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• Desprez, Josquin: Mille regretz

Desprez, Josquin: Mille regretz

and Susato, Tielman: Les miens aussi
for 4 voices or instruments.

Josquin´s remarkable Mille regretz comes down to us only in posthumous sources, principally a Susato anthology of 1549, the L´unziesme livre contenant Vingt & neuf Chansons Amoureuses a quatre parties, where it is followed by Susato´s own Responce.
Given the gap between the composer´s death (1521) and the date of Susato´s publication, and that the composer´s name is only mentioned in the Susato source (and the Narvaez intabulation), there has to be some doubt about the attribution, especially as the piece is substantially simpler than most of the chansons regarded as definitely by Josquin. However, the simplicity is that of true economy rather than of artlessness, and is very much in line with developments in some of Josquin´s later chansons: pieces like Plaine de dueil contain virtually no padding, and achieve the true Renaissance synthesis between text and music that we tend to associate with the Italian madrigal. The emphasis on the minor third in the last line, with the characteristic avoidance of musica ficta, can be found in several other Josquin chansons, and two of Josquin´s five-part chansons use the same opening idea. So if Mille regretz was not actually composed by Josquin, it must have been written by one of his followers.
Writing a Response to a well-known chanson was a relatively common practice in the first half of the sixteenth-century: there is a similar piece for Sandrin´s Douce memoire, and Susato published one to another Josquin chanson, Nest pas ung grant deplaisir, by a Jo. le Brung.
This edition follows the Susato print of 1549. The original note values have been halved. An occasional editorial accidental appears printed small above the stave, applying to the one note only.