CAPPELLA NOVA: THE MHS RECORDINGS - Cappella Nova, Richard Taruskin, director

CAPPELLA NOVA Richard Taruskin, Director JOSQUIN DES PREZ: Motets JOHANNES OCKEGHEM Motets & Missa Prolationum WILLIAM BYRD: A Pentecost Service

JOHANNES OCKEGHEM: PRINCE OF MUSIC OCKEGHEM: Missa Prolationum 1 I. Kyrie 04:56 2 II. Gloria 06:03 3 III. Credo 05:31 4 IV. Sanctus 07:24 5 V. Agnus Dei 05:42 6 Requiem: Offertorium - Hostias Et Preces Tibi 02:55 7 Johannes Lupi: Ergone conticuit (In Johannem Okegi, Musicuorum Principem, Naenia) 09:55

JOHANNES OCKEGHEM: MOTETS 8 BUSNOIS: In Hydraulis 06:34 9 Alma Redemptoris Mater 05:33 10 Intemerata Dei mater 07:42 11 Salve Regina (manuscript Cappella Sistena 42) 08:41 12 Salve Regina II (manuscript Cappella Sistina 46) 04:38 13 Ave Maria 03:29 14 Celeste beneficium (doubtful attribution to Ockeghem) 09:45 15 Gaude Maria (doubtful attribution to Ockeghem) 09:53

WILLIAM BYRD: VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS - A PENTECOST SERVICE 16 Psalm 94: Venite exultemus Domino (from Gradualia, Book II) 02:57 17 Antiphon: Non vos relinquam (from Gradualia, Book II) 01:44 18 Magnificat: My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord (from The Great Service, Durham Cathedral Manuscript) 12:31 19 Introit: Spiritus Domini replevit (from Gradualia, Book II) 04:51 Mass in Five Voices 20 I. Kyrie 01:34 21 II. Gloria 04:10 22 Alleluia I - Emitte spiritum tuum (from Gradualia, Book II) 00:54 23 Alleluia II - Veni Sancte Spiritus 01:18 24 Sequence - Veni Sancte Spiritus 05:12 Mass in Five Voices 25 III. Credo 07:29 26 Offertory: Confirma hoc Deus (from Gradualia, Book II) 02:15 Mass in Five Voices 27 IV. Sanctus 03:06 28 V. Agnus Dei 03:16

29 Communion: Factus est repente (from Gradualia, Book II) 01:36 30 Psalm 116: Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (from Gradualia, Book II) 02:39

JOSQUIN des PREZ: MOTETS FOR THE BLESSED VIRGIN 1 Ave Maria 04:42 Vultum tuum deprecabuntur 2 Prima Pars - Vultum tuum deprecabuntur 01:45 3 Secunda Pars - Sancta Dei genitrix 01:21 4 Tertia Pars - Intemerata Virgo 02:23 5 Quarta Pars - O Maria 01:57 6 Quinta Pars - Mente tota 02:25 7 Sexta Pars - Ora pro nobis0 2:32 8 Septima Et Ultima Pars - Christe, Fili Dei 02:59 9 Ave, nobilissima creatura 07:52 10 Pater Noster/Ave Maria 07:13 11 Salve Regina 02:31 12 Benedicta es, coelorum Regina 05:08 13 Ave Maria (Senfl) 13:16

Johannes Ockeghem

musicians--Josquin, Brumel. La Rue, Compere, Agricola, Ghiselin, Prioris and Gaspar van Weerbecke--he was the 'Maistre et bon Pere,' perhaps in some cases actually their teacher, certainly to all of them a model. To three successive French kings of the house of Valois-Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VII--he gave over forty years' service not only as choirmaster but as chaplain, and for 35 of those years he was concurrently treasurer of the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours. Ockeghem may have been the pupil of the Burgundian court musician Gilles Binchois (d.

1460), upon whose death he composed a deploration, or lament. He knew and may even have influenced his senior, the great Guillaume Dufay (d. 1474). And in a spirit of friendly rivalry with Busnois, he may have been the initiator of the centuries-long tradition of composing Masses on the French popular tune L 'Homme Armné.

Johannes Ockeghem (d. 1497) was the greatest musician of the late 15th century. On this judgment both the modern historian and the composer's contemporaries concur, for no one enjoyed greater prestige among practitioners, patrons and students of music in the Renaissance.

To Desiderius Erasmus, the greatest of the northern humanists, Ockeghem was "Prince of Music.'" To Antoine Busnois, foremost composer at the court of Burgundy, he was to be compared only with Pythagoras, the legendary inventor of the art. To a whole generation of Netherlandish

This brilliant career and glowing lifetime reputation are more than matched by the quality of Ockeghem's survíving compositions. These exhibit not only transcendent technical mastery, but also an inventive fantasy, an originality and a sometimes grandiose, sometimes whimsical virtuosity that set Ockeghem entirely apart from his contemporaries, and what is more, from his immediate successors. Perhaps his most impressive achievement was the unprecedented feat of creating extended polyphonic compositions that were based on no discernible pre-existent scaffold, whether Gregorian chant or secular song. The absence in some of his works of

Prince of Music

so universally relied-upon a structural device as a cantus firmus has made Ockeghem's music difficult to analyze and has carned him a reputation for 'mysticism'" among certain modern historians.

