"Ses amours et les miennes tout ensemble": la structure cyclique du Premier Livre d'Anthoine de Bertrand

Abstract

During the mid- to late 1570's, the popularity of Ronsard's poetry among musicians was so great that a number of composers published entire volumes of chansons on the poet's texts. The Ronsard collections of Anthoine de Bertrand, while representative of this trend, differ strikingly in many respects from those of his contemporaries. Bertrand's Premier livre des Amours (1576) is constructed cyclically; the sonnets chosen by the composer are presented in the order in which they were published by Ronsard, in a species of narrative tracing the history of an unhappy love affair. The chansons are grouped by mode as well, and the avoidance of certain tonal types and the use of others in connection with certain text groups lead to the conclusion that a system of modal ethos was governing the composer's choice of tonal structures