Le Jeune, C :: Revecy venir du Printans

Nourse Wind Publications presents Claude Le Jeune's 'Revecy venir du Printans' arranged for 5 flutes Nancy Nourse.

Performance Notes by the arranger: Claude Le Jeune, a Franco-Belgian composer of psalm settings, instrumental pieces as well as popular chansons, enjoyed considerable recognition as a composer during his lifetime. In John Hawkin's 'A General History of the Science and Practice of Music', published in 1776, he is credited with magical powers through his extraordinary knowledge and handling of the modes, when on one wedding occasion he first roused and then quelled the passions of a certain military officer through his music. Some other indication of his magical powers would be that even though he continued to be known as a Huguenot sympathizer in a devoutly Roman Catholic society, he remarkably managed to retain his position as composer to the king.

Three years after Claude Le Jeune's death in 1600, his sister Cecile Le Jeune edited and published in Paris a collection of 39 chansons for two to eight voices entitled 'Le Printemps'. This volume's preface discusses Claude Le Jeune's successful focus upon the issue of developing a more rhythmic treatment of vocal text, more in line with classical prosody than found in the French language of his time. Believing that metrical rhythm is the soul of music, and the harmony merely its body, Le Jeune worked with Jean-Antoine Baif (founder in 1570 of the Academie de Poesie et de la Musique) in creating a new style of 'vers mesures' composition that used clearly defined rhythmic patterns and long and short syllables wrapped in a simple chordal or homophonic structure.