FORS SEULEMENT L'ACTENTE QUE JE MEURE: OCKEGHEM'S RONDEAU AND THE GENDERED RHETORIC OF GRIEF

Abstract

Fors seulement is among Johannes Ockeghem's most extensively discussed chansons. A much debated feature of this rondeau is that its two upper voices span almost the same high register. Sources disagree over which of these voices is the tenor: earlier and authoritative manuscripts assign this role to the uppermost voice, while later ones ‘normalise’ the disposition by giving it to the slightly lower one. Apart from a few passing remarks, musicologists have not taken into sufficient consideration that the text of Fors seulement, the lament of a woman, is modelled upon Alain Chartier's Complainte on the death of his lady, as Paula Higgins has demonstrated. This article focuses on the transformation of the rhetoric of grief from male Complainte to female rondeau, and considers anew the issue of Fors seulement's unique contrapuntal structure and its troubled reception from the point of view of the peculiarly gendered nature of its poetic voice.