MILLE  REGRETS

 

          Mille Regrets (One thousand grieves) is a song composed by Josquin des Prez around 1520.  It was the melancholy Charles V's most beloved song, that's why it is also known as "The Emperor's Song".  The perfection of its melody and its wonderful adaptation to the text must be pointed up, becoming one of the most popular plays of its period.

 

          Cristóbal de Morales, the most internationaly known spanish composer of the age, elaborated it again for a mass with the title "Misa Mille Regrets" with six voices.  This use of plays for the composition of some new ones is an example of the procedure of the parody.

 

          Luys de Narváez arranged it in "Los seis libros del Delphin de música de cifra para tañer la vihuela" in 1538.  Edmond van der Stratten picked it up in his book  "Charles V, musicien" that narváez could offer his version to the Emperor when he was to Valladolid in that same year.

 

- WORDS -

Mille regrets de vous abandoner

Et d'elonger, votre face amoreuse,

J'ai si grand dueil et peine douloureuse

Qu'on me verra brief mes jours déffiner.

One thousand grieves for leaving you

And for removing from me your beloved face,

My grief and pain are so big

That my days will reach thir end soon.

 

          In Mille Regrets each voice is fundamental, a pair of voices answers to another pair as it happens in  "et peine douloureuse" or two voices are in imitation, as the cantus and the high in  "brief mes jours definer" or the whole choir repeats two times the same phrase and later it adds an ending with this same text at the end of the score.

 

 

 

 

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

 

Josquin des Prez. Gabado en madera. Colegiata de los Santos Miguel y Gúdula. Bruselas

          Josquin des Prez has been one of the greatest composers of all times, he enjoyed a large fame during his lifetime and he exerted a great influence among his followers.

 

          Born in France in 1440, he spent most part of his life in Italy returning in 1504 as a canon of the collegiate church of  Condé-sur-l'Escaut where he died in 1521.

   

          He was an extremely prolific composers and his production was varied.  It includes about 20 masses, about 100 motets and 70 songs and other profane plays.

 

          Josquin is the first big composer who tries to express feelings in a coherent way, the first to mould the humanistic attitude of the Renaissance by means of a great expressive quality.

 

 

 

LINKED SITES

 

Mille Regretz by the professor Luc Paganon

 

Versions of Mille Regretz

 

Reuses of the song Mille Regretz

 

 

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