Actually, to compose music so "free" and "inspirational'" is a task of baffling difficulty, requiring at once an inexhaustible richness of invention, an unerring sense of formal proportion, and sufficient technical control to temper the former with the latter. These Ockeghem possessed in abundance, and the result was a music uniquely and inimitably his, which seems by turns to hover uncannily Suspended in time and to bristle with rhythmic energy as it surges inexorably to the cadence.

Ockeghem's abandonment of the traditional use of a cantus firmus also enabled him to achieve a uniquely integrated texture in a few of his mature compositions. In these, all the voices are of equal structural importance and of equal melodic beauty: none merely accompanies or furnishes harmonic support. A work like the Missa Prolationum is a real sonic tapestry, a play of irridescent surfaces that offers the listener an endless fascination, for new relationships among the interweaving parts reveal themselves on every hearing.

These beauties, however, were lost for centuries while Ockeghem's music languished unpublished and unperformed and his historical position was distorted by generations of historians who had little contact with his art. Ironically, the greatest damage to Ockeghem's reputation was done by an ardent

admirer, the Swiss theorist Glareanus, who included a discussion of "Okenheim'' in his encyclopedic treatise of 1547, the Dodekachordon. Wishing to impress his readers with the master's unequalled technical ingenuity, Glareanus ignored the main body of Ockeghem's work and drew attention exclusively to a handful of compositions in which Ockeghem had exercised his virtuosity in a rather bizarrely ostentatious fashion. These included puzzle canons, a Mass so contrived as to be singable in any mode and which was therefore written down without clefs, and a mysterious piece Glareanus confessed he knew only by rumor, and which he called "a certain thirty-six voice twittering," identified by recent research as a huge canon for four nine-part choruses on the words "Deo gratias."

After the dubious homage Glareanus paid him, Ockeghem's reputation was dashed. He became a theorist's plaything and, in the eyes of historians of a later age, the prime embodiment of "Netherlandish artifice'" and bloodless cerebration in music. Glareanus's account was dutifully parroted for centuries: the same few atypical compositions cited. the same puzzle canons displayed (usually solved incorrectly, which did not help matters), and ever more moralizing embroidery on the dangers of "Gothic'" overintellectualization. Charles Burney, the great English music historian whose four volume General History of Music began appearing in 1776, quoted the puzzle canon "Prenez sur moi votre

exemple,'" along with a couple of excerpts from the "Mass in any mode'" (Missa cuiusvis toni), and then delivered himself of the following pronouncement, which as well as any, sums up not only the 'enlightened’ attitude toward Ockeghem in particular, but the smug condescension with which writers of the 18th century tended to regard the past in general: "These compositions are given rather as specimens of a determined spirit of patient perseverance, than as models of imitation.

In music, different from all other arts, learning and labour seem to have preceded taste and invention, from both which the times under consideration are still very remote.”

It remained for the music historians of the nineteenth century, beginning with August Wilhelm Ambros, who went back to the original source instead of relying on handed-down traditions, to rediscover Ockeghem's true worth. It is a job which remains in progress, for sad to say, Ockeghem's music remains in part unpublished to this day. And as it is brought gradually to light, an even sadder fact emerges: only a scant fraction of Ockeghem's output survives. All we have is fifteen Masses ( including one Requiem Mass), some two dozen courtly chansons and a handful of motets, of which several are of uncertain authenticity. These are slim remains indeed of a creative career that--to judge both from the composer's biography and the evolving style of his known output--must have spanned half a century at least. Of the Masses, the lion's share of the Ockeghem legacy, all but two

are found in a single manuscript, the so-called "Chigi Codex'" now in the collection of the Biblioteca Apostolica in Vatican City, and four are found only there. One can guess how many such manuscripts have vanished. In any case we know of at least four more Ockeghem Masses by name-thanks to chance mentions in treatises and letters-which are irrevocably lost.

Cappella Nova Wendy Erslev, Sally Hamby, Imogen Howe, Christine Hunter, Jessie Ann Owens, Caroline Rockwood - sopranos Peter Becker, Marian Hyun, Patricia Petersen, Hugh Robertson - altos Peter Bannon, Robert Eisenstein, Edward Stevenson tenors Thomas Baker, Richard Bodig, Paul deSimone, Louis Flaim, Robert Myers - basses Richard Taruskin, director

Ockeghem The Motets

During the 15th century, the genre of musical composition known as motet underwent such a thorough transformation that it would be virtualy impossible to define the word in terms that applied equally well to works so named written at the begin ning of the period and at the end. Around 1400, the motet, always the epitome of learned music, had become a sort of musi cal monument. It was conceived in purely architectonic terms: over the foundation of a borrowed Gregorian chant cast as it were in musical stone by a process of elaborate rhyth mic patterning known then as “talea” and now as “isorhythm,” melodic lines-each carrying its own text and hang intelligibility! Were vaulted and buttressed in great sonic arches. In their extreme complexity of design and rigidity of structure, motets of this type gave expression to the final, most impressive outburst of late medieval cosmic speculation in tone: the apotheosis of the Platonic ideal of music as the divinely ordained symbol of the harmony of the spheres. Isorhythmic motets celebrated great occasions, praised great cities, and honored great men of church and state. The last major practitioner of this somewhat archaic genre was Guillaume Dufay (d. 1474), who wrote, among others, three impressively grandiose specimens to commemorate events in the career of Pope Eugenius IV (reigned 1431-40).

