Untitled

244 MEDIEVAL SONG
(Clap your hands, all nations, sing praises to the King who has suffered, sing
a hymn to God. He was conquered who had conquered us. Sing praises to the
King who has suffered. He suffered and conquered and reigns.)
We may represent this by the formula aAdbAB, where the capital
letters indicate the refrain and the letters A, a, a' and B, b respectively
stand for the same melodic phrases fitted to different words with the
same rhyme. In the more elaborate type of rondeau, with eight or
more lines, the refrain also occurs in full at the beginning, as in the
virelaL The formula of the eight-line rondeau,, which may be taken as
the standard type, is thus ABaAdbAB. Ajnumber of rondeau refrains
were used in thirteenth-c^nt^r^otetSj so thatlffhe^complef e words
are extant elsewhere it .is . possible to reconstruct ^
Werfoay take as an example the rondeau *
Toute seule passerai le vert
boscage*, which is cited by Johannes de Grocheo as an example of
what he calls the cantilena rotunda or rotundellus* No complete text
of this rondeau survives with music. But there is a thirteenth-century
motet which begins :
J s .
Ex. 109 *
Notum
with the words 'li vert boscage' and 'puis que compaignie n'ai*
occurring later in the same part ; and as the complete text of the words
is available elsewhere:
1
Toute seule passerai le vert boscage,
Puts que compaignie rfai;
Se j'ai perdu mon ami par mon outrage,
Toute seule passerai le vert boscage.
Je li ferai a savoir par un mesage
li amenderai.
Que je
Toute seule passerai le vert boscage,
Puts que compaignie rfai*
Wolf, op. cit, p. 92. It is curious that Johannes de Grocheo's description of the
farm of the rondeau is inaccurate.
3
Bamberg, Staatsbibl. Ed. iv. 6, fo. 58; facsimile in P. Aubry, Cent Motets du XIII*
siecle (Paris, 1908).
s
Paris, Bibl. Nat, fr. 12786, fo. 78- printed in Gennrich, op. cit, i, p. 79 Gennrich