Personne

The composer Jean Servin was born in or near Blois about 1529 and died on 27 February 1609 in Geneva where, as a refugee, he spent the last thirty-seven years of his life.[1] His upbringing and early years are obscure.[2] From a strongly Protestant family, he may have studied at the University of Orléans, a city where his first publication appeared, a three-voice setting of all 150 psalms: Les cent cinquante pseaumes de David composez a 3 parties dont l’une est le chant commun separez par cinquantaines, a la fin desquelles y a priere devant et après le repas (Orléans: Loys Rabier, 1565). The first and second books of these psalms were dedicated to the ‘Très haut et puissant seigneur, Messire Odet, cardinal de Chastillon, comte de Beauvais’, the third to ‘François de Coulligny, seigneur d’Andelot’.[3] Until Servin’s entry into Geneva in the autumn of 1572 there is little or no evidence of his activities; almost everything we know about him is from the records of Geneva.

            At any rate, after his psalms were published he may have moved to join the refugees at the chateau of Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara, at Montargis: his setting, in the Premier livres de chansons nouvelles (1578), of ‘Petit trouppeau qui te tiens en ce lieu’ seems to mirror the life of Huguenots there.[4] If he were one of the refugees, he would have departed in the general exodus of 1569 when a treaty allowed them to leave in safety. At that point he may well have settled in Lyon, where the printers Claude and Etienne Servin, father and son, were active.[5] Musicians there included Claude Goudimel, who was later to lose his life in the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in late August 1572.[6] Servin, like many others, escaped this disaster by fleeing to Geneva, where he was admitted on 23 October of that same year.[7] We can posit a personal relationship with Goudimel, perhaps, in the moving, six-voice ‘Epitaphe’ that Servin wrote to commemorate him in his Premier Livre de Chansons Nouvelles.[8]

            Attached to one or other of the Protestant temples (churches) in Geneva, probably the former cathedral of St-Pierre in Geneva, Servin found at last a place where, free from religious persecution, he could pursue composition. Musical amateurs in the city practised multi-part music at home, and this would have been the immediate context – but not the only context, judging by the present location of the part-books – in which his works were performed.[9] His three books of chansons, the Premier [Second] Livre de Chansons Nouvelles and the Meslange de Chansons Nouvelles (RISM S 2838-40) were completed and published in 1578, but they may well represent a period of compositional activity stemming from the 1560s. The themes and references in the texts, at least, appear to confirm this. The closely-observed ‘Fricassée des cris de Paris’ in the Meslange, for example, may have originated during sojourns in the city as a student, perhaps in the 1560s, although as a Protestant he may not have enjoyed the famously reactionary stance of the faculty at the university.[10] He may have compiled the cries from observation over several visits and different years. On the other hand his most ambitious work, the multi-voice settings of George Buchanan’s neo-Latin psalm paraphrases (RISM S 2841), published by Charles Pesnot in 1579, probably occupied him most fully during the early years of his exile in Geneva (from 1572).[11]

This last having been completed in the spring of 1579 Servin, with the sponsorship of Théodore de Bèze, Calvin’s successor in Geneva, undertook the journey to Scotland in the late summer to present his part-books to the young King James VI, for whom Buchanan had acted as preceptor.[12] Hoping for preferment, doubtless at James’s Chapel Royal in Stirling, Servin must have been disappointed not to receive a position from the king, whose Chapel Royal was encountering a difficult time, musically speaking, in the wake of the Reformation. Elaborate polyphony to Latin (even neo-classical Latin) texts was proscribed as too redolent of the old religion. An additional factor was the recent arrival at court of James’s glamorous French cousin, Esmé Stuart. An emissary of the ultra-Catholic Guise faction that was plotting to restore James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots, to the throne, Esmé had a notorious influence over James, who had been brought up as a Protestant in rather austere surroundings. It was unfortunate that Servin, a Huguenot, should arrive just at that moment. For both musical and political reasons, his hopes for a position came to nothing.[13]