By the middle of the century, elaborately constructivist techniques had largely passed over into the domain of the cyclic Mass, and the motet was reborn (the English, whose music was

luxuriantly in votive services. And were surely form and rapt spirituality through whose magical known to all believers by heart. combination, in the words of Desiderius Erasmus, "the golden voice of Ockeghem caressed the ears Johannes Ockeghem (d. 1497), Dufay’s Successor of the angels, and swayed the hearts of men to as leading composer of Catholic church music in their depths." the late 15th century, was heir to all these traditions and developments, both musical and -Richard Taruskin liturgical. This recording presents his entire extant legacy of motets (undoubtedly only a fraction of TEXTS AND NOTES ON THE WORKS what he must have composed during his halfcentury career) with the exception of some 1 In praise of Ockeghem: In Hydraulis fragments and a mysterious composition entitled (words and music by Antoine Busnois) Ut heremita solus (“Lonely as a Hermit"), which Source: Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio, Ms. 91, Comes down to us shorn of its text. All but one of f. 35-37 (music) Munich, Bayerische the seven motets are Marian (and even the Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Ms. 3154, f. 27-29 (text) remaining work. Celeste benei cium, is probably only an apparent exception, as will be explained. In In hydraulis quondam Pythagora/ Admirante melos, their style and fac- ture, Ockeghem’s motets phtongitates/Malleorum. Secutus aequora/Per adhere to the line established by Dufay’s Ave ponderum inaegquili tates/Advenit musae Regina, while at the same time proclaiming their qualitates./Epitritum ac emioliam,/Epogdoi duplam Composer’s individuality in matters of texture and perducunt./Nam tessaron pente sonority: three of the motets are scored for five convenientiam/Nec non phtongum et pason Voice parts rather than the standard complement adducunt,/Monocordi dum genus conducunt. of four, and several exploit extreme tessituras. One in particular, Intemerata, is a prime example of the Once Pythagoras, having wondered at the melodies exploration of the low est depths of vocal range for of water organs, and having attend ed to the pitches which Ockeghem-known in his day as a bass singer made by hammers, discovered the ratio-properties as well as composer-was famed. Many of of the muse through the inequalities of weights.

Ockeghem's motets are found in choirbooks These ratios are the epitritum (4:3), the emiolia associated with the Papal chapel choir in Rome, (3:2), the epogdoon (9:8) and the double proportion testifying to his prestige as churchman and (2:1). These produce the harmony of fourth, fifth, composer alike, as he him self never sang there. tone and octave, while monochords complete the And all of them display the effortless perfection of scale.

Haec Ockeghem, qui cunctis ecinis/Galliarum in regis aula,/Practicum propaginis/Arma cernens quondam Jagora/Burgundiae ducis in patria,/Pro Busnois, illustris comitis/De Chaulois indignum musicum,/Saluteris tuis pro meritis/Tamquam summum capias tro pheum,/Vale, verum instar Orpheicem!

You, Ockeghem, who have understood the late Pythagoras and are first among singers at the court of the King of France, strengthen the practice of your progeny in the nation of the Duke of Burgundy.

On behalf of me. Busnois, unworthy musician of the illustrious Count of Charolais, be saluted for your great merit, and may you take the highest trophy.

Flourish, true image of Orpheus!

Text emended and translated by Susan Hellauer As a kind of preface to our program of Ockeghem motets we present this tribute to the master—itself in the form of a motet- from his greatest colleague, Antoine Busnois (d. 1492), who was to the court and chapel of the Duchy of Burgundy what Ockeghem was to those of France: “first singer” (i.e., chiet musician and composer), as the text of the motet puts it. Ockeghem is compared with Pythagoras, the legendary inventor of musi cal science, and with Orpheus, the semi godly musician who could move the shades of Hades with his songvivid testimonials To Ockeghem’s preeminence in the eyes of contemporaries. Since Busnois refers to his patron as the Count of

Charolais. The motet must have been written before Charles the Bold acceded to the ducal throne in 1467. And since dedicatory motets like this one probably arose from direct professional contact. It has been suggested that In hydraulis was composed in connection with the coronation of Louis XI of France in 1461, when the whole Burgundian court and its entourage visited Paris.

Since In hydraulis is a celebratory motet with a “great man” as its object, and especially since its text deals so conspicuously with musical “science,” it is not surprising that Busnois reverted in it somewhat to the style and procedures of the oldfashioned isorhythmic motet. The whole piece is laid out over a series of repetitions in the tenor part of a three-note pattern which, in its transposition, sums up the “Pythagorean” pitch ratios the text describes. Moreover, the three-note motive is put through a series of rhythmic alterations that express the same ratios in terms of durations.

