This week we focus on 16th Century French with specialist Olivier Bettens. Our text is "Mignonne allons voir si la rose" by Pierre de Ronsard, and we discuss the differences between 16th Century and Modern French pronunciation and spelling.  I had some problems with a previous posting of this, so I'm hoping that this new post will work--fingers crossed!

Pierre de Ronsard was a very famous and prolific poet in 16th Century France, one of a group of 7 poets, called the Pleiades, dedicated to bringing French literature of the time up to classical standards. During the podcast I said that the Pleiades brings us back to mythology, because the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione.

All the websites I found with the text had modernized versions of it, so I'm uploading a pdf of the original plate that Olivier and I were looking at (I can't seem to attach two files to one post, so it will be in a separate post). The Long S, which looks like a lower-case "f" without a crossbar, was maintained in many languaged for centuries; it is even at the top of the American Declaration of Independence as well as in most German books up until the past century. There are many websites with lyrics and music of this song with different spellings: The Lied, Art Song and Choral Text Archive; Costeley's setting of this for chorus; Richard Wagner's setting for solo voice and piano; and a French Wikipedia article with the text.

Olivier Bettens' website "Chantez-vous francais?" is a phenomenal reference source for Medieval and Baroque French Diction. It's mostly in French, bet several sections are also translated into English. He also recommended the website Prononciation, with a bibliography of reference materials from the 1500s through to today, all on the topic of French Diction throughout the ages.

This episode came about because of a question from a listener, so please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com  I do my best to honor them as quickly as I can!