WHO WAS JOHANNES OCKEGHEM? and Duration, the Basic Elements of Music)

Ockeghem@600 | Concert 6 MA MAISTRESSE: SONGS, MASSES & A MOTET FOR MY LADY 8 PM • Saturday, October 14, 2017 First Church in Cambridge, Congregational Ockeghem@600 | Concert 6 MA MAISTRESSE: MA MAISTRESSE: SONGS, MASSES & A MOTET FOR MY LADY SONGS, MASSES & A MOTET FOR MY LADY This program explores a complex of with Ockeghem’s Mass may have provoked interrelated works—a song and two masses the ascription to the much more famous cantus Johannes Regis (c. 1425-1496) by Johannes Ockeghem, a song by one musician.) Margot Rood Barbingant, and a song by Firminus Caron. Celsitonantis ave genitrix / Abrahe fit promissio • mr mn jm st pg Martin Near The first of this group of pieces seems to To be honest, it is not entirely certain that Barbingant (fl. c.1465-75) tenor & contratenor be Ockeghem’s song Ma maistresse, whose Au travail suis borrowed its “Ma maistresse” Au travail suis • mr sr sm Owen McIntosh earliest source is a manuscript from the early figure from Ockeghem’s song, or whether the Jason McStoots to mid-1450s: it was probably composed loan may have gone in the other direction. Stefan Reed Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497) Sumner Thompson around or shortly after 1450 and is one of the David Fallows has argued in favor of Missa Au travail suis very earliest works of Ockeghem’s known to Barbingant originating the figure, largely on • Kyrie & Gloria mn om pg dm bassus us. The song survives in eight sources, while the grounds that Ockeghem’s handling of Paul Guttry its text (which David Fallows has suggested it in imitation at the fifth is more complex Anonymous David McFerrin En atendant vostre venue • mr om st may be by Alain Chartier) is found in two than Barbingant’s imitation at the octave, so Scott Metcalfe purely poetic collections. The song’s opening that Ma maistresse appears to raise the stakes Ockeghem fiddle & director gesture, setting the words “Ma maistresse,” on Au travail suis. Fallows has also noticed Credo sine nomine • mn jm st pg is treated in imitation at the fifth between what appears to be a direct quote of both the cantus and tenor parts, a rather unusual cantus and tenor voices of Au travail suis, with technical maneuvre for the mid-15th century. imitation at the octave, in the tenor and bass intermission Ockeghem@600 is Blue Heron’s Perhaps it was in part this feature that inspired at the beginning of the Gloria of the Missa Ma long-term project to perform Barbingant to quote the figure, in imitation at maistresse; Fallows did not remark upon it, but the complete works of Johannes the octave, when setting the same two words the same quotation, in the same two voices, is Firminus Caron (fl. c. 1460-75) Ockeghem in a series of concert in his song Au travail suis. reprised at the climactic final moments of the Cent mil escuz • mn jm dm programs presented between 2015 and 2021. We are very pleased to movement, at the words “In gloria Dei patris, Ockeghem have Professor Sean Gallagher join Apparently undocumented in archival Amen.” Furthermore, in some cases where we Missa Au travail suis us as adviser for the entire project. records, Barbingant is known to us by a are sure of the chronology, the opening line Credo • mn om dm pg small handful of ascriptions in musical of a later song quotes an internal line from Sanctus • mr sr/om dm pg Pre-concert talk by Sean Gallagher sources from the 1460s and 1470s, including another, rather than the reverse: Busnoys’s En Agnus dei • mr/mn om dm pg (New England Conservatory of three French songs and one mass. His songs soustenant vostre querelle, for example, takes its Music) sponsored in part by The enjoyed considerable success: one (L’omme textual incipit from the last line of Binchois’s Ockeghem Cambridge Society for Early Music. banny de sa plaisance) is found in no less than indisputably earlier De plus en plus. Ma maistresse • mn jm st ten sources, while Ockeghem took Au travail Blue Heron is funded in part by suis as a model for his Missa Au travail suis. (In But both the chronology of the sources and Ockeghem the Massachusetts Cultural Council, fact, Au travail suis was so highly regarded that considerations of musical style make a strong a state agency. Missa Ma maistresse one scribe ascribed it to Ockeghem himself. case that Ma maistresse was composed first, • Kyrie mr om sr dm Modern scholarship has been divided on sometime in the early 1450s, Au travail suis Gloria the question, but Barbingant’s authorship perhaps a decade later. In this view, Barbingant seems most likely; the association of the song honored Ockeghem with a quotation of Ma Blue Heron 950 Watertown St., Suite 11, West Newton, MA 02465 (617) 960-7956 [email protected] www.blueheron.org 3 maistresse in the second half of