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

2

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

3

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.

4

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

5

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 ! »

6

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

7

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

8

« Sur l’air, Je suis Cassandre, &c. », dans La Clé des

chansonniers, ou recueil des vaudevilles depuis cent

ans & plus…, Paris, Christophe Ballard, 1717, t. I,

p. 236-237