Chanter en grec à la cour de Louis XIII? L'ultime cantique spirituel du lieutenant de Courbes

Abstract

The last item in Charles de Courbes' Cantiques Spirituels (Paris : Pierre Ballard, 1622) is a polyphonic setting of two Greek texts, a unique example of its kind among early music prints. Consisting in the blessing of the table and the graces, the texts form a rather common pair, as shows their frequent use for the sake of pedagogy in Greek Alphabets. The version used by De Courbes is however taken from a more ambitious model : a Greek translation of a complete Office de la Vierge by the royal greek and latin lecturer to Henry IV, Federic II Morel. Neither the typography, nor the association of the syllables with the musical parts reveal a great control of the Greek language however, suggesting that it is more to a symbolic role that this polyphony seems to refer. Following descriptions of royal meals given by Guillaume du Peyrat in his Histoire ecclesiastique de la cour (1645), one notices that references to the court of Constantinople are quite numerous, determining a kind of ideal model for ceremonies at the French court. Pointing towards a continuity between Paris and the second Rome, these references aiming at an illustration of a venerable antiquity form a possible background for the piece. Beside this general dimension of symbolical prestige, the greek language also allows for an emphasis on the more circumstancial meaning of the collection as a whole, conceived as an offering to king Louis XIII on his 21 st birthday.