Chansons, Odes, et Sonetz de Pierre Ronsard (1576).

This music collection underscores the popularity of the poetry of Pierre Ronsard among composers of northern Europe during the later sixteenth century. Ronsard himself claimed that his verse, especially the short lyric sonnet, was intended to be set to music. In the preface to this edition, Brooks examines why musicians, French and Franco-Flemish alike, were attracted to Ronsard's poems. She suggests that their rhythmic qualities - the control of rhythmic organization, assonance, repetition, and varied patterns - as well as their colorful metaphors, not unlike those in Italian madrigal verse, appealed to musicians.

In recent years, scholars have revisited the music of Jean de Castro (c.1540-c.1600), one of the most prolific composers of his era. This volume of twenty-two chansons is a welcome addition to the few works now available in a modern edition (a nineteen-volume opera omnia is planned, but only one volume has appeared to date). This edition follows the order of the original print, organized first by voicing (with ten works for four voices, ten for five voices, and two for eight voices), and within each category by tonal structure (as determined by the clefs, system, and final). The style of the music is largely contrapuntal, like much of the northern chanson repertory, but with a highly syllabic text setting; melismas are reserved for the madrigalian technique of text painting. Although many of Castro's chansons are set for only three voices, these works reflect the many-voiced settings that typify the Franco-Flemish style.

For this collection, Castro chose six chansons, six odes, and ten sonnets of Ronsard; his treatment of the texts is (according to Brooks) rather irreverent, using fragments of long poems, setting only partial texts of sonnets, and inconsistently placing musical divisions in sonnets. In one case he combined quatrains from two different sonnets to form a chanson text. The editor presumes that the composer's use of frequent word repetition accounts for the fragmentation of the original texts and his choice of uncomplicated verse. The preface to this edition has much to offer the interdisciplinary reader, including an overview and identification of Ronsard's editions that served Castro's many settings, as wall as fresh translations of the twenty-two poems from this 1576 collection.

Brooks points to one pair of thematically-related works which she claims resemble the response phenomenon so popular in earlier sixteenth-century chanson collections. "Ah, je meurs, ah baise moy" (no. 8) and "Las! ou fuis tu? atten encor un peu" (no. 9) are indeed both appeals to a reluctant woman from her lover, who in both poems alludes to her attempts to flee from his touch and to his desire to caress her breasts. Unlike the chanson-response sets of earlier years, however, these texts are not structurally related (no. 8 sets the final strophe of an ode while no. 9 sets the sestet of a sonnet), nor is there any musical link beyond the cleffing and finals. Typically, related poems were dialogues with identical syllabification and rhyme schemes, and musical settings generally exhibited similar melodic fragments or entire lines.

With such careful attention given to the poet and texts of this edition, it is somewhat disappointing that the composer remains an elusive figure whose biography is largely defined by his book dedications and imprint dates. Castro is possibly from Liege (a 1588 collection identifies him as "Eburone"); he seems to have worked in Antwerp during the 1570s, when this print along with others was issued; his travels to Lyon and Germany are documented only by dedications and occasional pieces; and his date and place of death is unknown. Perhaps the archives will eventually reveal some substantive information about this musician.

The musical and orthographical readings follow a single copy of the source (three are extant), and the editorial principles on which the modern volume is based are standard. The typography has a clean and easy-to-read look. One could only wish for concordances for the works, but these will come with the opera omnia. This was, in its day, the music of amateurs - the print was dedicated to the Dean of the Barber's Guild of Antwerp, who (according to Castro) loved music and was highly skilled in the art. It is certainly worthy of study and performance today in this well-prepared edition.

KRISTINE K. FORNEY California State University, Long Beach