Among the fifty secular songs contained in Harmonice musices odhecaton (1501), Ottaviano Petrucci's famous music publication—the first printed collection of polyphonic music—are two settings of a playful French text, "Baisez moy, ma doulce amie" (Kiss me, my sweet love). The first is a canonic setting for four voices, and the second, following shortly after it in the manuscript, adds two more canonic voices. Both are attributed to Josquin Desprez (though the six-voice version is perhaps spurious) and, while both are fine examples of the "learned" counterpoint of the period, they are based on an eponymous popular song from the courtly Bayeux Chansonnier, the text of which is a flirtatious dialogue between a boy and a girl who is reluctant to grant him a kiss (quite a modest request when compared to many contemporary "Rustic Chanson" texts!).

The musical elements of the popular tune to "Baisez moy" may have attracted Josquin as much as the rustic charm of the text. It comprises ten short phrases in five sequential pairs, yielding a simple chanson à refrain structure ABABA'. The sequentially repeated motifs in the melody lend themselves quite well to canonic treatment, and the pairing of short phrases in canonic dialogue wittily reflects the flirtation in the text.

The version of Baisez moy for four voices places the popular tune strikingly in the bass voice, with the tenor following it in canon a fourth higher. But whereas Josquin in several other chanson settings allows the other voices to freely weave themselves around a single canonic pair, here the upper two voices are also canonically intertwined. Two interlocked couples circle one another in this dance. And the added pair of voices in the version à 6 delightfully complicate matters by adding a third canonic dialogue. If this version is not by Josquin, the anonymous composer at least understood both the wit and musical skill of Josquin's setting, and magnified its effect.





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