May Fait Les Bois - Score and parts
Sheet Music

Double SATB recorders or double SATB voices

SKU: MM.EML0238

Composed by Claude LeJeune. Recorder Sextets etc. Early Music Library. Choral or Vocal Music. Score and Parts. Published by Magnamusic Distributors Inc (MM.EML0238).

Claude Le Jeune's May fait les bois comes from his Second livre des meslanges, published in Paris by Pierre Ballard in 1612. Le Jeune uses the two choirs to present an antithesis between the month of May, with all the light and gaiety it traditionally brings (Chorus I), and the miserable poet (Chorus II), who feels his own troubles only highlighted by the arrival of spring. In view of this, it is not surprising the two choirs each have their own music, rather than engaging in antiphony in the Venetian style. However, slightly more than half-way through, the two choirs begin to share musical material, and there are two tutti passages in which all eight parts blend together.