Field
Level
1
HISTory,
ArT HISTory
SeCoNDAry
"Vive Henri IV!"
The song "Vive Henri IV" was part of a three-act comedy from 1774 by Charles Collé
entitled La Partie de chasse d’Henri IV. It was a huge success, and contributed the
legend of the "good king", here illustrated in an epinal print.
Documents
Summary
epinal prints, Pellerin printer’s (19th c.): "Vive Henry IV!"
AD Vosges
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Commentary
This image shows the legendary king, surrounded by his adoring subjects, walking
with dignity at the side of an elegant lady –Marie de Médicis, perhaps. Henri IV has
been given the traditional attributes: a hat with a plume and a ruff. In the years
following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, this type of image –
testifying to French unity as well Henri IV's bon vivant character – was not devoid
of national connotations intended to bring the nation together. The text "Vive Henri
IV" is from a song by that Charles Collé inserted in La Partie de chasse d’Henri
IV, a three-act play that was first performed at the Théâtre des Tuileries on 16
November 1774. It was a huge success: between 1781 to 1790, it was performed
three hundred times, nearly as many times as Beaumarchais's The Marriage of
Figaro! This is not by chance: both plays are subversive pieces that exalt the idea of
a monarchy that draws its values from its subjects and that sidelines both the court
and the aristocrats, which are presented as sources of vice and intrigue.
The song "Vive Henri IV" that Collé used was sung to a tune that was already
quite established – traces of it can be found in several literary collections of songs
from the early 1580s. For example, it appears in Joyeux banquet des chansons
nouvelles (1581) to sing pour the "Chanson nouvelle de Cassandre" ("Belle brunette,
Trop aimer ne vous puis…" or "Hélas Cassandre, Trop aimer ne vous puis…"). The
song reappears in the Ample recueil des chansons tant amoureuses, rustiques,
musicales que autres…, published in 1582, with a couplet that would shortly become
emblematic :
« Je suis Cassandre
Qu’est descendue des cieux
Je suis Cassandre
Non pas pour vos beaux yeux !
Pour vous répondre
Entendez la façon,
Petit mignon,
Entendez la façon… »
That same year, one of the couplets from Joyeux banquet (1581) was used for
French spiritual lyrics in Recueil des vieux Noelz ("Vierge Marie, Fais moy donc la
faveur…")… These few examples show that the melody had already been a popular
one before the start of Henri IV's reign (1589).
The first identified musical notation of the melody appeared under the title Mixed
Branle known as Cassandra in Orchésographie by Thoinot Arbeau (a pseudonym
of Jean Tabourot). This invaluable treatise takes the form of a dialogue concerning
social dancing; it was published in 1589 and reissued in 1596. The melody is
given in a single line, without an accompanying poetic text, although the recurrent
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references to "Cassandra" allow us to identify the timbre immediately. The branle
was a dance that was extremely popular in the renaissance at all levels of society.
It was generally danced in an open or closed line and with lateral steps. Mixed
branles were made up of the two basic branles (single and double branle), and were
"composed branles that are mixtures of double and single branles, with pieds en
l’air, pieds joints and sauts sometimes varied by the insertion of miscellaneous bars,
in slow or quick time, as it pleases the composers or inventors (orchésographie,
1589). According to Arbeau, the Cassandra branle was the "first… in the suite of the
mixed branles of Champagne, which are danced in duple time, lightly and without
sauts… or you may dance them like the branles of Haut Barrois, with little springs"
(Orchésographie, 1589).
The melody entered into the collective consciousness; it appeared in various
forms and as support for various couplets, often light. It appeared in a great many
collections of songs, which attest to an extremely large oral tradition that could be
called upon. Thus, in an entrée for his Ballet de Cassandre, a masque danced by the
young Louis XIV in 1651, Isaac de Benserade used the couplet "Je suis Cassandre"
for a verse description of the unseemly changes to his heroine.
early in the 18th century, we find a written-down and updated version of the melody
in La Clé des chansonniers, a collection published in Paris in 1717 (see the tablature
for the air "Je suis Cassandre, &c."); it serves as the melody for a drinking song,
which preserves the reference to the dance (the tricotet was a popular dance that
was very much in fashion in the mid-17th century).
