Ménétriers: Dances and Songs of the European Minstrels

Composer(s)

Adrien Le Roy
(b Montreuil-sur-Mer, c1520; d Paris, 1598). French music printer, lutenist and composer. He was born into a wealthy merchant family from northern France. As a young man he entered successively the service of two members of the aristocracy close to the French throne, Claude de Clermont and Jacques II, Baron de Semblançay and Viscount of Tours. In March 1546 he became acquainted with the editor Jean de Brouilly in Paris, bought some properties from him in St Denis and married his daughter Denise (d before 1570). He moved to Brouilly’s house at the sign of Ste Geneviève (later the sign of Mount Parnassus) in the rue St Jean-de-Beauvais – an address which was to become famous as the home of one of the greatest of the French music printing establishments.

On 14 August 1551 Le Roy and his cousin Robert Ballard obtained a privilege from Henri II to print and sell all kinds of music books. Their first publication appeared at the end of the same month. On 16 February 1553, the king gave Le Roy & Ballard the title of royal music printer, which had been vacant since Attaingnant’s death in 1552; it was renewed in 1568 and 1594. The association flourished, and Ballard’s heirs continued to dominate French music printing until the middle of the 18th century (see Ballard). Le Roy acted as artistic director, while Ballard handled the business side.

Some of the printing firm’s success can be attributed to the access both Le Roy and Ballard had to court circles, including the Valois monarchs Henri II, Charles IX and Henri III. Le Roy was a regular member of the salon of Catherine de Clermont, Countess of Retz. There he met artists, musicians and the poets Ronsard, Baïf and Melissus, who wrote dedicatory verses for some of his collections. Le Roy himself wrote a few dedications to Charles IX and the Count of Retz.

Greater artistic success came to Le Roy, however, as a composer of chansons and music for lute, guitar and cittern, instruments on which he was an accomplished virtuoso. He wrote instruction books for the lute (Instruction … de luth, ?1557, Eng. trans., 1568; Instructions pour le luth, 1574) and guitar (Briefve et facile instruction, 1551) as well as several books of tablature for lute (at least six), guitar (five) and cittern containing arrangements of four-voice chansons and psalms, plus several dances and two fantasias. The lute books include highly ornate versions of songs by Arcadelt, Certon, Sandrin and other contemporaries, following the virtuoso style of Albert de Rippe in ornamentation by diminution, arpeggiation and an incipient style brisé. As Le Roy explained in his Instructions of 1574, the technique of arrangement may be simple intabulation (as in his arrangements of chansons by Lassus) or more ‘ finely handled’ divisions with ornate variation and diminution. His five books for four-course guitar include preludes, two ‘fantasies’ and several dances (some followed by more ornate divisions), as well as arrangements of Latin psalms, chansons and voix de ville (two books presenting a separate fully texted vocal line which is doubled in the tablature). The vocal line is doubled too in his Livre d’airs de cour (Paris, 1571) for solo voice and lute, the first publication in which the term air de cour was used (see Air de cour); many of these airs offer more declamatory monodic arrangements of four-voice strophic chansons or voix de ville by La Grotte and others, while some songs are followed by alternative more ornate versions. Le Roy’s own surviving four-voice songs are limited to two chansons (O que d’ennuis, RISM 155426, and En un chasteau, RISM 155616), one strophic air (Quel feu par les vens animé, RISM 15763) and a Premier livre de chansons en forme de vau de ville (Paris, 1573) containing 23 chansons, most of which reharmonize melodies from Certon’s Premier livre de chansons (1552) with the tenor part transposed to the superius. In addition Le Roy left a treatise, Traicté de musique (1583), with chapters on the rules of counterpoint, consonance, dissonance, syncopation, cadences and modes.

Le Roy’s friendship with musicians helped assure the firm’s pre-eminence. Certon, Arcadelt, Le Jeune, Costeley and Goudimel were personal acquaintances. The most valuable friendship of all was that with Orlande de Lassus, who stayed in Le Roy’s house during a visit to Paris and whom Le Roy introduced at court. A letter dated 14 January 1574, from Le Roy to Lassus, describes the delight that Charles IX took in Lassus’s music and tells him that the king wanted to make him composer of the royal chamber and had urged Le Roy to print his music as soon as possible for fear that it otherwise might be lost. Le Roy & Ballard were chiefly responsible for making Lassus’s older music well known in France and for disseminating his newest works to the rest of the musical world.

After Ballard’s death in July 1588 the firm did not publish anything until 1591, when three books of songs appeared under Le Roy’s name alone. After another pause publishing began again in 1593 and continued until Le Roy’s death. During this period 15 more books were printed, this time under the name of Adrian Le Roy and the widow of Ballard. Le Roy died childless, turning over his interest to Ballard’s heirs.

Le Roy was respected as a pedagogue, but perhaps his most lasting contribution to music history is the influence he exercised as a publisher on French musical taste.

