Surname
Regnes
Given Name
Nicole
Role
Composer
Musician
Active period
circa 1530 - 1551
Biography
A rédiger à partir de NG2
(fl 1530–51). French editor and composer. He worked in Paris as house editor for Nicolas Du Chemin between 1549 and 1551, instructing the printer in the rudiments of music in return for board and a modest salary. Du Chemin also offered him ten golden crowns for several books of his music, including three collections of new chansons and a book of unpublished four-part motets (though there is no evidence that any of this was ever printed). Regnes was succeeded as house editor by Claude Goudimel.
20 of Regnes’ compositions survive: all but one are four-voice chansons. The three-voice Le berger et la bergere, to judge from the frequency with which it was reprinted, was his best-known work. A few of his chansons – A tout jamais vous faire humble service, for example – demonstrate competence in handling the chordal texture of the typical Parisian chanson. Most of the pieces, however, show the composer’s woeful lack of contrapuntal skill. His style suffers from a paucity of harmonic and melodic imagination. The great disparity between Regnes’ better work and the more incompetent pieces suggests that there may have been more than one composer involved; the music is attributed variously to Regnes, Rene, Renes, Rennes, Renez, Reveré, Revertz and Revez (generally no forename is given), but there is no consistent correlation between one form of the name and any stylistic traits.
WORKS
1 chanson, 3vv, Attaingnant: Trente et une chansons (1535); ed. L.F. Bernstein, La couronne et fleur des chansons a troys (New York, 1984)
19 chansons, 4vv, 2 in 15303, 1 in 15311, 15365, 153810, 154314, 154612, 3 in 154924, 154925, 1 in 154926, 2 in 15505, 3 in 15507; 1 ed. in PÄMw, xxiii (1899/R), 1 ed. A. Seay, Thirty Chansons for Three and Four Voices, from Attaingnant Collections (New Haven, 1960), 1 ed. in SCC, xxviii (1993)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. Coyecque: Recueil d’actes notariés relatifs à l’histoire de Paris et de ses environs au XVIe siècle, ii (Paris, 1923), item 5795
F. Lesure and G. Thibault: ‘Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Nicolas Du Chemin (1549–1576)’, AnnM, i (1953), 269–373; iv (1956), 251–3; vi (1958–63), 408–6
D. Heartz: ‘Au pres de vous: Claudin’s Chanson and the Commerce of Publishers’ Arrangements’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 193–225
L.F. Bernstein: ‘La courone et fleur des chansons a troys [RISM 15361]: a Mirror of the French Chanson in Italy in the Years between Ottaviano Petrucci and Antonio Gardano’, JAMS, xxvi (1973), 1–68
LAWRENCE F. BERNSTEIN
Boucaut 2005 apporte des infos