Surname
Planson
Given Name
Jean
Variant Name
Jehan
Role
Composer
Musician
Organist
Active period
1575 - 1588
Workplace
Paris
Institution
Église Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois de Paris
Biography
Voir Dictionnaire
Planson [Plançon], Jean [Jehan]
(b ?Paris, c1559; d after 1611). French composer and organist. On 8 July 1575 he was appointed organist at the collegiate church of St Germain-l’Auxerrois, Paris; although Jean Lesecq is known to have replaced him in the following December, he was recorded as still holding the post when he won the harp prize for his five-voice motet Aspice Domine and the triomphe prize for his seven-voice setting of the sonnet Ha, Dieu que de filetz in the St Cecilia competition at Evreux in 1578. From 1586 to 1588 he was organist at St Sauveur, Paris. In 1612 a ‘Jehan Pinson’ was described as ‘marchant bourgeois de Paris et musicien’ and about 53 years old.
Planson’s prize-winning motet and sonnet were published in his Quatrains du Sieur de Pybrac, ensemble quelques sonetz et motetz (Paris, 1583) for three, four, five and seven voices; the collection is devoted mainly to 19 settings of Pibrac’s moralistic quatrains, but also includes eight sonnets (five to texts by Belleau) and six motets. Four years later his four-voice Airs mis en musique par Jean Planson parisien tant de son invention que d’autres musitiens (Paris, 1587; ed. H. Expert and A. Verchaly, Paris, 1966) appeared; the collection proved so popular that further editions appeared in 1588, 1593 and 1595. In his dedication to the amateur musician Jean Louvet, for his ‘relaxation and pleasure during these troubled times’, Planson promised a sequel of settings of more serious texts. Both his collections reflect the influence of the musicians of the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, Joachim Thibault de Courville, Beaulieu, Fabrice Marin Caietain and Le Jeune, but he preferred poems in a pastoral, folklike vein (such as those by Belleau, La Roque and Jean Bertaut, who is the only poet named in the Airs) to the vers mesurés of Baïf and his followers. The texts of 32 of the 37 airs were published without music at Paris in 1597, and were reprinted several times in the early 17th century. Although the airs were printed in the conventional four partbooks the settings are strictly syllabic and homophonic, with the melodies (sometimes borrowed and often folklike) in the top voice. The musical phrases are short and well-defined, with each line of text marked off by a bar-line; the poetic metres are often dance-like (a number have typical branle structure) but of irregular lengths. Three of the airs were set for voice and lute in Emanuel Adriaenssen’s Novum pratum musicum (RISM 159222) and another for lute solo in Jean-Baptiste Besard’s Thesaurus harmonicus (RISM 160315); a sacred contrafactum of Puis que le ciel appeared in La pieuse alouette (RISM 16199). Planson also contributed two, more old-fashioned, four-voice chansons, En m’oyant chanter quelquefois and Soyons joyeulx, to one of Le Roy & Ballard’s anthologies (RISM 15839); both were inspired by settings of the same texts by Lassus. He is reported to have harmonized seven dance melodies (by the violinist Michel Henry) for a feast of the Confrérie de St Julien in Paris in 1587 (see F. Lesure: ‘Le recueil des ballets de Michel Henry (vers 1620)’, Les fêtes de la Renaissance [I]: Royaumont 1955, pp.205–19, esp. 206–7). (For further discussion see MGG1, F. Lesure; Y. de Brossard: Musiciens de Paris, 1535–1792 (Paris, 1965); and A. Verchaly: Introduction to Jehan Planson: Airs mis en musique à quatre parties (1587), Paris, 1966.)
FRANK DOBBINS
Planson [Plançon], Jean [Jehan]
(b ?Paris, c1559; d after 1611). French composer and organist. On 8 July 1575 he was appointed organist at the collegiate church of St Germain-l’Auxerrois, Paris; although Jean Lesecq is known to have replaced him in the following December, he was recorded as still holding the post when he won the harp prize for his five-voice motet Aspice Domine and the triomphe prize for his seven-voice setting of the sonnet Ha, Dieu que de filetz in the St Cecilia competition at Evreux in 1578. From 1586 to 1588 he was organist at St Sauveur, Paris. In 1612 a ‘Jehan Pinson’ was described as ‘marchant bourgeois de Paris et musicien’ and about 53 years old.
Planson’s prize-winning motet and sonnet were published in his Quatrains du Sieur de Pybrac, ensemble quelques sonetz et motetz (Paris, 1583) for three, four, five and seven voices; the collection is devoted mainly to 19 settings of Pibrac’s moralistic quatrains, but also includes eight sonnets (five to texts by Belleau) and six motets. Four years later his four-voice Airs mis en musique par Jean Planson parisien tant de son invention que d’autres musitiens (Paris, 1587; ed. H. Expert and A. Verchaly, Paris, 1966) appeared; the collection proved so popular that further editions appeared in 1588, 1593 and 1595. In his dedication to the amateur musician Jean Louvet, for his ‘relaxation and pleasure during these troubled times’, Planson promised a sequel of settings of more serious texts. Both his collections reflect the influence of the musicians of the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, Joachim Thibault de Courville, Beaulieu, Fabrice Marin Caietain and Le Jeune, but he preferred poems in a pastoral, folklike vein (such as those by Belleau, La Roque and Jean Bertaut, who is the only poet named in the Airs) to the vers mesurés of Baïf and his followers. The texts of 32 of the 37 airs were published without music at Paris in 1597, and were reprinted several times in the early 17th century. Although the airs were printed in the conventional four partbooks the settings are strictly syllabic and homophonic, with the melodies (sometimes borrowed and often folklike) in the top voice. The musical phrases are short and well-defined, with each line of text marked off by a bar-line; the poetic metres are often dance-like (a number have typical branle structure) but of irregular lengths. Three of the airs were set for voice and lute in Emanuel Adriaenssen’s Novum pratum musicum (RISM 159222) and another for lute solo in Jean-Baptiste Besard’s Thesaurus harmonicus (RISM 160315); a sacred contrafactum of Puis que le ciel appeared in La pieuse alouette (RISM 16199). Planson also contributed two, more old-fashioned, four-voice chansons, En m’oyant chanter quelquefois and Soyons joyeulx, to one of Le Roy & Ballard’s anthologies (RISM 15839); both were inspired by settings of the same texts by Lassus. He is reported to have harmonized seven dance melodies (by the violinist Michel Henry) for a feast of the Confrérie de St Julien in Paris in 1587 (see F. Lesure: ‘Le recueil des ballets de Michel Henry (vers 1620)’, Les fêtes de la Renaissance [I]: Royaumont 1955, pp.205–19, esp. 206–7). (For further discussion see MGG1, F. Lesure; Y. de Brossard: Musiciens de Paris, 1535–1792 (Paris, 1965); and A. Verchaly: Introduction to Jehan Planson: Airs mis en musique à quatre parties (1587), Paris, 1966.)
FRANK DOBBINS