Caput: Ockeghem & the English
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Ockeghem@600 | Concert 5 CAPUT: OCKEGHEM & THE ENGLISH 8 PM • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2017 — First Parish of Lexington 8 PM • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2017 — First Church in Cambridge, Congregational Ockeghem@600 | Concert 5 CAPUT: OCKEGHEM & THE ENGLISH OCKEGHEM & THE ENGLISH Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497) cantus In this fifth program of our multi-season survey particular the way in which it handles the Missa Caput Martin Near of the complete works of Johannes Ockeghem, two lower lines of its four-voice contrapuntal Laura Pudwell Kyrie • lp ms st dm / mn om jm pg we present one of his earliest surviving texture (labelled Tenor primus and secundus), Gloria • lp om jm pg works, the Missa Caput. Those who have influenced a generation of French and Flemish tenor & contratenor attended previous concerts in the series will composers. Ockeghem adopts the new manner John Pyamour (d. before March 1426) Owen McIntosh Quam pulcra es • om jm dm Jason McStoots perhaps share the impression we are forming of writing in four parts, but then ups the Mark Sprinkle of Ockeghem’s compositional character— technical ante considerably by the daring and Walter Frye (d. before June 1475) Sumner Thompson curious, experimental, boldly asserting novel use to which he puts the cantus firmus. • Alas alas alas is my chief song mn st pg his superior craft vis-à-vis his models by Ave regina celorum • lp ms dm bassus surpassing their technical achievements, and The cantus firmus melody quotes a long Ockeghem Paul Guttry stretching the theoretical systems of his time in melisma on the word “caput” from an antiphon Missa Caput David McFerrin ways that challenge our ability to find a definite sung during the foot-washing ceremony on Credo • mn jm st dm solution (and surely posed similar challenges Maundy Thursday in the Sarum rite. The Sarum Scott Metcalfe to musicians of his day). No two of his pieces antiphon is in the seventh mode, with a G final — intermission — director sound quite the same or address formal and no flat in its signature; the Caput melisma Frye problems in the same manner. As Fabrice begins on a B-natural, ends on G, and features Tout a par moy, affin qu’on ne me voye • lp ms jm Fitch observes in his study of the Masses, many prominent Bs and Es. The English “most of them present a highly distinctive Caput Mass places the plainchant melody in Robert Morton (b. c. 1430, d. after March 13, 1479) profile, determined by features peculiar to its traditional locus in the second-lowest voice, • Le souvenir de vous me tue mn ms pg the one work alone. Thus, the soundscapes and unsurprisingly, the Mass, like its tenor, is Gilles de Bins, dit Binchois (c. 1400-1460) of individual works vary considerably, and in a sparkling G mode, featuring numerous Dueil angoisseux, rage desmesuree • lp st jm the differences between them are often more G and C major triads. This is the normal obvious than their similarities.”1 situation in modal polyphony: according to Ockeghem the preeminent theorist Johannes Tinctoris, Missa Caput These tendencies are already obvious in the the mode of a piece generally corresponds to Sanctus Agnus dei music of Ockeghem’s younger years, including the mode of its tenor. the Missa Caput. Probably composed by around 1450, the Mass borrows its cantus If anyone were to say to me, Tinctoris, I ask Ockeghem@600 is a long-term project exploring the complete works of firmus (the preexisting plainchant melody you, of what mode is the song Le serviteur? I Johannes Ockeghem in thirteen concert programs presented between 2015 and 2021. quoted by the tenor) and much of its structure would reply, In general, of an irregular first Blue Heron is very pleased to have Professor Sean Gallagher as adviser for the entire project. from an anonymous English Mass that arrived mode, because the tenor, the principal part Pre-concert talk (in Cambridge) by Sean Gallagher (New England Conservatory of Music) on the continent perhaps a decade before. The of the song, is of such a mode. sponsored in part by The Cambridge Society for Early Music. technical innovations of the English work, in Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum, 1476 Blue Heron is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. The Lexington performance is supported in part by a 1 Fabrice Fitch, Johannes Ockeghem: masses and models grant from the Lexington Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. (1997), p. 41. Blue Heron 950 Watertown St., Suite 11, West Newton, MA 02465 (617) 960-7956 [email protected] www.blueheron.org 3 The Gloria of the English Mass, performed often than they are compatible. The modal as “erratic and arbitrary.”3 Absent