Ockeghem@600 | Concert 7 Fors seulement Thursday, March 1, 2018 Friday, March 2, 2018 Saturday, March 3, 2018 St. Cecilia Parish, Boston St. Andrew’s Church, Wellesley First Church in Cambridge, Congregational Ockeghem@600 | Concert 7 Fors seulement Fors seullement: from sacred to secular in the ffeenth century cantus A number of themes run through our pro- of Mons. He worked at the church of Our Megan Chartrand gram this evening. All the sacred music Lady in Antwerp and in the chapel of the Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497) Martin Near Fors seullement l’acente que je meure • mc mn st in the concert honors the Blessed Virgin duke of Bourbon before joining the French tenor & contratenor Mary in some fashion. You will hear poly- royal court by 1451. By 1459 he was living Mathaeus Pipelare (c. 1450-c. 1515) Owen McIntosh Jason McStoots phonic setings of a hymn (Maria mater in Tours, on the Loire about a hundred Fors seullement • MC OM ST DM Sumner Tompson gratie) and an antiphon (Salve regina) ad- miles southwest of Paris, and earning Ockeghem bassus dressed directly to Mary, and Mass move- an income as treasurer of the collegiate Fors seullement contre ce qu’ay promys / Paul Gutry ments whose musical material is derived in church of St-Martin, whose nominal Fors seullement l’actente que je meure • MC JM PG Steven Hrycelak David McFerrin some way from secular songs which may head was the king of France. (A collegiate ?Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452-1518) Scot Metcalfe be interpreted allegorically as expressing church is one by a college or community Maria mater gratie / Fors seullement • MC OM JM DM PG director devotion to her in one case, or her grief at of clerics.) Ockeghem died on February Ockeghem losing her son in the other. 6, 1497, a prosperous and celebrated man • Ockeghem@600 is Blue Heron’s Kyrie & Gloria Fors seullement MN OM JM ST SH long-term project to perform whose passing inspired laments by poets the complete works of Johannes Tis is also a story of three generations and musicians including Josquin, whose Ockeghem in a series of concert of musicians from a small geographic seting of Nymphes des bois mourned the intermission programs presented between 2015 and 2021. area encompassing parts of northern older musician’s death, just as Ockeghem France and the southern Low Countries had honored Binchois with his Mort, tu as Ockeghem We are very pleased to have (now Belgium)>an area, rich in choir Credo Fors seullement • MC OM JM ST DM navré de ton dart. Professor Sean Gallagher schools or maîtrises, that trained most of join us as adviser for Gilles de Bins, called Binchois (c. 1400-1460) the entire project. Europe’s best singers and composers in Mathaeus Pipelare, Alexander Agricola, Je ne vis onques la pareille • MN OM PG the ffeenth century. Te oldest of our Pierre de la Rue, and Johannes Ghiselin Pre-concert talk in Cambridge by composers, Gilles de Bins, called Binchois, represent the next generation. All four Alexander Agricola (c. 1450-1506) Sean Galagher (New England Credo Je ne vis onques la pareille (II) • MN OM JM PG Conservatory of Music) was born around 1400, probably in Mons, were born in the 1450s, and all also had sonsored in part by the capital of the province of Hainaut. He some connection with the Habsburg- Johannes Ghiselin (documented 1491-1507) Te Cambridge Society spent most of his career in the employ of Burgundian court, the descendant of the Salve regina Je ne vis onques la pareille for Early Music the duke of Burgundy before retiring to storied duchy of Burgundy. Agricola was Q&A afer the concert with Soignies, a town just ten miles northeast born in Ghent and spent the frst decades Sean Galagher & Scot Metcalfe of Mons, on the way to Brussels. Johannes of his career in Italy and working for the Ockeghem was born around 1420 in the French royal court before joining the Blue Heron is funded in part by the Massachusets Cultural Council, a state agency. small town of St-Ghislain, just to the west Habsburg-Burgundian court in 1500. Blue Heron 950 Watertown St., Suite 8, Wes Newton, MA 02465 (617) 960-7956 [email protected] www.blueheron.org 3 La Rue was almost certainly born in the Fors seullement falling motive occurs more than a dozen downwards, surrounding it with three cathedral city of Tournai, also in Hainaut times in the course of the song. A duet be- newly-composed parts, one higher and very near the French border, and educated Our point of departure is Fors seullement tween the lower voices also introduces the two lower. Te piece may have been in- in the cathedral school. He was