For OCKEGHEM

ss CORO hilliard live CORO hilliard live 2 Producer: Antony Pitts Recording: Susan Thomas Editors: Susan Thomas and Marvin Ware Post-production: Chris Ekers and Dave Hunt New re-mastering: Raphael Mouterde (Floating Earth) Translations of Busnois, Compère and Lupi by Selene Mills Cover image: from an intitial to The Nun's Priest's Tale (reversed) by Eric Gill, with thanks to the Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham: www.goldmarkart.com Design: Andrew Giles The Hilliard Ensemble David James countertenor Recorded by BBC Radio 3 in St Jude-on-the-Hill, Rogers Covey-Crump tenor Hampstead Garden Suburb and first broadcast on John Potter tenor 5 February 1997, the eve of the 500th anniversary Gordon Jones baritone of the death of Johannes Ockeghem. Previously released as Hilliard Live HL 1002 Bob Peck reader For Also available on coro: hilliard live 1 PÉROTIN and the ARS ANTIQUA cor16046 OCKEGHEM 2007 The Sixteen Productions Ltd © 2007 The Sixteen Productions Ltd N the hilliard ensemble To find out more about CORO and to buy CDs, visit www.thesixteen.com cor16048 The hilliard live series of recordings came about for various reasons. 1 Kyrie and Gloria (Missa Mi mi) Ockeghem 7:10 At the time self-published recordings were a fairly new and increasingly 2 Cruel death.... Crétin 2:34 common phenomenon in popular music and we were keen to see if 3 In hydraulis Busnois 7:50 we could make the process work for us in the context of a series of public concerts. Perhaps the most important motive for this experiment 4 After this sweet harmony.... Crétin 1:30 was our desire to capture the atmosphere and excitement of concert 5 Credo (Missa De plus en plus) Ockeghem 9:44 performances of some of our favourite repertoire. Performance rather 6 Then arose King David the psalmist.... Crétin 1:45 than recording is, after all, what music is about. There is the unavoidable risk that all will not be perfect; audience noise or human frailty on our 7 Omnium bonorum plena Compère 10:41 part may detract from the polished perfection that can be achieved with 8 Chiron the Centaur came up from Thessaly.... Crétin 2:41 a studio recording but such risks are part of our daily life of concert 9 Sanctus (Missa Caput) Ockeghem 7:17 giving and lend to the event an added degree of excitement and, we bl Then the very doleful Lady Music.... Crétin 3:43 hope, engagement with the audience. bm Ergone conticuit Lupi 7:52 We are happy to make this series of discs more widely available on CORO. bn I call him Doctor in the science of music.... Crétin 4:57 Gordon Jones bo Agnus Dei (Missa Prolationum) Ockeghem 6:10 The Hilliard Ensemble on CORO: Total playing time 73:56 hilliard live 1 Pérotin and the Ars Antiqua Interspersed with the music are parts of Guillaume Crétin’s Lament on the Death of the Late Ockeghem, Treasurer of hilliard live 2 For Ockeghem Saint Martin of Tours, in a specially commissioned translation coming soon: hilliard live 3 Antoine Brumel by Virginia Rounding, read by Bob Peck. hilliard live 4 Guillaume Dufay www.thesixteen.com The complete French text is printed at the end of this booklet. 2 3 OCKEGHEM and his of the day, Ockeghem was clearly held movement. In recent years, though, other admired in its composer’s time as, to in awe by other musicians, for whom, in references and quotations have added judge from its comparatively frequent contemporaries the words of Molinet’s famous lament new layers of significance to this enigmatic modern recordings and performances, it hen Johannes Ockeghem died on Nymphes des bois, he was ‘maistre et work. Gayle Kirkwood has proposed a is by Ockeghem aficionados today. bon père.’ While he composed in all highly suggestive symbolic significance for February 6, 1497, he was the revered Antoine Busnois (also known as Busnoys), W the genres of his day, he is best known the head motif in the musical treatises elder statesman of music. As Treasurer the composer most often mentioned for his settings of the Ordinary of the of the great mystical theologian Jean of the Royal Abbey of Saint Martin in in the same breath as Ockeghem, could Mass. Movements from some of his most Gerson, whose works were almost Tours – one of the richest ecclesiastical even have been his pupil. Certainly famous Masses are showcased on this disc, certainly familiar to Ockeghem. The motif foundations in France – and Baron of Busnois felt some sense of filial devotion interleaved with musical tributes by his is also familiar from its place in the closely Châteauneuf, which covered a large part to Ockeghem, as witnessed by the motet contemporaries. Acknowledged in music related opening gestures of Ockeghem’s of the city of Tours, as well as the holder In hydraulis, the text of which compares by his contemporaries and successors, own motet Intemerata Dei mater and of