personal on this program, conveys an excellent sense schizophrenia that results is obvious right guidance from Ockeghem himself, it does not of the whole work—sunny, jazzy, energetic, from the outset, as the D-A sonority of the seem possible to arrive at a definitive solution seemingly uncomplicated, with the top two first measure is followed immediately by one to the puzzles posed by the piece and so, as parts granted the lion’s share of melodic and on B with an F-sharp above it, which is in turn Jaap van Benthem remarks in the preface to his rhythmic interest, the bottom two proceeding quickly succeeded by another D sonority, this edition of the Missa Caput, “We can be quite mostly in longer note values and together Fig. 1. The Caput tenor from the time with an F natural in the topmost voice. sure that any performance of the composition creating the harmonic framework. English Missa Caput. Trent, Archivio Soon more F-sharps ensue, and it’s not long not supervised by the composer or someone Diocesano, MS 93, f. 126v. before a B-flat turns up, too. The Mass is rife acquainted with the composer’s intentions Arrestingly strange in sound from its very with such harmonic contradictions from start must, even at the time, have been different opening measures, Ockeghem’s Missa Caput to finish. from all others.” could hardly be more different in effect. Its young composer (probably less than 30 when So things sound strange indeed—but we can’t We make no claims to have discovered what he wrote the piece) takes the cantus firmus of be certain exactly how strange. The problem Ockeghem would have wished (and our the English Mass—not the plainchant itself, is that fifteenth-century musicians did not reading of the piece differs from van Benthem’s, which he likely did not know, as it belongs invariably specify in their written music how naturally), but we have attempted to conjure to the insular Sarum repertoire—intact, to inflect the notes of the scale, raising or up a performance that a group of well-trained including the rhythms devised by the English lowering them a semitone by adding a flat or fifteenth-century singers might have produced composer, but he directs that it be sung down sharp, but left many such inflections implicit. from the surviving source material—two an octave, where it becomes the lowest voice Fig. 2. Ockeghem’s tenor in his Missa The application of such chromatic alterations manuscript copies, neither of which, it must in the counterpoint. (See figures 1-3.) In this Caput. Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, was governed by a combination of theory, be noted, derives directly from Ockeghem. position its numerous B-naturals require Castello del Buonconsiglio, MS 1375 melodic convention, and custom. Singers (One was copied in northern Italy in the late F-sharps a perfect fifth above them in order (formerly 88), f. 287v. were expected to solve these questions on 1450s, the other in the Habsburg-Burgundian to create a “perfect consonance” or stable the spot, and they didn’t always agree how scriptorium in Mechelen nearly a half century harmony. This situation is unusual enough to resolve issues when observing one rule or later, a few years after the composer’s death.) in fifteenth-century music, where sharps custom creates a conflict with another. (An lie outside the gamut of “real music,” must early sixteenth-century correspondence However the Missa Caput is realised in be borrowed from the “imaginary” world documents one such disagreement between performance, it makes for compelling of musica ficta (feigned or false music), and musicians.) Such questions arise again and listening—mysterious, certainly, but hauntingly Fig. 3. The “canon” or rule directing usually function as temporarily raised leading again in Ockeghem’s Missa Caput, and many beautiful, sonorous, meditative, and fascinating, the singer of Ockeghem’s tenor to tones at cadences—F-sharp leading to G, for commentators have expressed their perplexity the extraordinary creation of an phenomenally transpose the tenor down an octave: example. The greater oddity is that Ockeghem’s over it, one writing that “the application of gifted, skilled, and imaginative composer at the “Alterum caput descendendo tenorem Mass is not oriented to a final of G, as is the these alterations, which were taken for granted, beginning of his career. per diapason et sic per totam missam” Caput cantus firmus, but to D, with F-naturals presents difficulties without number,”2 another (Another Caput, lowering the tenor by and B-flats in abundance. In short, the cantus describing the harmonic style of the Mass an octave, and thus for the entire mass). firmus, which normally serves as the structural Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS foundation of the counterpoint, is in a different Chigi C VIII 234, f.