Baude Cordier

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Cordier's rondeau about love, Belle, Bonne, Sage, is in a heart shape, with red notes indicating rhythmic alterations.
Cordier's rondeau about love, Belle, Bonne, Sage, is in a heart shape, with red notes indicating rhythmic alterations.

Baude Cordier (*ca. 1380 in Rheims, died before 1440) was a French composer from Rheims; it has been suggested that Cordier was the nom de plume of Baude Fresnel.[1] Cordier's works are considered among the prime examples of ars subtilior. In line with that cultural trend, he was fond of using red note notation, also known as coloration, a technique stemming from the general practice of mensural notation. The change in color adjusts the rhythm of a particular note from its usual form. (This musical style and type of notation has also been termed "mannerism" and "mannered notation.")[2]

Ten of Cordier's secular pieces survive, most of which are rondeaux:

  • some are in the rhythmically complex late fourteenth-century French style of ars subtilior, such as "Amans amés secretement" (Lovers, love discretely).[3]
  • others are simpler, with greater emphasis on lyrical melody, such as "Belle, Bonne, Sage", also transcribed in HAM, and characterized with "Amans" as a rondeau.

Two of the composer's chansons are in the Chantilly Manuscript and are well-known examples of eye music:

  • the love song "Belle, Bonne, Sage" ("Beautiful, Good, Wise"). The manuscript is in the shape of a heart. For an additional fillip of eye music, hanging like a locket in the upper left are notes all in red also in the shape of a heart.[4][5]
Cordier's Tout par compas suy composés.
Cordier's Tout par compas suy composés.
  • a circular canon "Tout par compas suy composés" ("With a compass was I composed")—more eye music, in which the manuscript is written in a circle.[6][7]

His mass movement in the Apt MS is in the later, simpler fifteenth-century style.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Reany, Gilbert, "Cordier, Baude" The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. London, Macmillan, 1980. (20 vol.) ISBN 1-56159-174-2
  2. ^ See Parrish, Carl. The Notation of Medieval Music. W. W. Norton, 1957.)
  3. ^ Transcribed with commentary in Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apel: Historical Anthology of Music (HAM): Oriental, Medieval and Renaissance Music (Harvard University Press)
  4. ^ A modern transcription and music media file of "Belle, Bonne, Sage."
  5. ^ The text and English translation of the song
  6. ^ More details on text and performance and links to recorded performances of "Tout par compas
  7. ^ Bergsagel, John. "Cordier's Circular Canon," The Musical Times, 113, No. 1558 (Dec., 1972), pp. 1175-1177