Meanwhile the three other voices carol away in the most complex fashion-syncopations, lengthy melodic sequences, cross rhythms and accents galore. And so, despite the ostensibly hon oritic purpose and the ostentatiously humble tone of the motet’s text, one imagines that the real purpose of the piece may well have been to astound the assembled musicians of the French court with Burgundian virtuosity. (Ockeghem seems to have returned the “compliment” with the even more spectacularly complex Ut heremita solus, which, for carious reasons too lengthy to go into here, might be a sort of companion piece to in hydraulis with Busnois as its dedicatee).

Alma Redemptoris Mater Intemerata Dei Mater Source: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Source: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Cappella Sistina 46, f. 115-17 Chigiana C. VIll. 234, f. 276'-79.

Alma redemptoris mater/quae pervia caeli porta manes,/et stella maris, succure cadeno ti/surgere qui curat populo:/Tu quae genuistio natura mirante,/tuum sanctum Genitorem

Intemerata dei mater, generosa puella,/Milia carminibus quam stipant agmina divum,/Respice nos tantum, si quid jubilando menemur./Tu scis, virgo decens, quantum discrimen agatur/Exilibus, passimque quibus jactemur arenis.

Mother beloved of the Savior, and Gate wide open of Heaven, Star of the Sea, bring help to the people O undefiled mother of God, gracious maiden, whom that weakens and wavers; O thou, whom marveling flights of angels throng with a thou sand songs: Nature saw to bear the Creator within thee: look down on us, if we deserve any reward for our celebrations. You, noble virgin, know in what Virgo prius ac posterius, /Gabrielis ab ore sumens danger we exiles are, And in what wastes of sand illud Ave,/peccatorum miserere Amen. we are tossed about.

Virgin before and since, O thou to whom Gabriel Nec sine te manet ulla quies, spes nulla laboris, kneeling, uttered his "Hail”, show pity to all sinners. /Nulla salus patriae, domus aut potiunda Amen. parentis,/Cui regina praees, dispen sans omnia./Laeto suscipis pios dulci quos nectare Tradition holds that the original chant melody of potas,/Et facis assiduos epulis accumbere sacris. this Marian antiphon was composed in the eleventh century by the monk and musical theorist Hermannus Contractus Abbot of Reichenau in Switzerland (1013-54). In Ockeghem's setting, the melody is transposed up a fifth, liberally embellished in the manner of the cantilena, and assigned to the alto voice rather than the more conventional tenor. The unusually high range thus achieved combines with an exceptional transparency of texture and fluid lyricism in the vocal writing to evoke a delicate musical trait of the Divine Mother.

Without you there is no rest, no hope in Our travail, no salvation for our country, no regaining that ancestral home over which you reign and to which you give all things. But you raise up the devout with a cheering face and give them sweet nectar and invite them to recline at sacred banquets forevermore.

Aspiciat facito miseros pietatis ocello Filius;/ipsa potes. Fessos hinc arripe surSum/Diva, virgo, manu tutos et in arce locato. Amen.

Prevail upon your son to look upon the wretched with an eye of pity (for we know you can), and, O Virgin, lift up the weary in your heavenly hand, take them away from this place, and set them safely in the citadel. Amen.

famous “Chigi Codex” now at the Vatican. This fabulously illuminated Flemish manu script, seemingly compiled as a retrospective shortly after Ockeghem’s death, is the richest single source of his music today.

Trans. Lawrence Rosenwald

Salve Regina

Source: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. No greater contrast could be imagined than Cappella Sistina 42, f. 144-48. between the airy grace of Alma Redemptoris Mater and the tortured depths of Intemerata. This motet is a prime example of a votive antiphon--a newly composed, non-canonical text meant for a similarly non canonical votive Mass or Office, so common ly celebrated in the fifteenth century. In keep ing with the nature of the text, the music seems to be based on no preexistent cantus firmus. It is an excellent example of Ockeghem's “free style," in which the music derives its shape from a series of sections based on a line or two of text, each of which, beginning slowly, reaches a bristling climax of rhythmic energy before subsiding into the cadence.

Although there is no cantus firmus, the motet quotes from two Masses by Ockeghem which share its extremely somber range and rich texture: the Missa M-Mi (quoted at the very beginning) and the Missa Fors seulement (quoted at the beginning of the motet's secunda pars at the words, "Nec sine te"). Fors seulement itself was a famous song of courtly love (also by Ockeghem). Quotations from such songs in the context of Marian devotions was a favorite way of sym bolizing the love felt by the Christian soul for the Bride of Christ. Both masses quoted in Intemerata are found along with it in the

Salve regina, mater misericordiae: Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clama mus, exsules, filii Hevae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy; Hail, Our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

Eya ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos mis ericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exslium ostende.

Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us; and after this Our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

O clemens: O pia: O dulcis Virgo Maria.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!

The Salve Regina is the most penitential in mood of the four Marian antiphons, and so became the most popular for votive obser vances. Ockeghem wrote two motet settings which paraphrase this famous chant, and they could not be more different. The one we present first emphasizes the penitent mood by rather unconventionally placing the chant paraphrase in the lowest voice part, with Occasional migrations to the more usual tenor. The beautiful arc-like settings of the closing acclamations are unforgettable.

are played off one against the other), it is more likely that the composer has perpetrated a clever and in fact unique trompe-l’oreille effect. It has recently been discovered that this setting of the Salve Regina was published in 1520 by the printer Andrea Antico of Rome with an attribution not to Ockeghem but to the somewhat younger composer Philippe Basiron. Thus an element of doubt has been raised as to the motet’s status as a composition by Ockeghem. Considering, however, that the manuscript from which we have drawn our version of the motet also contains other works by Salve Regina Ockeghem which are of unchallenged authenticity, Source: Rome, Bibliote ca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. we feel justified in relying for our present purposes Cappella Sistina 46, f. 118-20. on the standard attribution.

