This beautiful and sad poem was written by Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1468-1502), poet and member of the court of king Charles VIII of France. The poem, part of a larger work by St. Gelais, Complainte sur le depart de Marguerite, was written in 1493 on the eve of Margaret’s departure from the French court. In many ways this represents the hardships and misfortunes of Margaret’s later life.

Margaret of Austria was born in 1480, daughter of archduke Maximilian of Austria and Mary of Burgundy, and was raised at the French court of Louis XI to be the future bride of his son, the dauphin Charles VII. Separated from her Austrian family at the age of two, she spent the first years of her life in France, where she received a French education and developed a preference for French poetry and music that would stay with her for the rest of her life. In 1491, however, after a low point in relations between the French court and the Habsburg empire, her engagement was annulled in favor of Anne of Bretagne, and Margaret had to leave the court in 1493. In the following years, her marriage to prince John, son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was arranged and eventually took place in 1497. The prince died only six months after the marriage and in 1499 she returned to the Low Countries as a widow. Her next marriage to duke Philibert II of Savoy did not last much longer. Margaret was the duchess of Savoy from 1501, when she married Philibert, until 1506, two years after his death. In 1506, after the unexpected death of her brother Philip the Fair, she was called back to the Low Countries to assume regency for her nephew Charles V.

Margaret loved art all her life and cultivated poetry and music. There are countless testimonies of her ability to play keyboard instruments, and many of her own poems have been preserved until today. Important proof of the musical life that Margaret cultivated at the court can be found in two manuscripts that have been preserved today in the Royal Library of Brussels. The two chansonniers (song books) contain chansons and motets of many Franco-Flemish composers who were connected with or who were directly working at Margaret’s court: Pierre de la Rue, Alexander Agricola, Antoine Brumel among others. The chansonniers were part of the extensive private library of Margaret and were probably put together for her own use. They contain many biographical references to her life, such as the collection of regrets-pieces (fourteen in both manuscripts) and songs composed on her self-written poems, such as Pour ung Jamais. These manuscripts are the most important source of inspiration for our concert program. We also use a third source, the Basevi Codex, that nowadays can be found in the Conservatory Library of Florence. This codex was compiled in the scriptorium of the Burgundian court chapel which was led by Petrus Alamire, who himself had produced one of the two chansonniers. It was prepared for a northern Italian patron and mainly contains works by Burgundian court composers.

Jole de Baerdemaeker
Translation: Johanna Lambrechts