This book is an informative editorial history of the musical supplement composed for the first editions of Ronsard’s Amours. As the second major collection of poems of the prince des poètes, the Amours has often received critical attention, but Collarile and Maira’s book offers useful new perspectives on the collection for musicologists, poetry scholars, and performers of early modern music alike. Building on a series of previously coauthored articles, Collarile and Maira provide a complete publication history of the musical additions to the sonnet collection. Additionally, the authors offer new arguments concerning this history and the peritext surrounding the Amours and its supplement.

Collarile and Maira establish the significance of the musical supplements through the immediate success of the Amours in its time. As Ronsard sought to distinguish himself from Italian and Lyonnais Petrarchists, the musical supplement (containing nine songs by four composers) furthers such a distinction while paradoxically associating the poet with Petrarch, as music eventually accompanied the Canzoniere. In the first section, the authors examine the publication history of the musical supplements, filling a gap in previous scholarship through (they claim) closer analysis of the two editions’ differences than the generally accepted Laumonier analysis. The authors also focus on the relationship between the poems and their musical representation, especially as the relationship reveals Ronsard’s philosophy regarding the inherent links between poetry and music. Additionally, Collarile and Maira analyze the Amours’ peritext (particularly the engravings by Nicolas Denisot and the commentary by Marc-Antoine Muret, who composed the music for “Las, je me plain”) for its role in establishing the philosophical relationship between painting, poetry, and music that they read as a goal of Ronsard’s for the collection.

Collarile and Maira’s approach allows an analysis of Ronsard’s technique from a linguistic perspective. For instance, the nine songs, of which six are sonnets of the Amours, suffice so that the reader may sing nearly all the 182 sonnets of the first edition, except those that break the masculine-feminine rhyme alternation. The authors assess the six sonnets set to music to determine why they were selected to represent the whole, a question not previously explored. By breaking the sonnets into four primary categories and analyzing details such as rhymes and spelling alterations, the authors demonstrate how the six sonnets represent the whole and emphatically tie Amours to the Canzoniere. Thus, though aimed at musicologists, the text is equally interesting for literary studies for the new perspective it lends to the Amours’ composition.

While the authors mention portions of Ronsard’s Art Poëtique françois, further engagement with this treatise could supplement the thorough categorizing analysis of the sonnets’ rhymes and spellings even further, especially through the speculation on Ronsard’s own role in preparing the musical supplement. Additionally, the authors read the presentation of the Amours and its supplement as a collaborative project between several Pléiade members with the objective of promoting the group’s poetic program, and such a conclusion might be illuminated further in its relation to Du Bellay’s manifesto for the Pléiade, Deffense et illustration de la langue françoise.

The second half of the book provides the reader first with a comprehensive publication history of the musical supplement with the Amours, categorical charts of the sonnets according to the musical annotations, and, finally, the music itself. Modern musical editions of the nine songs that accompany the Amours precede facsimiles of the originals. First is Nicolas du Chemin’s edition, printed with the first Amours in 1552. This is followed by the second edition in 1553 printed by Michel Fezandat. As the authors explain, Ronsard’s desire was that all might sing the sonnets, not merely the poet (as was the fashion of France’s court poets); the documents included in the appendixes afford the modern reader the opportunity. As such, the text may be an unlikely practical resource for performers of early modern music.

Overall, Collarile and Maira’s book is staggering in detail, a quality that strengthens the authors’ conclusions about the musical supplement’s history. The amount of appendix material provides direct access to the extensive archival research performed by the authors. While the authors’ thoroughness can sometimes be overwhelming in its detail, this renders the book an invaluable resource for those studying musical accompaniments to poetry collections.