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INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
IN FRANCE DURING THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, there was a musical movement toward the composition of solo song concurrent with that of Italy. These new solo works existed in many forms;1 one in particular, the air de cour, holds an important place in the development of French song. Yet, unlike their Italian counterparts, these pieces are infrequently performed in the voice studio and on the recital stage.
Early French monody is overlooked for many reasons. For the past two centuries, seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian aria/art song has outshone the air de cour as well as French solo stage music from the same period. As a result, only a few modern performing editions of this French genre have been published. One can find academic editions of airs de cour in certain volumes of collected works and/or anthologies, but these editions are not the best for performance. They are particularly cumbersome for beginning singers, who know little about French text declamation, pronunciation, and appropriate vocal style. One may stumble across a facsimile of the original manuscript for an air de cour, but the nonspecialized musician is ill equipped to perform from it, due to the use of nontraditional clefs, antiquated notation, and specialized accompaniments. Additionally, singers rarely are taught the specific ornamentation and other pertinent performance practice considerations appropriate to this type of piece. The aim of this article is to aid singers in the preparation and performance of these early French pieces, particularly the air de cour. The focus will be not only on a historically informed performance (including appropriate vocal production, instrumentation, tuning, diction, ornamentation, and interpretation of text), but also on an approach that renders this genre more accessible to beginning and intermediate singers. A representative air de cour, "Amans qui vous plaignés," is offered at the end of the paper. This new, modernized edition provides appropriate text declamation and examples of ornamentation based on performance practice of the time. Other performance suggestions are included in the body of the article.
According to John Baron, air de cour is a term used to describe secular, strophic songs typically sung at the French court from the late sixteenth century through the middle of the seventeenth century. The genre derived from...