Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France. (Historical Topics).

Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France. By Jeanice Brooks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. [xvi, 560 p. ISBN 0-226-07587-7. $80.]

Although musicmaking at the French court in the late sixteenth century encompassed many genres, solo song figured most prominently as representative of the court itself: its ideals, attitudes, anxieties, and wit. Indeed, the vernacular atrophic songs originally known as voix de ville, which began in the 1560s to challenge the hegemony of the polyphonic chanson, later became identified as airs de cour precisely because of their association with the court. In Courtly Song; a meticulously researched and beautifully written book, Jeanice Brooks takes a multidisciplinary approach to this repertory, using it to shed light on the cultural and social mores of the French aristocracy under the last Valois kings (1559-89).

In presenting the air de cour as both a musical genre and a social practice, Brooks proceeds from consideration of the functions served by song within the court itself to the ways in which song helped to define the court's relationship to the outside world. Chapter 1, "The Court and the Air de Cour," scrutinizes the network of practices and relationships that attended the production and dissemination of airs: the adoption of this repertory by the royal music printers, how the songs were anthologized and presented on the printed page, the patrons to whom they were dedicated, the affiliation of the airs with the lyric production of court poets and the nobility, and the links between songs and specific court events. Although the extant court records for this period are incomplete, Brooks has nonetheless drawn from them a wealth of new information regarding the careers of the royal chamber musicians. In chapter 2, "Paying Court," she shows how song functioned as a commodity in the economic system of the court. He re she outlines the types of positions occupied by musicians, how they obtained these appointments, how they were remunerated, and how (in some cases) they went about accumulating multiple charges in different households. For these professionals, success required being a good courtier as well as a good musician, and Brooks demonstrates that the flowery dedicatory epistles that preface collections of airs can be mined for insights into the nature of patron-client relationships.

In the remaining chapters, this initial focus on professional musicmaking broadens to include amateur musicmaking as well. "The Conjunction of Arms and Letters" assesses the role of song in sixteenth-century debates over the character of the nobility and how noble virtue was to be defined and recognized. Brooks produces substantial evidence that courtly song became a real component of noble education in the late sixteenth century. Musicmaking--especially solo singing to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument--was viewed as a complement to the exercise of arms, and appreciation for music was perceived to be a sign of a virtuous soul. Airs devoted to battle themes supported the encomiastic needs of the court. And on another front, song could be used as a weapon itself, in the warfare of courtly love. Next, "Women's Voices" makes an important contribution to the study of gender in early modern France by looking at courtly songs that project a female subject position. The ...