The Musique Mesurée of Claude Le Jeune

Claude Le Jeune

Engraving from Le Jeune's posthumous 'Le Printemps' of 1603

Source: Wikipedia

Conceived in Valenciennes in northern France some time between 1528 and 1530, Claude Le Jeune was educated in the Franco-Flemish school. He was also among the first Protestant composers on the Continent, Thomas Tallis across the Channel in England about a generation older. Le Jeune composed no small amount of sacred music, including 347 psalms, 38 chansons, eleven motets and a mass. Secular works included 43 Italian madrigals. .

First records of Le Jeune find at least one of his chansons being published in Leuven in 1554. See Volume IV of Dr. Burney's Musical Extracts. Like Tallis in England, the Reformation found Le Jeune working for both sides of enemy camps. Moving to Paris in 1564, Le Jeune became involved with the Huguenots, a group of reformed Protestants of the Calvinist vein gathering force since the thirties. He nevertheless also involved himself with the Academie de Musique et de Poésie under Catholic, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, in 1570, beginning herein his middle period. As a theorist, Le Jeune educated himself in ancient Grecian music alike Vincenzo Galilei. Unlike Galilei who called for a fundamental return to Greek monody to save composition from polyphonic methods which obscured true music, Le Jeune's major claim to fame was his secular "Parisian" chansons and airs in the manner of musique mesurée, a style developed to complement vers mesurée, the latter developed by poets under the leadership of Baif. Those chansons would be among the last of such kind, as the chanson had begun transitioning toward the air du cour in popular French song in the latter 16th century. Galilei's recall of Greek monody was highly estimated and pursued into the baroque by numerous composers. Le Jeune's return to the ancients, however, was based on the metrics of verse, creating rhythmic harmony via such as matching notes of long or short values to text of long or short syllables. Such made Le Jeune's name for a time with some. But musique mesurée required such as the manipulation of contemporary texts like Baif's to suit classical meter. Though it produced interesting results it was deemed unsustainable by most composers and largely passed away with Le Jeune. Albeit considerably popular in humanist France for a time, composers of greater Continental status tended to ignore him. Le Jeune composed, then composed, then composed some more in the pursuit of musique mesurée, but with the exception of airs de cour (usually rhyming) for which Le Jeune is noted, it came to its own demise in the end and was of little influence to baroque counterpoint developing in Italy. Musique mesurée was a niche method unique, but wasn't to last as a fundamental contribution to the direction that music was going. Le Juene is thus of peculiar interest as a composer with his own theoretical funk temporarily operating at the fringe of the majors, set apart as a horse of a different color in comparison to more influential paths of European composition.

Moving ahead some years, Le Jeune was living in La Rochelle when he was discovered to be the author of an anti-Catholic tract in 1589 and was forced to flee Paris. Le Jeunes's slightly older contemporary, Claude Goudimel, had been killed by Catholics in Lyon during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in August of 1572. Acquiring employment by Huguenot (Protestant) king, Henry IV, with whom he remained the last years of his life, Le Jeune published 'Dodecacorde: Comprising Twelve Psalms of David Set to Music According to the Twelve Modes' in 1598. Most of his books, however, weren't published until after his death. 'Les Cent Cinquante Pseaumes de David' ('The 150 Psalms of David') saw publishing posthumously in 1601 followed by ''Pseaumes En Vers Mezurez'' in 1606. His last finished work prior to his death was 'Octonaires de la vanité et inconstances du monde' ('Eight-line Poems on the Vanity and Inconstancy of the World'). Consisting of 36 movements setting poems by Antoine Chandieu, that saw publishing in 1606. Titles below are stacked by publication dates, not entirely of which may be the first. All posthumous, dates of composition are unidentified and might have been as many as three decades earlier.

'Qu'est devenu ce bel oeil'   Chanson a 3 by Claude Le Jeune

'What is happened to this beautiful eye'

Pub by Le Jeune's sister in 'Le Printemps' of 1603 dedicated to James I

A memento mori (reminder of death)

Prob a middle period work illustrating Le Jeune's interpretation of Greek chromaticism

Ensemble Clement Janequin

'Revoicy venir du printemps'   Chanson mesurée à l'antique a 5 by Claude Le Jeune

'Behold the return of spring'

Setting to text by Jean-Antoine de Baif

Pub in 'Airs a 3, 4, 5 et 6 parties' in Paris by Pierre Ballard 1608

Ensemble Clement Janequin

'Une puce j'ai dedans l'oreille'   Chanson mesurée à l'antique a 4 by Claude Le Jeune

'A flea I have stuck in my ear'

Setting to text by Jean-Antoine de Baif

Pub in 'Airs a 3, 4, 5 et 6 parties' in Paris by Pierre Ballard 1608

Prob based on Baldassara Donato's 'No pulice m'entrato nell'orecchia' of 1550

A flea in one's ear may refer to sexual temptation as it did in the later medieval period

Ensemble Clement Janequin directed by Dominique Vissee

'La Guerre de Claude Le Jeune'   Chanson mesurée à l'antique a 3-6 by Claude Le Jeune

'The War of Claude Le Jeune'

Setting to text by Jean-Antoine de Baif

Pub in 'Airs a 3, 4, 5 et 6 parties' in Paris by Pierre Ballard 1608

"War" in this refers less to military battle than erotic love

Ensemble Clement Janequin directed by Dominique Vissee

'Tout ce qui est de plus beau dans les cieux'   Chanson a 4 by Claude Le Jeune

'All that is more beautiful in the heavens'

No.9 of  'Chansons et airs à quatre' in 'Meslanges, Livre 2' of 1612

Ensemble Clement Janequin directed by Dominique Vissee

'Je suis deshéritée'   Chanson a 6 by Claude Le Jeune

'I am dispossessed'   Text by anonymous

Prob No.5 of two versions in 'Chansons a six' in 'Meslanges, Livre 2' of 1612

Ensemble Clement Janequin   Album: 'Claude Lejeune: Meslanges' on Harmonia Mundi 2008

Le Jeune had died in Paris in 1600, buried on 26 September.