Costeley Online

Sources and dissemination of the work

This edition takes as its primary text the meticulously prepared publication, likely overseen by the composer himself, in five partboooks, Musique de Guillaume Costeley, Paris, Le Roy & Ballard, 1570, and designates the works by their serial number in this publication (nos. 1 to 104). The three chansons not included in this publication (nos. 105 to 107), as well as the fantasy (no. 108), have been edited based on their only surviving sources: three printed copies by N. Du Chemin and one manuscript. Two of these chansons (nos. 106 and 107) comprise only the superius and tenor parts, as no copies of the contratenor and bassus volumes have been preserved. Finally, editions of five known tablatures of songs or fragments of songs by Costeley, transmitted in two printed and one manuscript, are also accessible through the pages of the original songs (nos. 2, 6, 68 and 88).

In addition to the second edition of Musique in 1579, whose only change from the first was the radical simplification of the alterations (more than eight hundred alterations from the first edition were not included in the second), thirteen other printed editions and one manuscript transmit individual songs by Costeley. All these sources are listed and described in Costeley online, as well as all their revised reeditions whose revisions concern works by Costeley. Identical reprints of editions already described are simply noted in the commentary accompanying the main editions. Finally, all surviving copies of both editions of Musique are listed in Costeley online, but for other sources, only one or two copies have been recorded, primarily those digitized and made available online by a library. A complete list of all copies of these editions can be found via the link to the RISM online and the bibliographic references provided for each source.

Costeley online includes a total of twenty-six sources: the two editions of Musique, thirteen first editions of anthologies with six of their revised reprints, two manuscripts, and three tablature sources. A few explanations are in order about some of these choices, which are linked in particular to the publishing context of the livres de chansons from the royal printers Le Roy and Ballard, whose practice regarding revised reprints is particularly complex (see Lesure & Thibault 1955 / BLRB, p. 24, on the probably very pragmatic reasons for this system, which "may seem inextricable to the scholar today"). Table 1 presents all the printed sources for Costeley's work. Its first column lists the sixteen editions that can be considered primary, that is to say (naturally) the first editions of a publication containing at least one work by Costeley, but also (more artificially) the first revised re-editions of a publication in which at least one work by Costeley has been added. The third column (Nb) indicates the number of Costeley pieces included in each of these publications. The fourth column lists the re-editions of the sixteen primary editions: those in bold with a hyperlink are the seven included in Costeley online, those in parentheses and italics are the revised re-editions no longer containing any works by Costeley, the rest being unchanged re-editions of the primary edition. Finally, a number in parentheses following a re-edition date indicates the number of Costeley works included in this revised edition, which differs from the number in the primary edition (3^rd column).

Table 1. Printed source of Costeley's works

This table provides a clear chronology of the diffusion of Costeley's songs, which started very gradually between 1554 and 1565, then accelerated until the publication of Musique in 1570, to dry up around 1580. Only three international publications prolonged the dissemination of three songs: two lute prints published in 1584 and 1598 (tablatures of songs nos. 2 and 6) and the very exceptional Livre septieme from the Phalèse press of Antwerp, which continued to include a single song by Costeley (no. 24) in all its re-editions from 1589 to 1613, and even in a re-edition of 1633.

In addition to these twenty-three prints, three manuscripts which convey Costeley's works provide marginal information. One of the manuscripts of the lutenist Guillaume Morlaye now preserved in Uppsala (S-Uu VmH 76b) contains four lute tablatures drafts of an air (no. 88) and of two sections of La Prize du Havre (no. 68), undoubtedly made from Musique. A partbooks manuscript of French origin of which only the altus and tenor partbooks are preserved (F-Pn Rés. 255 & I-Fl MS Ashb. 1085) includes two other songs also probably copied from Musique (nos. 6 and 72). Last but not least, it is thanks to the composite manuscript of a renowned writing master, Jacques Cellier, which deals with an infinite number of subjects but devotes a few pages to musical curiosities (F-Pnm Français 9152), that we have an insight of Costeley's art on the keyboard, in the form of about twenty bars of a fantasy for organ or spinet (no. 108).

Apart from the manuscript of the keyboard fantasy, all these sources concern exclusively the songs, the three motets being unique to Musique (nos. 102 for four voices, 103 and 104 for five). Of Costeley's 104 songs, 69 are unica (2/3) and 35 (1/3) appear in one or more sources in addition to Musique, according to the following distribution:

• 69 unica:
  • 3 in 3 books published by Du Chemin in 1554, 1557, and 1567 (nos. 105-107)
  • 66 in Musique
• 35 in Musique and at least one other source:  
  • 26 in a single source in addition to Musique
  • 8 in two sources in addition to Musique (nos. 2, 3, 19, 20, 31, 47, 72, 88)
  • 1 in three sources in addition to Musique (no. 6)

These figures attest to the considerable importance of Musique in the transmission of Costeley's work. As he himself explained in the epistle "to his friends" included in the quinta pars partbook of Musique, he had resolved to have his works printed because he only had a copy in a single personal manuscript, which he feared might one day fall into the wrong hands. The manuscript having (indeed) long since disappeared, the volumes of Musique nowadays preserve two-thirds of otherwise unknown songs and offer invaluable testimony to what a 16th-century composer considered the core of his work.

Musique groups songs into three categories, in the order of its table of contents:

• 72 songs proper (untitled first section): four-voice contrapuntal settings of French poems (nos. 1 to 72)
• 21 airs, grouped in a section entitled "Meslange de chansons en façon d'air" (nos. 73 to 93, the first occurrence of the French term "air" in a musical publication): strophic songs setting the first stanza of a long poem in note-against-note counterpoint (or, in contemporary terms, in chords), the subsequent stanzas of which are to be sung to the music of the first
• 8 "songs for five and six parts" (nos. 94 to 101), all in five-voice counterpoint, except the last, for six voices.

Musicologists interested in contributing are invited to contact the responsible of the project, David Fiala.

Bibliography

[BLRB [Lesure & Thibault 1955]]

[BNDC [Lesure & Thibault 1953]]

[Fiala 2025a]

[RISM Online]

[Vanhulst 1978]

[Évreux Exp 2025]

Contributors

Frank Dobbins

David Fiala