Pierre Passereau

Il est bel et bon

Renaissance French composer Pierre Passereau was a popular creator of chanson rustiques in Paris and at court the early 1500's. The songs that survive are almost all of a hearty style with plenty of onomatopoeia, doubleentendres, puns and occasional indelicacies, employing graceful melody, polyphony and sometimes chordal passages. Il es bel et bon has retained popularity almost since it was written. There is evidence that this song was sung asfar away as Venice in the 1500's. Here composer Helen Cockburn makes the most of the delightful clucking, cuckooing passages and the English words have retained most of the original's consonants to good effect.