Sandrin

Today, a lesson from an old song.  The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. 

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     Years ago, I sang a sixteenth-century song in a collegium musicum group.  And it’s stayed with me.  The sentiment is older than coal – a love affair ending in heart-rending loss.  Now I look to that song, not for its sad message, but for what it says about the afterlife of musical texts.  I’ll explain.  

The piece is by one Pierre Sandrin.  He wrote only secular chansons – or pop songs.  No Liturgical music.  This was his most popular song, Douce Memoire, en Plasir Consummee.  

(Douce Memoire)

In English, it begins, Sweet memory, so consumed in pleasure.  And it ends, All joy is gone; replaced by sudden pain.  It’s very like the sad songs we still sing today.

Now here’s the odd thing: The pop songs of that time very often got chopped into fragments.  And those fragments grew legs.  One of the most famous was Petite Camusette.  

(Petite Camusette)

It was about sweet little Camusette, leading a boy off into the woods to make love.  No original version exists.  But its melody is pleasing and the text is fun.  So, it got picked up and reset by many later musicians. 

Another such sixteenth century tune, Westron Wynde, is equally explicit.  In modern English, the text says: 

Western Wind when willt thou blow

The small rain down can rain

Christ, if my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again. 

(Westron Wynde)

Here, once more, we had only a lovely simple tune, and it has resurfaced again and again, to this very day.  At least three composers have based church masses on its melody.  Stravinsky used it in a movement of a cantata.  The list is too long to recite.

     And here we are, back to Sandrin’s Douce Memoire.  It was enormously popular in its day.  And we can hear old music groups singing it today. But no one has cherry-picked this song for other uses.  What has happened is that the original music has been adapted for all kinds of instrumental performances. 

     Why should that be?  Well, Sandrin had given us a completely finished piece of music.  Not one that invited reinvention.  And here we find something that applies far beyond music.  It is that all good invention evolves from the bottom up.  Just think how much classical music is based on folk songs. 

But think too, about technology.  The airplane, the personal computer, the automobile – all originated at the hands of individuals, not corporations.  All cried out for improvement – for embellishment.  Sandrin’s song began as the finished invention.  It is the more primitive melodies which, like the first telephone or steamboat, led to countless innovations upon them.  

I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Douce Memoire)

Here is a performance of Sandrin’s song: Bing Videos

Here is the Wikipedia account of Sandrin - Wikipedia

Here is a typical modern Renaissance instrumental ensemble playing Douce Memoire. 

Richard Dyer-Bennet sings my favorite rendition of Westron Winde here:

Josquin DesPrez’ setting of Petite Camusette is one of the best -known Renaissance versions. Click Here. 

Here is the text of Sandrin’s song, followed by my translation. (As a matter of interest, the original French text is set in ten-syllable, unaccented lines.  That was typical French usage.  I have taken the liberty of using the more typical three beat “trimetric” English cadence.):

Douce mémoire, en plaisir consommée;

O siècle heureux que cause tel savoir:

La fermetée de nous deux tant aimée

Qui à nos maux a su si bien pourvoir

Or maintenant a perdu son pouvoir

Rompant le but de ma seule espérance

Servant d’exemple à tous piteux à voir

Fini le bien, le mal soudain commence

Sweet memory, so consumed in pleasure,
The constancy we shared and cherished so,
Knowing all the ways to ease our pains. 
Now that power’s slipped away, and gone
Shattering the aim of my sole hope,
A quiet lesson all might look upon:
All joy is gone; replaced by sudden pain.

This Episode first aired on February 16, 2026.