Returning to Geneva, Servin may have served in one of the Huguenot temples there, probably St-Pierre.[14] Eventually, his personal life suffered setbacks. His first wife Marye, some thirteen years older than her husband, died at the age of 68 on 16 September 1584. He then married Catherine, widow of the printer, Estienne Anastaize, on 31 December 1584, at St-Pierre. A child born of this union did not survive, dying on 5 November. Servin lost his second wife, who passed away at the age of 46, on 29 November 1585. He married for the third time, on 20 March 1586, Marie Vaular, widow of Luc Bertault, again at St-Pierre. A son, Louis, born in 1587 died in 1596 at the age of nine, and a daughter, Marie, also died, on 27 December 1592.[15] With some difficulty, Servin was later persuaded to become chantre (cantor) at St-Pierre in 1600, when he also taught the psalm tunes to the boys in the college attached to the temple.[16] He encountered problems at the time of the ‘Escalade’ in 1602, when the Duke of Savoy unsuccessfully attacked Geneva. The boys were apparently unruly at this time of stress for the city and the authorities had to appoint another teacher, although Servin stayed on as cantor until 1604.[17] He made one visit to France on unknown business, for six months, in 1602.[18] Five years later Jean Servin died of pleurisy, at the age of 80, on 27 February 1609.[19]

[1] The parish records of Blois are unfortunately deficient for the years 1529-30. I am indebted to Pierre Flückiger, Archives d’État, Geneva for confirming the date of Servin’s death. The Livre des Morts notes that Jean Servin, ‘habitant, musicien, est mort à Genève, en sa demeure, le 27 février, 1609, a l’âge de 80 ans, d’une pleurésie’ (AEG E.C. morts 24). Several commentators have followed Fétis in stating, wrongly, that Servin came from Orléans (Biographie universelle des musiciens, 2d. ed, Paris, vol.viii [1865], p.22).  The Genevan Régistres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs frequently mention Servin in the years 1599-1604.

[2] His own account claims that his devout nature and musical talent appeared early. In the dedication, to King James, of his setting of forty-one psalm paraphrases of George Buchanan, published in 1579, Servin refers to his God-given talent for music: ‘Cum iam inde a teneris annis Deus Opt.Max.pro sua infinita bonitate me ad veram sui nominis cognitionem vocasset, hoc statim in animum induxi meum, & tanquam votum nuncupavi, ut si quid unquam ingenii contigisset, illud celebrandae ipsius gloriae consecrarem’ (For now, since the Almighty Lord in his infinite goodness called me, from my youngest years, to a true knowledge of his name, I immediately resolved, and pronounced a vow, that if any talent fell to my lot I would dedicate that to celebrating His glory). See also P-F Geisendorf, Livre des habitants de Genève (Geneva, 1963), vol. 2, p. 45: ‘Jean Servin, de Blois, musicien’ (23 October 1572. He is described (‘Jean Servin, de Vendosmes’) as a habitant on Monday 15 November 1585; see Geisendorf, ibid, p.139. Claude Servin, said to be the father of the noted magistrate, writer, and defender of the Gallican church, Louis Servin (1555-1626), was a native of Blois. E.Haag and E.Haag, La France Protestante, vol.5 (Paris, 1856), p.276 state that Claude was the uncle (not father) of Louis Servin. Claude, a Huguenot attached as contrôleur de gendarmerie to Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre and duc de Vendôme, died in Geneva. See R. Saint-Venant, ed. Dictionnaire historique…du Vendômois (Blois, c.1912; Vendôme, 1983), vol. 3, p. 379. Claude and his son Etienne were printers in Lyon before fleeing to Geneva; see E. Droz, ‘Simon Goulart, éditeur de musique’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. xiv (1952), pp. 266-76; here, p.273.

