rondeau opens in homorhythmical declamation, which then steps down to the cadence in ‘camouflaged’ parallel third-fifth concords (bb. 37-39). The setting of the last line of text is very long; arched melodies in superius and tenor develop into free canonic imitation (bb. 51 ff), which ends in a fauxbourdon cadence. Again, the tendency to parallelism in the counterpoint (cf. also bb. 18-21) discloses the setting’s quite old-fashioned stylistic background in spite of its declamatory stance.

See further my Introduction to The Complete Works of Gilles Mureau.

PWCH July 2011