Readings of poetry—readings of music: intertextuality in Josquin’s Je me complains de mon amy
Vassiliki Koutsobina, Distinguished Dissertation Fellow at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, is completing a doctoral dissertation on musical rhetoric in the multi-voice chanson repertory of Josquin and his contemporaries. She has lectured widely on intertextuality in Josquin’s chansons and is currently researching musical responses of the early 16th century. koutsov{at}email.uc.edu
 |
Abstract |
|---|
Josquin’s five-voice Je me complains de mon amy incorporates the melodic and poetic fragment ‘La tricoton, la tricoton / La belle tricotée’, derived from a pre-existing popular song, as its final couplet. Despite the unusual placement of the quotation and the obscure meaning of the word ‘tricotée’, the chanson has attracted little scholarly attention. Relying on the concept of intertextuality, this article explores the signifying function of the insertion. The above quotation forms the last phrase of the tune ‘La tricotée est par matin levée’, which survives in three 15th-century polyphonic settings. Its text is related to other ‘Je m’y levay par ung matin’ poems, whose associative meanings were easily recognizable by contemporary audiences. Comparison between the individual phrases of ‘La tricotée est par matin levée’ and the phrases of the canonic melody in Je me complains de mon amy reveals a one-to-one correspondence of their motivic content and structural layout. On the level of the poetry, the interaction of the ‘tricotée’ topos with the amorous complaint of the main poem creates a subtle layer of irony, present from beginning to end. The proposed reading reveals Josquin’s reliance on the full verbal and musical ‘text’ of ‘La tricotée est par matin levée’ and the social and cultural overtones with which the tune resonates.
Key Words: Josquin des Prez • tricotée • Je me complains de mon amy • intertextuality • allusion • borrowing • quotation • irony