[3] A single, incomplete copy of this work (RISM S 2837) survives in the Bibliothèque de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, Paris. O.Douen, Clément Marot et le psautier huguenot, 2 vols (Paris, 1878-79), p.51, cites the work as bearing the date, ‘avec privilege du février 1565’(actually cited as ‘8e jour d’aoust 1565’). Pierre Pidoux, Le Psautier Huguenot du XVIe siècle: Mélodies et documents, 2 vols. (Bâle, 1962), p. 195 quotes Servin’s preface, ‘…le champ estant commun…je n’ay pas craint de m’efforcer à le mettre en une musique familière à trois parties seulement, qui sont un concordant et deux dessus, l’un desquels tient le chant vulgaire de nostre Église, sans y avoir adjousté ni osté chose que ce soit’. In other words the setting for three voice parts, one singing the psalter melody, was within the capability of families. Odet, cardinal de Châtillon (1517-1571) was the brother of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. Having become a Calvinist in 1561 he was declared a heretic by the Inquisition in 1562 and escaped to England in 1568. He was poisoned there by his valet de chambre, possibly at the instigation of Catherine de Medici, and is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

[4]           Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara (1510-74), the daughter of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany was sympathetic to Huguenots and gave shelter to refugees at her chateau of Montargis (‘ce lieu’) during the Wars of Religion. Jean Servin may have been among the 460 who left Montargis under treaty on 26 September 1569. See Droz, ‘Simon Goulart’, p.272. In Geneva later (9 November 1573), Servin acted as a witness along with Thomas Grenay (one of Servin’s own guarantors in October 1572) for the refugee chaussetier, Joachin Jeffroneau, from Montargis. This suggests another link with Renée of France; see Geisendorf, Livre des habitants, vol. 2, p. 93.  Servin’s text refers to the refugees as ‘petit trouppeau’ (little flock), a phrase used by Calvin, Bèze and others as a metaphor for the Huguenots. The metaphor originates in Luke XII: 32, ‘Ne crainez point, petit troupeau, car il a pleu à vostre père de vous donner le royaume’ (Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’). See P.Pidoux, Le psautier huguenot,vol. ii, p.63: ‘TDB a l’eglise de Nostre Seigneur, Salut…Petit troupeau, qui en ta petitesse/Vas surmontant du monde la hautesse…’ [1553]. Ronsard had already used the phrase in a different context in his Odes (1550), ‘Ce petit trouppeau flamboyant’. In Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques, vol. 1, lines 393f.the phrase is used to allude to the Huguenot army that engaged a larger government force under Montmorency, who received mortal wounds at the Battle of St.-Denis (10 November 1567): ‘Un fort petit troupeau, peu de temps, peu de lieu/Font de tres-grands effects, celuy qui trompoit Dieu,/Son Roy, et ses amis, son sang, et sa patrie,/Perdit l’estat, l’honneur, le combat, et la vie!’. On the Wars of Religion, see D.Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: le violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525-vers 1610 (Seyssel, 1990); J.P. Barbier-Mueller, La Parole et les Armes (Geneva, 2006); B.B.Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford, 1991).

            Musically, items with a similar title had already appeared, such as ‘Petite troupe estes vous pas contente’, the contrafactum of Lassus’s ‘Petite folle estes-vous pas contente’ (1565), in Thomas Vautrollier’s Receuil du Mellange d’Orlande de Lassus (London, 1570), in Jean Pasquier’s Mellange d’Orlande de Lassus (La Rochelle, 1575), and in Goulart’s Thrésor de musique d’Orlande de Lassus [Geneva, 1576] as ‘Troupe fidele es-tu pas bien contente’. ‘Petit troupeau fidelle’ had earlier been included in Receuil de plusieurs chansons spirituelles (Geneva, 1555) and Chansons spirituelles a l’honneur et louange de Dieu (n.p.1569). See Marc Honegger, Les chansons spirituelles de Didier Lupi et les débuts de la musique protestante en France au XVIe siècle, 2 vols (Thèse de lettres, Paris, 1970; repr. Université de Lille, 1971), vol.ii, pp.83,181. The setting of the prayer before meals in which the phrase appears, ‘O souverain Pasteur, et Maistre,/Regarde ce trouppeau petit…’ appeared first in Susato’s L’unziesme livre contenant vingt & neuf chansons amoreuses a quatre parties (1549) and in a setting by Clemens non Papa (printed several times and as late as Sweelinck’s Livre septieme, Amsterdam 1644). See also H-L.Bordier, Le chansonnier Huguenot du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1871), p. 392f, v.4 of ‘Chanson sur le carnage de Vassy’ (1562), ‘Ce petit troupeau fidèle/Qui à Vassy te servoit…’