The other setting of Salve Regina is an intriguing experiment in texture. The tradition al melody is paraphrased cantilena-style in the highest voice part, and the composer has taken pains to make the setting particularly song-like. The repetition of the opening phrase in the original chant melody is mir rored by a corresponding exact repetition in the paraphrase, at the words “Vita, dulcedo. At the same time, however, the tenor enters with sustained notes (and continues in this fashion to the end), creating a texture remi niscent of the older cantus firmus motet, and perhaps deliberately creating the illusion that the tenor, not the soprano, is the voice carry ing the preexistent melody. No such tune has yet been identified in the tenor part, however, and while it is not impossible that we are dealing here with a double paraphrase (wherein lines derived from two different Gregorian chants

Ave Maria Source: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Chigiana C. VIl. 234, f. 139’ 40.

Ave, Maria, gratia plena: Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictum fructus ventris tui, Jesus Christus. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Ockeghem’s concise setting of what is surely the most familiar of all Marian votive texts is an exquisite jewel of a motet in free style. No preexistent melody is present: rather. All four voices move in a rhythmically close-knit harmony,

achieving a marvelous climax at mention of the name of Jesus by means of a sudden expansion of range (both outer voices mnove to their extremes) and a lengthening of rhyth mic values. The concluding “Phrygian” cadence to A is one of Ockeghem’s most beautiful inspirations.

The only direct evidence that links the work with our composer seems flimsy; the entry “Okegus” in one part (the bassus) out of five. And the piece is different from that of any authenticated work of the master in style and technique, since it makes so much conspicuous use of imitation. And yet, there is no reason to dismiss the possi bility that the work Celeste beneficium is authentic: if it does not immediately remind us of Source: Regensburg, Proske-Bibliothek, Mus. Mss. Ockeghem’s style, neither does it bring that of any B 211-15. other com poser to mind. The imitative writing, though pervasive, is not “structural” as it might be Celeste beneficium introivit in orbem ver bum Dei expected to be in a work actually composed quod fulget nobis per Germaniam. around 1538. The main structural principal is still the sustained-note cantus firmus in the tenor part, A heavenly gift has come into the world: it is the around which the other parts twist like vines, the word of God, which shines out for our Germany. close imitations assuming an essentially decorative role. And we simply do not possess enough of Celeste beneficium accipe Germaniam grata quia Ockeghem’s music to be able to form a reliable tibi resonuit vox tandem aeterni numinis salutem “internal” basis for deciding questions of adesse nuncians. Ambulate dum lucem habetis. authenticity. In other words, the internal grounds for doubting Ockeghem’s authorship are not strong And you, O Germany, accept freely that heavenly enough to outweigh even the flimsiest external gift; for at long last the voice of the everlasting God grounds for accepting it, and so accept it we must, has sounded out to you, pro claiming that salvation at least for now. Not that one is reluctant: Celeste is at hand. Go forth now, while you still have the beneficium is clearly a major work by a great light. master.

-Trans. Lawrence Rosenwald The authenticity of this motet as a work of Ockeghem’s has been doubted by many. It is found only in a set of German partbooks dated 1538, which puts its unique Source at an enormous remove from Ockeghem both in time and in place.

Mysteries do not stop with matters of authorship.

The text is clearly a “contrafact,” that is, a substitution for a lost original. Not only would Ockeghem have had no call to write a motet about or for Germany, and not only is it obvious that the text Is much shorter than the one to which the music was original ly composed (just listen to the

amount of fragmentary word repetition—all faithfully transcribed from the source-that is required to stretch the words out over the musical frame), but there are specifically musical and liturgical reasons for suspecting a substitu tion.

The repetition of a lengthy passage of music from the first part of the motet near the end of the second part (compare the settings of the words ”fulget nobis” and “salutem adesse nuncians”) suggests the form of a Gregorian responsory, and in fact there is responsary whose text begins with the words “celeste beneficium introivit” … and it is Marian! It is part of the liturgy of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and it was undoubtedly the text to which this music was originally composed, whether or not by Ockeghem.

de spiritu sancto credimus impregnatum.

We believe that your womb was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

Erubescat Judeus infelix, qui dicit Christum de Joseph semine esse natum./Dum virgo deum et hominem genuisti,/Et post partum virgo inviolata per mansisti.

Blush for shame, miserable Jew, who say that Christ was born of Joseph’s seed. You, Mary, a virgin, gave birth to God and man, And rermained a virgin, unspotted, after giving birth.

