Certon, Pierre (EN)

Certon Pierre, *ca. 1510 Melun (?), †23 February 1572 Paris, French composer. From 29 October 1529, he was a cleric at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, where he was probably a pupil of H. de Caen. In 1532, Certon became a singer at Sainte-Chapelle, where he held the post of master of the boys’ choir from 1542 and, from 1548, also served as chaplain. He worked at Sainte-Chapelle until his death. Professional and social ties linked him to many distinguished musicians and publishers (including C. de Sermisy, to whom he dedicated a book of motets and a funeral piece, P. Attaingnant and Th. Champion); together with C. Goudimel and M.A. de Muret, Certon belonged to the group of composers associated with P. de Ronsard. From 1560, he received a benefice from Melun as a canon of the local Church of Notre Dame; he may also have received financial support from the de Villeroy family, who resided at the château in Corbeil.

Certon’s oeuvre has not yet been studied in detail, and no comprehensive monograph has been written about the composer himself. Alongside Claudine de Sermisy and C. Janequin, he ranks among the best-known exponents of the French chanson in the mid-16th century, and he also composed sacred music that was performed at the time. Most of his extensive legacy was published (sometimes several times) by well-known French and Italian publishers in the 16th and early 17th centuries, and individual works were frequently arranged for various instruments. Certon focused mainly on popular music, which influenced the style of his sacred works. For this reason, he was interested not so much in technical perfection as in the melodiousness, simplicity and accessibility of the piece. In his chansons, he drew on the achievements of the classical Parisian school and was one of the first to compose a new type of song, the so-called voix de ville. He focused on simple songs for four voices, most often with lyrical and erotic lyrics, and occasionally with a strong dose of humour (Fuions tous d’amour lejeu, La la la je ne l’ose dire). These included short, one-part compositions or more elaborate works (e.g. in aab or aabcc form), sometimes with strophic structures, rondos with a melody repeated across multiple stanzas, and also set to various texts. The texture was predominantly homophonic with the melody in the highest voice (L’ oeil pres et loing) or homorhythmic (Ung bon vieillard, Entre vous). Together with Janequin, Goudimel and Muret, he took part in setting Pierre de Ronsard’s Les amours to music (1552), thereby embracing the early creative ideology of the Pléiade group. Among the characteristic features of his later chansons are the diversity and variability of the vocal parts; for example, in the collection Les meslanges, Certon included, amongst others, quite extensive chansons intended for 2–13-part ensembles.

Certon’s masses, exclusively for four voices, represent the missa parodia type and the type of mass based on a cantus firmus drawn from secular monody or chant. In the missa parodia, published in 1540 alongside the motet on which it was based, Certon employs the model in its entirety as early as the Kyrie, repeating it in the subsequent sections. Certon’s funeral mass enjoyed considerable popularity; in it, the melody (in the highest voice) was gradually simplified and reduced to fundamental tones, whilst the whole work displayed a simple chordal texture. The mass Sus le pont d’Avignon, based on a 15th-century song, is written in a free imitative style (Certon avoided strict imitation and canon) with two-voice passages in the middle of each section; the other masses display similar characteristics. Certon’s interest in metrical composition is evidenced by his setting of the Psalter to French texts. Of the 50 surviving tenor melodies, around 35 reveal connections with the Strasbourg and Geneva versions of the Calvinist Psalter (Certon himself was not a Calvinist).

Motets are among Certon’s least known works. In some, the composition was based on a plainchant (e.g. Asperges me) set in the tenor voice, or less frequently in the highest voice. Here, Certon employed free counterpoint, imitation and homophonic passages, and varied the number of voices within a single piece.

Certon’s compositions were particularly popular in the second half of the 16th century; for example, Orlando di Lasso used the song Frère Thibault as the basis for one of his masses a la française. They were also part of the Polish repertoire, for example, that of the Rorantist choir in Krakow (cf. Missa ad imitationem moduli Le temps qui court in the manuscript from the Archives of the Cracow Cathedral Chapter, reference number I. 1).

Literature: M. Brenet Les musiciens de la Sainte-Chapelle du Palais, Paris 1910, revised edition 1973; P. Wagner Geschichte der Messe, vol. 1, Leipzig 1913, revised edition 1963; A. Pirro Histoire de la musique du XVe et XVIe siècles, Paris 1940; F. Lesure P. Attaingnant. Notes et documents, “Musica Disciplina” III, 1949; P. Pidoux Les psaumes d’A. de Momable, G. Morlaye et P. Certon, “Annales Musicologiques” V, 1957; F. Lesure Musique et musiciens français du XVIe siècle, Geneva 1976; J. Kłobukowska Msze francuskie w repertuarze kapeli rorantystów and Muzyka francuskiego renesansu w Polsce, “Muzyka”, Warsaw 1971 No. 3 and 1972 No. 2; E. Kovarik The Parody Chansons of Certon’s “Meslanges”, in: Music and Context, Festschrift for J.M. Ward, ed. A.Dh. Shapiro and Ph. Benjamin, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1985; J.-P Ouvrard Le sonnet ronsardien en musique. Du “Supplément” de 1552 à 1580, “Revue de Musicologie”LXXIV, 1988; O. Bluteau Roland de Lassus et Pierre Certon, “Ostinato rigore. Revue internationale d’études musicales” IV, 1994.