[5] Droz, ‘Simon Goulart’, p.273; P.Chaix, A.Dufour, G.Moeckli, Les livres imprimés à Genève de 1550 à 1600 (Genève, 1966), p.96.

[6] See Claude Goudimel: Oeuvres Complètes publiées par Henri Gagnebin, Rudolf Hauser et Eleanor Lawry sous la direction de Luther A. Dittmer et Pierre Pidoux, 14 vols (New York, Bâle, 1974). Further, L. Guillo, Les éditions musicales de la renaissance lyonnaise (Paris, 1991); Natalie Zemon Davis,’The Protestant Printing Workers of Lyons in 1551’, inAspects de la Propagande Religieuse (Geneva, 1957), pp. 247-57. On Lyon and its religious conflicts at the time see T. Watson, ‘Preaching, Printing, Psalm-Singing: the Making and Unmaking of the Reformed Church in Lyon, 1550-1572’, in Society and Culture: The Huguenot World 1559-1685, ed. R.A.Mentzer and A.Spicer (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 10-28.

[7] Cf. n. 2 above. He was pledged surety by the Genevan merchant, Estienne Toucheron (or Turcheron); see Geisendorf, Livre des habitants, vol. 2, p.45; E. Droz, Chemins de l’hérésie: textes et documents (Geneva, 1974), vol. 3, p.367.

[8] The Épitaphe (fos. 24v-25) is cited in Douen, Clément Marot, ii, pp. 35-6. It opens with the lines, ‘Sous le penible faix de ce poudreux tumbeaux/Du mielleux Goudimel la cendre se repose […]. The text plays on the ‘taste of honey’ (gout de miel), making references to the sweetness of his music. The poem, probably written by Goudimel’s friend Pierre Enoch, first appeared in La fleur des chansons, premier livre à 4 (Lyon, 1574). Enoch, one of the compilers of the collection, is designated in the dedication by his initials in reverse (‘G.E.P’ = Pierre Enoch Genevois). The poem is dedicated to ‘M.A.T.’ = Mme. Anne Trye, wife of the eminent doctor and writer, Joseph Du Chesne, Seigneur de La Violette (1546-1609), who ended his career as Premier médecin to Henry IV. See Guillo, Les éditions musicales, pp.339-43, 435.Pierre’s father, Louis Enoch, succeeded Théodore de Bèze as rector of the Academy in Geneva. Towards the end of his life, Goudimel set three of Pierre Enoch’s poems to music, two chansons profanes (‘Las!Ou fuis tu? Arreste toy pillarde’, ‘Lors qu’a mes yeux se monster ta beauté’) and one chanson spirituelle (‘Voyant tous les faits’). See M. Egan-Buffet, ‘Claude Goudimel et l’art poétique’ in Histoire, Humanisme et Hymnologie: Mélanges offerts au Professeur Édith Weber (Paris, 1997), pp.253-64.

[9] See R. Freedman, The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso and Their Protestant Listeners: Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France (Rochester, 2000), pp. 1-18. The key figure in this process of making spiritual contrafacta from secular chansons was Simon Goulart, the pastor originally from Senlis who edited several important musical works from 1576 to 1594 (the year of Lasso’s death), among them those of Servin.

[10] See.J.K.Farge, Orthdoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France: The Faculty of Theology of Paris, 1500-1543 (Leiden, 1985); further, James K.Farge ed, Students and Teachers at the University of Paris, the Generation of 1500: A Critical Edition of Bibliothèque de l’Université de Paris (Sorbonne) Archives, Régistres 89 and 90(Boston, 2006).

