Renart le Nouvel

Beast satire with songs.

I recently reviewed John Haines’s new edition of the music inserted into one of the late (13thC) branches of the Old French stories of Renart the Fox, Renart le Nouvel. Lots of the songs that are sung by the various animals have music in some of the sources and concordances in the repertoire of motets, ballettes, and trouvère songs, including the songs of Adam de la Halle. In the spirit of my other pages aggregating sources for particular musical repertoires, I thought I’d do one for the four sources of Renart le Nouvel. So here it is!

MS L. F-Pn fr. 1581. Blank staves except for one melody, but some interesting pictures (including the one above). Contains only Renart.

MS C. F-Pn fr.372. Contains only Renart. (Thanks to Matthew Thomson for letting me know that Gallica has now upgraded the images to full colour!) With musical notation.

MS V. F-Pn fr. 25566 = Trouvère W; Adam de la Halle manuscript which also contains a lot of other things; DIAMM description. Contains Renart on ff.109v-177v. With musical notation.

MS F. F-Pn fr. 1593. Contains Renart as first item, ff.1r-58r. At least four different musical hands, some clearly 14thC (see D’un joli dart in picture below) and some probably by Claude Fauchet, the 16thC owner of the MS, who has annotated it liberally in the margins.
Français 1593
Français 1593
Source: gallica.bnf.fr

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