The three volumes of chansons were all published in 1578, the first two bearing the dates 16 and 18 August respectively, and the third undated. The titles of the first two volumes differ slightly since the first volume contains a setting (in ‘Seiché de douleur’) for seven voices:
PREMIER LIVRE/ DE CHANSONS/ NOVVVELLES A QUATRE,/CINQ, SIX, SEPT ET HUIT/ PARTIES, PAR IEAN/SERVIN….A LYON./ Par Charles Pesnot./M.D.LXXVIII.
Its companion volume is entitled:
SECOND LIVRE/DE CHANSONS/NOUVELLES A QUATRE/CINQ, SIX ET HUIT/PARTIES, PAR IEAN/SERVIN… A LYON/. Par Charles Pesnot./M.D. LXXVIII.
The third volume is entitled:
MESLANGE/DE CHANSONS/ NOVVELLES A QUATRE/ PARTIES, PAR IEAN/SERVIN…A LYON/. Par Charles Pesnot./M.D.LXXVIII.
Pesnot, the publisher of the volumes, was a Lyonnais bookseller with branches in Frankfurt, Medina del Campo and Geneva. The paper he used in his music books, along with the characters and engraving, all appear to be Genevan. The printer artisans who helped produce the volumes, such as Jean Le Royer, worked for Pesnot in Geneva, and the false address of Lyon was used so that the publisher could sell the books in France, there being an embargo on Genevan books at the time. Only two full sets of part-books of all three volumes survive: one in Munich’s Staatsbibliothek and the other in the Landes- und Murhardsche Bibliothek, Kassel. A few incomplete voice parts are extant elsewhere.
The books are oblong octavo and vellum-bound, with the same title-page woodcut surround and diamond-shaped note heads as in the Buchanan psalm settings and several other Genevan contrafacta editions produced at the time: the Theatrum musicum (1580), the Sonets chrestiens vols.1 and 2, by Guillaume Boni (1579) and Anthoine de Bertrand, vols.1 and 2 (1580). The part-books in Munich (4 Mus.pr.174) are bound together with Philippe da Monte’s Sonetz de Pierre de Ronsard (Louvain, Anvers, 1575), Jean de Castro’s Chansons, Odes, et Sonetz de Pierre Ronsard (Louvain, Anvers, 1576) and his Livre de Chansons a Cinq Parties (Anvers, 1586), and the Premier [Second] Livre des octonaires de la vanite du monde of Paschal de L’Estocart (Lyon, 1582). The Kassel copies (Mus. 8c) are bound in with the two volumes of Guillaume Boni’s Sonets chrestiens (1579) and Anthoine de Bertrand’s two books with the same title (1580). The first volume of Boni’s Sonets chrestiens is bound separately with other works. These bindings in Munich and Kassel are clearly later than the original ones, which do not seem to have survived.
Musicologists interested in contributing are invited to contact the responsible of the project, James Porter.
Files
Contributors
https://ricercardatalab.cesr.univ-tours.fr/projects/14/
Porter James, Complete Works of Jean Servin, in RicercarDataLab [https://ricercardatalab.cesr.univ-tours.fr/projects/14/] (accessed 01 May 2026).
Fundings
