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Jukebox Tebordet video Air & Hymne De La Monarchie Française (Vive Henri IV)


Jukebox Tebordet video Branle Cassandre - Tanzgruppe Domenico


Länk: Cassandra è un branle

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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".

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 :

Belle brunette, trop aimer ne vous puis (bis)
Vous etes honnète dont à vous du tout suis
Belle brunette, trop aimer ne vous puis (bis)


Je suis Cassandre qu’est descendue des cieux
Je suis Cassandre non pas pour vos beaux yeux
Je suis Cassandre qu’est descendue des cieux


Belle Cassandre, fais-moi une faveur
Charmante Cassandre, fais-moi une faveur
Et de tout cœur, te serais serviteur


J’ai le cœur tendre et je sais la leçon
Pour vous répondre, entendez la façon
Mon petit mignon, entendez la façon


Petit cœur gauche, c’est à toi que je bois
J’aime la débauche quand je suis près de toi
Mon petit cœur gauche, c’est à toi que je bois


Buvons encore à mon petit cœur droit
Viens-t-en mignonne, viens boire avec moi
Quand je te regarde, je ne vois plus que toi


Un dernier verre pour que vous soyez deux
Charmantes jumelles je suis votre amoureux
Je ne sais laquelle je puis aimer le mieux

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 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 b anle 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.

Textes de chansons

Couplets sung in La Partie de chasse d’Henri IV by Charles Collé.

" 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
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 ! »


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 coeur, chant d’amour,
Redis sans cesse,
Et redis nuit et jour
Que dans notre ivresse