After its 1774 appearance in Collé's comedy, La Partie de chasse d’Henri IV, with
the lyrics ("Vive Henri IV, Vive ce roi vaillant…") that gave it its name, the popular
song took on a political dimension. It was sung by both the defenders of the king,
revolutionaries ("Aristocrate, Te voilà donc tondu…"), and anti-Bonapartistes
("Meurs, Bonaparte, Meurs, infâme tyran…"), etc., with each group providing its
own lyrics. under the restoration (reign of Louis XVIII), it was used above all as
a rallying cry for royalists, who made reference to the peacemaking and unifying
efforts of "the good king Henri" ("Fils d’Henri IV, Ô Louis! ô mon roi!...").
We will bring this brief overview to a close in the 19th century, when the melody
entered the romantic repertoire. Around 1830, the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt
used our "hymn" to compose a short piece for the piano, in the form of variations.
Finally, Tchaikovsky developed the theme into an orchestral piece for the grand
finale of Sleeping Beauty, which had its premier performance at the Mariinsky
Theatre in Saint-Petersburg on 15 october 1890.
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Suggestions for student activities
Have students examine the relationship between text and image through the
development of the idea of the good king who lived close to his people.
Students could also be taught to dance the mixed branle known as the "Cassandra"
(1589). It is simple, and nearly identical to the double branle (with the addition of a
step from the single branle). examine the "tablature" of the steps given by Arbeau.
Students could also add the popular lyrics from "Vive Henri IV!".
Have students identify passages in Collé's text that refer to Henri IV's peacemaking
role and the closeness to his subjects that posterity later assigned him. Among the
various uses of this song, the verses from the restoration are closest to "Vive Henri
IV!" Have students locate the similarities and changes in meaning that the new
regime brought about.
Textes de chansons
Couplets sung in La Partie de chasse d’Henri IV by Charles Collé, associated with the
epinal print:
« Vive Henri quatre,
Vive ce roi vaillant !
Ce diable à quatre
A le triple talent
De boire, de battre,
Et d’être un verd galant.
Chantons l’antienne
Qu’on chant’ra dans mille ans ;
Que Dieu maintienne
En paix ses descendants,
Jusqu’à c’ qu’on prenne
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La lune avec les dents.
J’aimons les filles,
Et j’aimons le bon vin ;
De nos bons drilles
Voila le gai refrain.
J’aimons les filles,
Et j’aimons le bon vin.
Moins de soudrilles
Eussent troublé le sein
De nos familles
Si l’Ligueux plus humain
Eût aimé les filles,
Eût aimé le bon vin.
Au diable guerres,
Rancunes et partis !
Comme nos pères
Chantons en vrais amis
Au choque des verres
Les roses et les lys.
Vive la France,
Vive le roi Henri !
Qu’à Reims on danse,
Disant comme à Paris :
Vive la France,
Vive le roi Henri ! »
extract from a version from the French revolution:
« Aristocrates,
Il vous faut un repos !
Le sein du diable
Sera votre tombeau
Aristocrates,
Il vous faut un repos !
Buvons mes frères,
À la Fédération !
Le pont en vient
Avec notre union
Buvons mes frères,
À toute la Nation ! »
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Couplets from the restoration (reign of Louis XVIII):
« Fils d’Henri quatre,
O Louis ! ô mon Roi !
S’il faut se battre,
Nous nous battrons pour toi ;
En vrai diable à quatre,
Je t’en donne ma foi.
Vive Alexandre !
C’est l’ami des Bourbons ;
C’est pour nous rendre
Un roi que nous aimons,
Qu’il vient nous défendre,
Avec ses escadrons.
Bon Roi de France,
Si longtemps attendu,
La Providence
Enfin nous a rendu
La paix, l’espérance,
Cela nous est bien dû.
Toi, d’Angoulême,
Fille de tant de Rois ;
La vertu même.
Mille échos, mille voix
Disent que l’on t’aime
Comme on aime d’Artois.
Chant d’allégresse,
Chant du cœur, chant d’amour,
Redis sans cesse,
Et redis nuit et jour
Que dans notre ivresse
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Pièces sonores
« Branle couppé, nommé Cassandre »
(orchésographie)
Franz Liszt : « Vive Henri IV »
Tablature du « Branle couppé, nommé Cassandre »,
Thoinot Arbeau, orchésographie…, Langres, Jehan
Des Prez, 1589, f. 74v-75
Document