a number of other lucrative benefices, the achievements of his admired Ockeghem had in his own music nodded his bergerette Presque transi, which, as he was also a senior figure in the hierarchy colleague with the supposed discovery respectfully at those who came before Haruyo Miyazaki showed some ten years of the French Court and a very wealthy of musical proportions by Pythagoras. him. In this recording, therefore, the ago, is the source for some of the main man. His passing elicited laments by some Some connection between the two Hilliard Ensemble opens a window not musical material of the Mass. of the great literary figures of the day: composers already seemed to be implied only onto the master himself, but onto the great Déploration of Crétin, poems But musical links with the Mass do not by the dedication to both of them of the the network of musical interconnections in both Latin and French by Molinet, the end here: three other Mi mi Masses—by Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum of which locate him in the soundworld of latter set to music by no lesser a figure Pipelare, De Orto and an anonymous Johannes Tinctoris, the greatest music his time. than Josquin Desprez and even a Latin composer—apparently pay tribute to theorist of the later fifteenth century, and naenia by Erasmus, heard on this disc in Among the Masses named by Crétin Ockeghem’s Mass, while the bassus of its the frequent association of the two in a setting ascribed to Johannes Lupi. If the in his Déploration is the one with which Kyrie is reused in the same movement Tinctoris’ writings. language of these tributes is generally this performance begins, the Missa Mi of Obrecht’s Missa Sicut spina rosam. In recent years, though, evidence of that conventional, glimpses nevertheless come mi. The title of this, perhaps Ockeghem’s Listening to the Missa Mi mi today it is not connection has become much more through of genuine love and affection for best-known Mass, has encouraged various difficult to understand how it encouraged tangible. Paula Higgins and Pamela Starr a man who, in the words of Francesco explanations. The primary and most such a constellation of musical tributes: have discovered documents which prove Florio penned after meeting him in Tours obvious one is that it derives from the with its elegant, constantly undulating that Busnois was employed as a cleric in in the 1470s, ‘alone of all singers is free falling fifth motif E-A (‘mi’ in the natural surface and subtle response to the words Tours where Ockeghem was working as from all vice and abounds in all virtues.’ and soft hexachords respectively) heard of the Mass Ordinary, it was clearly as Treasurer of the Abbey of Saint Martin Respected by the great princes and poets in the bass at the beginning of each 4 5 from at least 1460. In hydraulis evidently work of that name ascribed to Ockeghem difficult not to perceive the preening of only musical acknowledgment of his grew out of their contact at this time: its in Crétin’s Déploration. As she noted, a young peacock out to impress both his admired older colleague: the Mass De plus text names the composer as ‘unworthy this lends support to the suggestion more established colleague and the highly en plus, based on the tenor of Binchois’ musician of the illustrious Count of made by other scholars that Ut heremita musical and similarly irascible magnate rondeau of the same name, is (with the Charolais’, the title held by Charles may have been a return compliment by who had recently hired him, the future possible exception of the Missa Au travail the Bold before he became Duke of Ockeghem to Busnois, whose patron Charles the Bold. suis) the only chanson-derived Mass by Burgundy in 1467. Clearly, then, the motet saint, St Anthony Abbot, was one of the Ockeghem based on a song which is Esteemed by his younger colleagues, must antedate this time, and Higgins has great saint-hermits. not one of the composer’s own. As can Ockeghem had in his turn acknowledged been able to narrow down the date of be heard here in the Credo, the Mass is Clearly the reverence felt by Busnois his own debts to his musical forebears. its composition still further, to between typical of cycles composed in the 1450s for Ockeghem was not replicated in his The most important of these seems to 1465 and 1467. This is therefore the only and 1460s in contrasting lively – in this relationships with all his colleagues in have been that which he felt towards the securely datable piece by Busnois, and an case sometimes highly virtuoso – duo Tours: a document of 1461 records his great composer of the Burgundian Court, almost uniquely demonstrable example passages with fully-scored passages in request for absolution from the crime of Gilles de Binche, dit Binchois.

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