de Calais (having been composed in 1558, and already published in 1559), a type of dramatic and cyclical dialogue inspired by Clément Janequin's famous Bataille, written for Marignan and François I, yet without simply imitating it. Prise du Havre (written in 1563, almost seven years before publication) also adopts a cyclic structure, yet is more developed – in 6 sections instead of 4 – with a brief verse passage representing a busy battle melée: "Each drum / Shall beat in turn, / Fifes, blow. / Cornets, swell. / Sound, clarions. / Thunder, cannon. / Enter, soldiers, / The walls are down, / The tower is breached. / Seize the wolves, / Kill them all, / They're ours now, / Their glory is spent." The absence of onomatopoeic devices, and the fact that Costeley adheres to the verse structure of the poem are what distinguish it from Janequin's model. Finally, the praise afforded the 13-year-old king in his victory over the English is unmistakably linked with the praise due to God.
year, the day after Saint Cecilia's feast day. The competition categories give us an overview of the interesting types of genre: 5-part Latin motets, 5-part songs on a "nonscandalous" text, "gently facetious" 4-part songs, 4-part airs, and (for "Cecilia's Triumph") 5-part song-settings of a Christian sonnet. Let us return to Costeley's Musique, which contains such a startling stylistic diversity, poetically as well as musically, and presents such an exceptional view of the French chanson of the 1550s and 1560s. The present recording reflects this variety, to which the composer himself refers in his dedication as "this, my musically diverse labour". Despite its odd title, the publication actually forms a good representation of the mélanges, a "mixed" category of anthologies or personal collections, that flourished at the time. In the same year, 1570, the great volumes of Lassus (published by Le Roy and Ballard), and of Pierre Certon (Du Chemin) appear: they were offering their musical clientele a broad range of genres, subjects, settings and even languages that might satisfy all tastes and all currents. Costeley lists in his dedication various types of repertoire suited to different goals: "Martial, serious, exalting, civil & comic songs". It happens that this categorisation, prefiguring that of the Puy d'Évreux of 1575, corresponds quite closely to the songs chosen for the current recording, which give a sufficiently representative sample of the different faces of the music of the time.
Several of the pieces presented on the recording can be placed in the category of "serious songs": J'ayme mon Dieu is a tripartite moral song denouncing the lure of gold, money and "the vanities"; Seigneur Dieu is the famous and chromatic sacred song in three sections dealt with above; Sy c'est un grief tourment describes the unhappy lover wanting to die; Je plains le temps expresses the regrets of a youth passed at the school of that "false god", the god of love; Puisque la loy is a short song on the relatively rare theme of a vow of chastity, or of virginity preserved until marriage.
Concerning the "martial songs", Prise du Havre seems a particularly suitable example. Costeley had already published a first attempt at the genre with La prinse [sic]
Among the "honest and civil" songs can be found Philippe Desportes' exceptional sonnet in dialogue form 13