Renaissance Chanson

The Renaissance chanson is a multi-voice secular song in French, typically scored for three to five voices. Composers used the form for love poetry, drinking songs, programmatic pieces depicting battles or birdsong, political satire and everything in between. Textures range from intricate Franco-Flemish polyphony, with imitative entries from each voice, to lighter Parisian chansons (Claudin de Sermisy, Clement Janequin) that move in clear chordal blocks suited to amateur singing. Programmatic chansons such as Janequin's 'La guerre' ('The War,' 1529) imitate trumpets, cannon-fire and shouted commands, while 'Le chant des oiseaux' renders birdcalls in vocal counterpoint.

The polyphonic chanson dominated French secular music from roughly 1450 to 1600. Major composers include Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez and, in the Parisian generation, Claudin de Sermisy and Clement Janequin. The 1528 Paris publisher Pierre Attaingnant pioneered movable-type music printing in France, which made chansons cheap and portable; sheet music circulated across courts and bourgeois households throughout Europe.

Follow how the text's images shape the music — birdsong pieces have voices leaping in trills, battle pieces fire short repeated cells against each other. The metrical pulse is usually clearer than in liturgical motets of the same period, making the chanson easier to follow on first hearing. Unaccompanied (a cappella) performances reveal the voice-leading; instrumental versions feel more dance-like.

Janequin's 'Le chant des oiseaux' (published 1529) is the most vivid entry — bird imitations rendered in four-voice counterpoint. Follow with Janequin's 'La guerre' for battle painting, and Josquin's 'Mille regretz' (c. 1520, written for Charles V) for melancholy at the highest level.

Janequin's 'La guerre' is sometimes called 'La bataille de Marignan' after the 1515 French victory over Swiss forces; the piece's vocal cannon-fire, drums and trumpet calls created the template for programmatic music in the European Renaissance.