Count Ludovico Roncalli,
(fl late 17th century). Italian guitarist and composer. The often-encountered spellings ‘Roncelli’ and ‘Rancalli’ are erroneous. Roncalli is known only through his Capricci armonici sopra la chitarra spagnola (Bergamo, 1692/R; facs. in BMB, iv, 1969). This collection contains nine ‘sonatas’ or suites for five-course Baroque guitar notated in Italian guitar tablature; each one comprises from five to seven movements. Each suite begins with a preludio and alemanda, which are followed by other typical late 17th-century Italian dance forms such as the corrente, giga, sarabanda and gavotta. Despite their Italian titles the movements show some French influence. Roncalli gave no indication of the tuning for his pieces, but their style and textures seem to indicate the ‘French’ tuning a/a–d'/d–g/g–b/b–e' used by his contemporaries Corbetta, Derosier and Visée.

Gaspar Sanz
(b Calanda, Aragon, mid-17th century; d early 18th century). Spanish guitarist, composer and priest. Early in his life he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from the University of Salamanca and later travelled to Italy, where he studied music under Cristoforo Caresana and Lelio Colista, and possibly also under Orazio Benevoli and Pietro Andrea Ziani. On returning to Spain he published not only his Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española but also two literary works: a Spanish translation of Daniello Bartoli's L'uomo de lettere (Madrid, 1678) and a eulogy in praise of Pope Innocent XI entitled Ecos sagrados (Madrid, 1681).

Giovanni Battista Vitali
(b Bologna, 18 Feb 1632; d Bologna, 12 Oct 1692). Composer, cellist and singer. He is noted for his work in establishing the Baroque sonata, especially the trio sonata. His works appear to have influenced the chamber music of such eminent composers as Corelli, Torelli and Purcell.

Girolamo Frescobaldi: (b Ferrara, bap. mid-Sept 1583; d Rome, 1 March 1643). Italian composer and keyboard virtuoso. He was one of the greatest keyboard composers of the first half of the 17th century.

Henry Purcell (ii)
(b ?Westminster, London, ?10 Sept 1659; d Westminster, London, 21 Nov 1695).
Composer and organist, son of (1) Henry Purcell (i). He was one of the most important 17th-century composers and one of the greatest of all English composers.

Jean-Baptiste Lully [Lulli, Giovanni Battista] (i)
(b Florence, 29 Nov 1632; d Paris, 22 March 1687). Composer, dancer and instrumentalist of Italian birth.
Lully's origins were modest. His father, Lorenzo (1599–1667), seems to have come from peasant stock; like his ancestors, he was born in Tuscany in the Mugello area and probably at Campestri, where he, his brothers and a cousin owned a chestnut wood. By the age of twenty he was living in Florence, and in 1620 he married a miller's daughter, Catarina del Sera (or del Seta). They had three children: Verginio (1621–38), Giovanni Battista and Margherita (d 1639). Little is known about the education of the younger son. He may have learnt writing and arithmetic at an early age from his father, who became a miller and a businessman, but the boy probably had to turn to the Franciscan friars of the Via Borgo Ognissanti, where his parents lived, for his introduction to music and instruction on the guitar and violin, which he must have learnt in his youth. According to Le Cerf de la Viéville, his first music master was ‘a good Franciscan friar’. It is not known how he came to be chosen to go to France as an Italian tutor to Louis XIV's cousin Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, known as the ‘Grande Mademoiselle’, who was studying the language at the time, but he was engaged by the princess's uncle Roger de Lorraine, the chevalier de Guise, who visited Florence in 1645 and 1646. In late February 1646 Giovanni Battista left his native land for Paris.

Marin Marais (b Paris, bap. 31 May 1656; d Paris, 15 Aug 1728). French composer and viol player. He is one of the outstanding figures in French music of the Baroque period.

Robert de Visée
(b ? c1655; d 1732–3). French guitarist, theorbo, lute and viol player and composer. He was possibly a pupil of Corbetta. He is first mentioned (as theorbist and guitarist) by Le Gallois in 1680, and about that time became a chamber musician to Louis XIV. In the dedication of his first guitar book (1682) he mentions that he was often called upon by the king to amuse the dauphin, and the diary of the Count of Dangeau from the year 1686 states that he regularly played the guitar at the king’s bedside in the evenings. Between 1694 and 1705 Visée frequently performed at the French court, particularly at the evening gatherings of Mme de Maintenon, with the flautists Descoteaux and Philibert, the harpsichordist Jean-Baptiste Buterne and the viol player Antoine Forqueray. In 1709 he was appointed to the post of singer in the royal chamber in recognition of his service to the court, in which he had not until then held a position. In 1719 he was formally appointed guitar teacher to the king, although he had actually been the king’s instructor since 1695; his son François succeeded him in this post in 1721. A letter of Jean Rousseau of 1688 indicates that Visée was a respected musician at Versailles and that he also played the viol.