Many of these Parisian works were published by Pierre Attaingnant. This genre sometimes featured music that was meant to be evocative of certain imagery such as birds or the marketplace. The first book of music printed from movable type was Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, a collection of ninety-six chansons by many composers, published in Venice in 1501 by Ottaviano Petrucci.īeginning in the late 1520s through mid-century, Claudin de Sermisy, Pierre Certon, Clément Janequin, and Philippe Verdelot were composers of so-called Parisian chansons, which also abandoned the formes fixes, often featured four voices, and were in a simpler, more homophonic style. Later 15th- and early 16th-century figures in the genre included Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez, whose works cease to be constrained by formes fixes and begin to feature a pervading imitation (all voices sharing material and moving at similar speeds), similar to that found in contemporary motets and liturgical music. Musicologist David Fallows includes the Burgundian repertoire in A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs 1415–1480. These works are typically still 3 voices, with an active upper voice (discantus) pitched above two lower voices (tenor and altus) usually sharing the same range. Their chansons, while somewhat simple in style, are also generally in three voices with a structural tenor. Two composers from Burgundy, Guillaume Du Fay and Gilles Binchois, who wrote so-called Burgundian chansons, dominated the subsequent generation of chanson composers ( c. The first important composer of chansons was Guillaume de Machaut, who composed three-voice works in the formes fixes during the 14th century. Sometimes, the singers were accompanied by instruments. The earliest chansons were for two, three or four voices, with first three becoming the norm, expanding to four voices by the 16th century. Early chansons tended to be in one of the formes fixes- ballade, rondeau or virelai (formerly the chanson baladée)-though some composers later set popular poetry in a variety of forms. In its typical specialized usage, the word chanson refers to a polyphonic French song of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Since the 1990s, the term may be used for Nouvelle Chanson, a French song that often contains poetic or political content. This includes the songs of chansonnier, chanson de geste and Grand chant court songs of the late Renaissance and early Baroque music periods, air de cour popular songs from the 17th to 19th century, bergerette, brunette, chanson pour boire, pastourelle, and vaudeville art song of the romantic era, mélodie and folk music, chanson populaire. Ī broad term, the word "chanson" literally means "song" in French and can thus less commonly refers to a variety of (usually secular) French genres throughout history. Not until the ars nova composer Guillaume de Machaut did any composer write a significant number of polyphonic chansons. The genre had origins in the monophonic songs of troubadours and trouvères, though the only polyphonic precedents were 16 works by Adam de la Halle and one by Jehan de Lescurel. ' song') is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the polyphonic French song of late medieval and Renaissance music.