-Trans. Lawrence Rosenwald

Gaude Maria Gaude Maria comes from the same set of Source: Regensburg, Proske-Bibliothek, Mus. Mss. partbooks as Celeste beneficium, is very sim ilar to B 211-215. it in style, is attributed to Ockeghem on the basis of the same evidence (though “Okegus” appears this Gaude Maria virgo, cunctas haereses sola time in all five part books), and its authenticity, interemisti,/Quae Gabrielis archangeli dictis therefore, has been similarly doubted. This time, at credisti,/Dum virgo deum et hominem genuisti,/Et least, we can be sure the text is the original one, post partum virgo inviolata per mansisti. namely, the Great Responsory for the Feast of the Annunciation. The form is respected in both text Rejoice, Virgin Mary: you unaided have put down all and music, with partial repetitions of the first heresies. You believed the word of the Archangel section in both the third and the fourth sections of Gabriel. You, a virgin, gave birth to God and man, the motet. This masterly setting teems with musical And remained a virgin, unspotted, after giving birth. wonders, but we will content ourselves here with describing only one, a remarkable bit of musical Gabrielem archangelum credimus divinitus te esse symbol- ism. The motet is in the transposed Lydian affatum. We believe that the Archangel Gabriel mode on C, but the note G is curiously insisted spoke to you by divine dispensation. Uterum tuum upon at all the section cadences, and is sustained

through practically the whole of the second part. It is undoubtedly meant to stand for the Archangel Gabriel and his “Ave” on hearing which Mary conceived the Son of God. Cappella Nova Ruth Cunningham,* Wendy Erslev, Sarah Hamby, Imogen Howe, Christine Hunter, Jessie Ann Owens, Caroline Rockwood - sopranos Peter Becker, Susan Hellauer,* Marian Hyun, Patricia Petersen, Hugh Robertson, altos Peter Bannon, Robert Eisenstein, Edward Stevenson,

tenors

Thomas Baker, Richard Bodig, Paul de Simone, Louis Flaim, Robert Myers, basses Richard Taruskin, director *1st 4 tracks only.

Special thanks to: David Macbride for assisting at the May 1979 recording sessions; Prof. Leeman L. Perkins for assistance in procuring sources.

Few composers have ever achieved such undisputed preeminence in the eyes of their contemporaries as Josquin des Prez enjoyed at the beginning of the 16th century. Before his time, composers, however great, were valued as craftsmen, not artists as we use the term. And later, opinion was rarely unanimous, nor did contemporary estimates always agree with ours.

Bach was esteemed far beneath many lesser lights- or so now we think. Partisans of Brahms and Wagner battled one another in the 19th century, as those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky continue to do today.

JOSQUIN

DES PREZ Motets for the Blessed Virgin

Only Beethoven seems to rival Josquin's musícal hegenony over his time. And many interesting parallels can in fact be drawn between Josquin and Beethoven as cultural figures. Both of them achieved legendary and symbolic status within their lifetimes, and both of them broke through to plateaus of prestige and cultural influence beyond the reach of any predecessor. By the force of their example they each caused the world to look not only upon their music, but upon music itself, with new eyes, and to listen with new ears.

In an unusual study entitled "Musical GeniusEvolution and Origins of a Concept," Edward Lowinsky went so far as to associate those origins with Josquin's prestige. He was the first composer to in terest his fellow men as a personality. He was the subject of gossip and anecdote, and the picture that emerges again resembles Beethoven: a cantankerous, arrogant, distracted sort of man,

difficult in social intercourse but excused by grace of his transcendent gift. Josquin, like Beethoven, was looked upon with awe as one marked off from others by divine inspiration - a status previously reserved for prophets and saints. This, indeed, is the kernel of our common con ception of artistic genius, but it is only the more trivial side of the coin.

On profounder levels, too, Josquin marked a turning point in the conception of music as an art.

With him, for the first time, music began to conform to Renaissance, humanist ideals. It became "ex pressive," that is, concerned with personal feeling and its communica tion. Before Josquin, music traditionally was ranked alongside mathematics and astronomy as an art of measurement and cosmic speculation. After him, it was viewed as one of the arts of rhetoric. Of course, Josquin alone was not responsible for these changes, which reflected profound social and cultural movements. But he was among their chief protagonists. Through his mastery and genius he became their musical focal point.

cathedral of Milan, from 1474 to 1486 in the service of the Sforza family in the same city, from 1486 to around the turn of the century in the papal chapel choir in Rome.

Then he returned home, possibly to the court of King Louis XIl, and remained in France until his death except for one year, beginning in April 1503, when he enjoyed his greatest eminence as court com poser to the duke of Ferrara. During this brief tenure Josquin was the highest-paid musician in Europe, and the chief ornament of the most musical court in the Western world. Following his Ferrara year, Josquin did as many aging musicians of eminence did at the time: he retired to a clerical sinecure, as provost at the church of Notre Dame in Condé. He died past the age of 80, active as composer to the very end. His career thus spanned some 60 creative years.

The great, exasperating irony is that, with few exceptions, we can not correlate Josquin's enormous musical legacy with this biographical framework. Most of his music is preserved in sources that are obviously far younger than their contents (and in many cases postdate Josquin's death), and so Josquin chronology has become a musicologist's nightmare. It cannot be said that even after decades of work on the problem we have come very far.

