Le Tourdion - French Renaissance Song

Arrangement & vocals by Farya Faraji. Many thanks to my good friends Christophe Chapleau and Tommy Laniel for participating in the video.

The history of this song is a bit complex: originally, the Tourdion was a French dance of the 1500's, with its associated music usually if not always in triple metre. The specific piece heard here was collected by Pierre Attaignant, a music publisher. This is an important detail: all over the internet, people will credit him as the author and musician of this melody, but he was simply a publisher, and he was the first to collect this piece whose original author is unknown. This original piece had no lyrics, and was simply a polyphonic instrumental piece. The lyrics heard here were added over four centuries later by César Goeffrey, a French musician, in the 1900's, who turned the piece into a vocal polyphonic performance.

Therefore, my arrangement, while historically accurate in its form, is a mixture of the original instrumental piece with the more recent vocal additions, which could have absolutely existed in the original era as they are now. However, one part that is not accurate is the nature of some of the melodic lines: the original versions use the cadential semitone subtonic of the harmonic minor during the ending of the melodic lines, as was most typical of Renaissance music. I based my singing on more recent written down renditions that substitute the harmonic minor subtonic during cadences for the whole tone subtonic of the natural minor, which is evidently anachronistic to the musical practices of the 1500's.

The rest of the arrangement follows the principles of 1500's French polyphony, one of my absolute favourite forms of music. Four different melodic lines are written in vertical structure to coincide with harmonic intervals that end up creating what is effectively a harmonic progression very similar to modern chord progressions in Western music. The instruments double the same melodic lines, and they consist of a fidule, a viola de gamba, a flute and a lute.

Lyrics in French:
Quand je bois du vin clairet,
Amis, tout tourne,
Aussi désormais
Je bois Anjou ou Arbois.
Chantons et buvons,
À ce flacon faisons la guerre,
Chantons et buvons,
Mes amis, buvons donc.

Buvons bien, buvons mes amis,
Trinquons, buvons, gaiement chantons.
En mangeant d’un gras jambon,
À ce flacon faisons la guerre.

Le bon vin nous a rendus gais,
Chantons, oublions nos peines, chantons.
En mangeant d’un gras jambon,
À ce flacon faisons la guerre.

English translation:
Everything is spinning, everything is spinning.

When I drink Clairet wine,
My friend, everything turns, turns, turns, turns...
Therefore now I drink Anjou or Arbois.

Let us drink my friends, let us drink well,
Let us empty our cups,
As we eat this fatty ham,
Let us wage war on this wine flask!

The good wine has made us gay,
Let us sing, let us drink,
As we eat this fatty ham,
Let us wage war on this wine flask!