Au travail suis, also befitting Holy Writ, which is cycle may once have existed. Both song, aside from the head-motif of each ensuring that the allusion was easily audible proposed to all without distinction movements draw liberally and audibly on Mass movement, which is drawn from by employing the simpler technical device of persons…that spiritual truths the discantus and tenor of the chanson. the song’s opening gesture. As so often of imitation at the octave and setting the be expounded by means of figures The bass of the Kyrie quotes the entire with Ockeghem, there seems to be no quotation off with a clear cadence immediately taken from corporeal things, in tenor line of the first section of the song, explanation of these mysteries. before it. Ockeghem then returned the tribute, order that thereby even the simple while in the Gloria both the first and rather subtly, by quoting Barbingant in the who are unable by themselves to second sections of the song’s discantus Credo sine nomine & Cent mil escuz Missa Ma maistresse, and paid more lavish grasp intellectual things may be melody are quoted complete by the homage to him elsewhere with an entire Mass able to understand it. tenor. At the last moment, at the words Although based throughout on plainchant cycle which takes Barbingant’s song as its point “In gloria Dei patris, Amen,” the tenor and otherwise unrelated to Au travail suis, of departure. Summa theologiae (Q. 1, art. 9), reprises the opening gesture of the song; the Credo sine nomine does share material written 1265–74 as noted above, the bass joins for moment with the Credo of the Missa Au travail in Songs & masses of imitation in an apparent allusion to one passage, that setting the words “Et The most obvious and most common analogy Au travail suis. Besides these direct and incarnatus…et homo factus est.” It is unclear Although the idea was not completely new, made available by courtly love was between extended quotations, the song’s melodies which work quotes which, but the quotation fifteenth-century composers absorbedthe unattainable object of desire and Mary, are absorbed into all the lines of the Mass. of a Credo based entirely on chant in a freely- secular melodies into sacred music with much and the virelai Ma maistresse provides an composed Mass based on song, or vice versa, greater frequency and freedom than did their exquisite example. The poem merits a rubric is characteristic of Ockeghem, at once playful predecessors, basing numerous Mass cycles like that given by the Burgundian court No two of Ockeghem’s Masses sound and serious, allusive, and densely layered. and motets on preexisting music drawn from chronicler and poet, Jean Molinet, to his quite the same or address formal problems songs, which were often incorporated into poem Dame sans per: “Dictier qui se poeult in the same manner. As Fabrice Fitch Among the sacred works and elevated the new composition in such a way as to be adreschier soit a la vierge Marie ou pour observes, “most of them present a highly sentiments of the rest of the program, Cent immediately recognizable to the listener. un amant a sa dame” (“Poem that may be distinctive profile, determined by features mil escuz appears the odd one out. What is this Far from violating propriety, the use of song addressed either to the Virgin Mary or by peculiar to the one work alone. Thus, the decidedly mundane song—a hit composed melodies was meant to offer enlightening a lover to his lady”). Ma maistresse speaks soundscapes of individual works vary by the memorably named Firminus Caron, parallels to the listener; the poetic texts of a lady “perfect in good qualities, if ever a considerably, and the differences between praised by Tinctoris alongside Ockeghem, they evoked in the memory, even if not sung, woman was, / She alone whose reputation them are often more obvious than their like Regis—doing in such company? As Sean suggested metaphors by which humans might and fame it is / To be without peer,” of the similarities.” Indeed, the Missa Au travail Gallagher has noticed, the song’s last phrase, attempt to comprehend their relationship speaker’s urgent desire to see her and his hope suis presents a stark contrast with the setting the words “Aulcuneffoiz quant je to God. Aquinas had stressed the utility of for her pity. The song is one of Ockeghem’s Missa Ma maistresse. The distinctive pourroye,” is a close match for the opening metaphor in conveying divine truth, which most bewitching creations, and its soaring features of the former include its unusual point of imitation of Ma maitresse, here might not be directly apprehendable by all: melodies lend an air of enchantment to the scoring—two lower parts moving in the extended to involve the third voice as well.

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