Given his colossal stature, it is astonishing how poorly we know him. Documentation of his career is far skimpier than with many lesser figures, though it increases daily through the dedicated efforts of whole cadres of scholars at work in the archives of France and Italy. It was in the former land that Josquin was born around 1440 and died An example is the great motet Ave, nobilissima in 1521, but he spent the bulk of his career in the creatura heard on this record, which, in recent latter: from 1459 to 1472 as a singer in the

studies, one prominent Josquin scholar (Winfried Kirsch) has classified as an early work, and another (Jeremy Noble) has just as confidently placed "among Josquin's maturest masterpieces."

There is no positive evidence to go on, only the in dividual scholar's judgment of "style," where subjectivity and circulari ty reign, and where all depends upon what criteria are judged relevant.

There is no safeguard here against prejudice, and no assurance that our ideas of relevance coincide with Josquin's. In the present in stance, it would seem that Kirsch based his judgnent on the fact that a Gregorian cantus firmus is given a threefold presentation in the tenor voice, going through a proportional diminution (that is, a rhythmic speedup) on every recurrence. This is indeed a very old device, based on practices that can be traced to the 13th century, if not earlier.

Authenticity is equally a nightmare. No two scholars agree on this list of Josquin's genuine works, and the reasons, ironically enough, have to do with his very stature and popularity. Once the music printing business got under way in the 16th century, editors found that the saleability of just about any piece could be enhanced by attributing it to Josquin, and so our composer has the longest list of opera dubia of all time. Add to that the paucity, already observed, of manuscript sources from Josquin's lifetime, and the magnitude of the problem is clear. So many pieces exist only in late sources (and to compound the mess, in sources from any, where Luther’s well-publicized love of Josquin's music further enhanced his prestige), that once again we are often left only with chancy and unreliable "internal" evidence to go on in determining what is Josquin and what is pseudoJosquin.

Noble, on the other hand, noticed the very rational organization of the six-voice texture, the at times emphatic and climactic declamation of the text, and the fact that the cantus firmus is so placed as to make a dramatic and "expressive" effect at its first entry. These are features we associate with "humanistic" esthetics, and so it is natural to regard a work that exhibits them as "late." But only if we assume that Josquin's career marked a steady progress from the "Gothic" to the "humanistic." And that is a prejudice, not a fact.

Cappella Nova Ruth Cunningham, Wendy Erslev, Sarah Hamby, Imogen Howe, Christine Hunter, Cornelia Ryding - Sopranos

But chronology is not the only problem.

Richard Taruskin, Director

Barbara Gambino, Susan Hellauer, Lawrence Lipnik, Leonore Max, Patricia Petersen - Altos Peter Bannon, lan Capps, Curtis Lasell, Steven Marcus, Edward Stevenson - Tenors Thomas Baker, Richard Bodig, Jonathan Clune, Paul de Simone, Louis Flaim - Basses

Among English musicians, at least, no man ever did. And among Byrd's contemporaries in Reformation England, it must be added, no man ever tried. For Byrd's Latin liturgical music was written for what was by the time of the composer's maturity an illegal rite, to be celebrated behind closeddoors. That in the face of such conditions Byrd went on composing, undeterred either by the prospect of persecu tion or by the lack of an audience save stalwart recusants like himself, is a great testament of faith and courage in religious and artistic adversity.

For Motetts and Musicke of pietie and devotion as well for the honour of our Nation, as the merit of the man, I prefer above all our Phoenix Mr. William Byrd, whom in that kind I know not whether any man may equal.

-Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (1622)

During the 1570s and 1580s Byrd had solved the problem of reconciling his adherence to the Catholic faith and its musical traditions with the inhospitable environment in which he was forced to work by abandoning the liturgy and composing motets to newly composed or compiled texts.

These pieces, often carrying penitential or thinly veiled propagandistic messages, have been termed "pious chamber music" by Joseph Kerman in his recent study, The Masses and Motets of William Byrd. They were probably meant for domestic, secular performance. But beginning in the 1590s, Byrd began devoting his career to the composition of underground Catholic music, now frankly liturgical and therefore subject to search and seizure.The work of this last period, which includes his three settings of the Mass Ordinary and his giant collections of motets for the Mass Proper entitled Gradualia, was in every way his crowning achievement.

Our program, built around the liturgical framework of the feast of Pentecost (or Whitsunday, as it is called in England), is drawn from this latest and greatest of Byrd's creative periods. It is a summation of all that his long composing career had taught him in terms both of craft and of poignant expression of words. In Byrd's late Latin music these two (often antagonistic) ways of approaching the task of writing sacred music have miraculously become one. The text is clearly declaimed, indeed often dramatized and "depicted." And at the same time the musical motives so lovingly modeled on the Latin words words that in the face of repression had become that much more precious are woven into shapely contrapuntal structures of dazzling technical perfection. The only Continental composers who came closeto Byrd's dual mastery of construction and expression were Palestrina and Lasso, and these two masters are often linked with Byrd as the three musical giants of the Counter-Reformation.

But even they did not equal Byrd's marvelous conciseness (perhaps that took English reserve), his density of musical utterance (he seems to pack more music into his short motets than anyone elseinto works twice their length), or his fantastic variety of expression {just observe how many ways Byrd finds to shape and to color emotionally the word Alleluia. As to the final result, Hooker must have had Byrd in mind when he wrote of music that it "carrieth as it were into ecstasies, filling the mind with an heavenly joy, and for the time in a manner severing it from the body."