at the l’actente. Te frst line of the text is itself song’s second part, which sounds briefy, tended for instruments, for it is transmit- Habsburg-Burgundian court by 1492; he borrowed from the end of Alain Chartier’s deceptively happy, before it returns to a ted entirely without text and cannot sen- retired in 1516 and died in 1518. Ghiselin, La Complainte (from the mid-1420s), desolate minor mode. sibly be divided into two sections, which also known as Verbonnet, is only docu- where it is spoken by the male narrator is necessary for the full performance of a mented working in Italy between 1491 about his lady and mistress (“ma dame About three dozen subsequent pieces rondeau, but the lines are perfectly sing- and 1507, but he was described as “da et ma maistresse”), a paragon of virtue rework the material of Fors seullement. able and carry the poem with ease. Piccardia” (from Picardy in northern snatched away by an untimely death. Ockeghem himself took the top part of France) in a Florentine chapel register the song, transposed it down a twelfh, Te fve-voice Maria mater gratie is Autre bien n’ay, n’autre bien n’assaveure and used it as the lowest, contratenor transmited uniquely and anonymously from 1493 and as a “famengo” (Fleming) Fors seulement l’actente que je meure; part of a new song, Fors seullement contre in a songbook that was copied for in one from Ferrara in 1502. His music Et desire que briefment vieigne l’eure, ce qu’ay promis, whose upper two voices Marguerite of Austria, the daughter of includes a song whose incipit, “Je l’ay em- Qu’apres ma mort en paradis la voye. pris,” was the moto of Charles the Bold (d. declaim a curious political text. Aside the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian 1477), the last Burgundian duke to rule an No other good do I have, no other good do I enjoy from the frst two words, is hard to see I, in the scriptorium of Petrus Alamire independent polity. Pipelare worked in save only the expectation that I shall die; the connection between this poem and at Marguerite’s court in the Netherlands, Antwerp and ’s-Hertogenbosch, and pos- and I desire that the hour come shortly, the sentiments of the original rondeau, probably sometime afer 1516. Marguerite sibly also in Ghent. More than half of his that afer my death I shall see her in Paradise. whose entire frst strophe is writen in the was a highly cultured, politically savvy, surviving compositions are transmited in new song’s contratenor part in one source. and famously melancholy lady who took manuscripts associated with the scripto- Te text of Ockeghem’s song is spoken An ironic twist seems possible, in which a as her moto “Fortune infortune fort rium of the Habsburg-Burgundian court. by a woman who, rejected by the man male speaker’s bluster about alliances and une” (Fortune makes a woman very un- she loves, curses her own loyalty to him, honor is>literally>undercut by a female happy), and the contents of her songbook Finally, our program presents composi- which causes her sufering beyond mea- voice lamenting her abandonment. (A sub- refect her seriousness and grief. In this tions based on pre-existent music: songs, sure. Ockeghem matches the poem’s grief tle disparity between the mode of the top song, probably by one of the Habsburg- motets, and Masses that draw their mu- and biterness with music of stark beauty. voices and that of the contratenor leads to Burgundian court’s star composers, Pierre sical inspiration from one or another of A pair of duets open the song, each fea- some disorienting metrical displacement de la Rue, four voices pray to Mary for her the two most famous songs of the mid- turing a falling melodic motive with the in the second half the song, too.) intercession at the hour of death, while a ffeenth century, Ockeghem’s Fors seulle- distinctive rhythmic profle of a doted ffh (second from the botom) quotes the ment l’actente que je meure and Binchois’s Je whole note followed by two descending Tis seting of Fors seullement by second voice of Ockeghem’s song down an ne vis onques la pareille. quarter notes (a doted semibreve and two Pipelare (one of two he wrote) also takes octave. Nothing but the frst two words of semiminims, in 15th-century terms). Te Ockeghem's melody and transposes it the original French text is writen in the 4 5 manuscript, but it seems perfectly appro- together in a single source copied in the implacability, pitilessness>or of Mary that makes it impossible to be absolutely priate to sing it in this context. Netherlands a few years afer the com- cursing her loyalty to her son.) In this certain which version wins out.