Janequin, D’un seul soleil
After last week’s foray into the ars subtilior, you may be ready for something a bit more sedate.
Clément Janequin (1485-1558) was in his time perhaps the most celebrated composer of French chansons. Today he may be best known for two of his programmatic and onomatopoetic chansons: La bataille (the Battle) and Chant des oiseaux (Song of the Birds), which mimics bird calls. Those two, despite their difficulty, tend to be favorites of vocal ensembles because they are such fun to sing. We featured Chant des oiseaux in Friday Performance Pick 287.
Chansons form the largest part of Janequin’s compositional corpus, numbering more than 250. He composed approximately 150 Psalm settings. In contrast, he left only two masses and one motet.
Janequin entered the priesthood sometime around 1523 and was listed as a student at the University of Angers as late as 1548. He had served as maître de chapelle at Angers Cathedral in the 1530s, presumably his most productive period, but his biographical record is often sketchy. He eventually attained the honors of chantre ordinaire du roi in the 1550s and later compositeur ordinarire du roi.
D’un seul soleil (from one sun comes all my light) was written for four unaccompanied voices. It was first published in Huitiesme livre contenant XXV chansons nouvelles, Paris 1550.