Byrd's setting of the great lnvitatory Psalm, Venite exultemus, from the second book of Gradualia (1607), opens strikingly with an initial "point" (i.e. a contrapuntally elaborated section) like a trumpet fanfare. Some of the dissonant harmony at "inconfessione" harks back half a century and more to the style of Byrd's teacher, Thomas Tallis.

But very new indeed are the "ballett" rhythms at "jubilemus" and the supple metrical shifting at the Alleluias.

Venite, exultemus Domino, Jubilemus Deo salutari nostro: praeoccupemus faciem ejus in confessione, et in psalrmis jubilemus ei. Amen. Alleluia.

Come let us praise the Lord with joy, let us jovfully sing to God our Savior: Let us Come before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise to Him with psalms.

Amen. Alleluia.

(Psalm 94:1-2)

Non vos relinquam, the antiphon to the Magnificat

for Whitsunday, shows Byrd at his most concise and imaginatively calculating. The Alleluias at the outset are not set apart from the rest of the text but, as Kerman notes, punctuate the promise of heaven quietly and gratefully in "double imitation."

The melodic highpoint is placed to coincide with

the word rejoice. "Coming and going" is evoked by a curiously circular melodic phrase. And the wholepiece "comes and goes in half a minute”.

Non vos relinquam orphanos, alleluia: vado, et venio ad vos, alleluia: et gaudebit Cor vestrum, alleluia.

I will not leave you orphans, alleluia I go away, and I come unto you, alleluia: and your heart shall rejoice, alleluia.

(John 14: 18 & 28; 16:22) The English Magnificat comes from the Great Service, the one piece of Anglican church music that can bear comparison with his Latin masterpieces. The setting of the text is extremely dramatic and pictorial, and the fact that the words are English removes the need for detailed explanation. The Great Service is hard to date, since it exists only in an undated manuscript. It is certainly a good deal earlier than the Gradualia, though, as the scoring is for a five-part choir that is made to expand at climactic points to as many as eight parts. And words are repeated over and over, out of sheer love of varying the choral sonority.

Edmund Fellowes’ discovery of this hithertoforgotten work in 1928 surely ranks as one of the major musicological finds of the 20th century.

My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Savior.

For He hath regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden.

For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For He that is mighty hath magnified me and holy is His name.

And His mercy is on them that fear Him, throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.

He remembering His mercy, hath holpen His servant Israel, As He promised to our forefather Abraham and to his seed forever.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Chost, As it was in the beginning and is now and ever shall be world without end.

Amen.

(Luke 1:46-55)

The setting of the middle section (that is, the Psalm verse) in the Introit, Spiritus Domini, is practically "madrigalian" in its pictorialization of the text.The Gloria Patri is set to a syncopated choral burst just like the "Glory be” in the Magnificat. This habit of Byrd's was quite uniform, whatever the language of the text.

Spiritus Dormini replevit orbem terrarum, alleluia: et hoc quod Continet omnia, scientiam habet Vocis, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The Spirit of the Lord hath illed the whole earth, alleluia: and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

V.: Exsurgat Deus, et dissipentur inimici ejus: et fugiant, qui oderunt eum, a facie ejus.

Let God arise, and His enemies be Scattered: and let them that hate Him, fly before His face.

(Wisdom 1:7 and Psalm 67) Gloria Patri et Filioet Spiritui Sancto sicut eras in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning, and is now, and ever shall be world without end.

Amen.

Byrd's three Masses were printed between 1592 and 1595 in editions that lacked title pages (since the musicwas contraband), though, as Kerman points out, "Byrd's name as author is coolly entered at the top of every page" (his eminence evidently vouchsafing his security). They are Byrd's most ambitious and most famous Latin­ texted works, and their celebrity is fully justified. Like the Gradualia completely free of any use of preexisting chant melody, they are miracles of compression, varied pacing,and musical drama,often of a searingly personal kind. They derive their musical shape from the olddevice of alternating imitative sections for a reduced complement of voices with chordal climaxes for the full choir. But the old form is refreshed by melodic writing of a very new kind, molded directly on the rhythms and sense of the text. In his mastery of this kind of late-Renaissance musical rhetoric, Byrd stands absolutely alone among his countrymen. His Masses are among the very few by Renaissance composers of which it may be confidently stated that they had no model, nor any structural guide save the compo ser's instinct and experience. They are an unprecedented and triumphant tour de force.

Cappella Nova Catherine Crook, Phyllis Curran, Sarah Hamby, Elise Kushner, Sarah Potter, Cornelia Praetorius, Lynn Vassar -

Sopranos

Susan Hellauer, Imogen Howe, Lawrence Lipnik, Leonore Max, Patricia Peterson -Altos Peter Bannon, Robert Hartshorne, Edward Stevenson, William van Steveninck -Tenors Richard Bodig, Jonathan Clune, Paul de Simone, Louis Flaim, Sandy Valerio -Basses Richard Taruskin. Director

E YTEICOS

SI U M T E H

R E I T H A L G A C

E S T. 19 6 0 All recordings ℗ 1978-1991 & © 2024 Heritage Music Royalties.

Additional information about these recordings can be found at our website www.themusicalheritagesociety.com