[11] J. Porter, ‘The Geneva Connection: Jean Servin’s Settings of George Buchanan’s Latin Psalm Paraphrases (1579)’, Acta musicologica lxxx/2 (2009), 229-54. An edition of this work is in preparation: Psalmi Davidis a G. Buchanano versibus expressi, nunc primum modulis IIII, V, VI, VII et VIII vocum, a I. Servino decantati, ed. J.Porter (Brepols, forthcoming, 2012). See also B.Gagnepain, ‘Reforme et humanisme dans l‘oeuvre de Jean Servin’, in Claude Le Jeune et Son Temps en France et dans les États de Savoie 1530-1600: Musique, littérature et histoire, ed M-T.Bouquet-Boyer, P.Bonniffet (Berne, 1996), pp.129-36.

[12] The letter of recommendation from Bèze to Peter Young, King James’s tutor after Buchanan, on behalf of Servin is quoted in Théodore de Bèze: Correspondance, vol.xx, ed A.Dufour, B.Nicollier, R.Bodenmann (Geneva, 1998), pp.172-74. Young mentions Servin in his answer of 13 November; see Theodore de Bèze: Correspondance, vol. xxi, ed. A.Dufour, B.Nicollier, H.Genton (Geneva, 1999), p. 72(n.1). The payment of £200 for the part-books presented to King James is recorded in Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, ed T. Dickson et al., 13 vols (Edinburgh, 1877-1978), vol. xiii, ed. C.T.McInnes, pp.291-2. Three of the original five part-books, calf-bound, redlined and with the royal arms of Scotland embossed on the covers, are extant; two are in the British Library, London (superius, bassus), and one in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (tenor). A fuller description is in Porter, ‘The Geneva Connection’.

[13] The details of Servin’s journey to Scotland in the late summer of 1579 are so far unknown. He could have gone by three different routes: via La Rochelle (a Protestant stronghold with links to Geneva), sailing to a west coast port such as Dumbarton; from Basel along the Rhine to a port in the Low Countries; or through a French departure point such as Dieppe. The last of these alternatives is perhaps the most likely. He would have had to wait until the presentation part-books were specially bound, and for the letter of recommendation from Bèze. The work is dated August 1, and the letter is dated 26 August. Thus, it is probable that Servin left Geneva in early September, taking up to two weeks to reach Scotland. Whether on arriving he went directly to Stirling, where King James and his Chapel Royal were still based, or remained in Edinburgh is unknown. James did not leave Stirling for Edinburgh to assume the throne until 29 September. Servin’s return to Geneva at the beginning of 1580 is noted in a letter of 26 January from Charles de Jonvilliers to Rudolf Gwalther in Zürich: ‘Quum D.Servinus, musicus insignis, nuper ad nos redisset ex Scotia et Anglia’; see Théodore de Bèze, Correspondance, vol xx, p.174.

[14] His association with St-Pierre is suggested not only because of his appointment there as chantre in 1600 but also the fact that he was married in the church.

[15] Droz, ‘Simon Goulart’, p.274.

[16] See Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Genève, vol. viii, ed. G.Cahier and M.Campagnolo (Geneva, 1986), p.15; O. Labarthe, ‘Les chantres à Saint-Pierre’,in La Musique à Saint-Pierre (Geneva, 1984), pp. 105-6.

[17] The matter of Servin’s appointment as chantre or maître de chant is recorded in Registres, vol. viii, pp. 15, 24, 29, 74, 83, 117, 135, 154, 157, 165; see also Labarthe, ‘Les chantres’, pp.106-7. He was asked in August 1599 but at first refused, taking up the post only in April 1600: see Registres, vol.vii, pp. 174-75, and notes 201 and 204.

[18] In March 1602 Servin sought permission to leave Geneva for some unspecified business in France. He returned six months later: see Registres, vol. viii, p. 135. In the interval the Compagnie replaced him temporarily by Pierre Millet, who had undertaken the position in the past.

[19] See n. 1 above.