Quant j'ai ouy le tabourin Choral single edition SATB divisi

The drum calls us to the May dance. The young people converge on the festival – with one exception and that is the narrator of this little scene that Charles d’Orléans describes in his poem Quant j’ay ouy le tabourin sonner (When I heard the tambourine): Our protagonist would rather roll over again in bed, lets his head fall back on the pillow and indulges in his own leisureliness. About five hundred years later Claude Debussy transcribed this cozy little scene into a musical language that in its vividness is reminiscent of the onomatopoetic chansons of the Renaissance composer Clément Janequin. The rondo-like composition fluctuates between the persistent calling dance rhythm of the tambourine in the lower voices and the iridescent melodic arches of the upper voice.