CRITICAL COMMENTARY to NOS 29A-61 and APPENDIX
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1408 CRITICAL COMMENTARY TO NOS 29a-61 AND APPENDIX 29a. Missa Caput Kyrie (version with shortened text) (i) Trent 89 ff. 246v-248r, ‘Caput Duffay’, with ‘Duffay’ erased (DTȌ VII inventory no. 677); (ii) Trent 88 ff. 31v-33r, ‘Caput Duffay’ (DTȌ VII inventory no. 217); (iii) Lucca ff. 17v-19r, anon, longer trope text, with both sections made slightly incomplete by removal of decorated initials in the Contra parts. One stave of the first Contra’s second section is overwritten with sixteenth or seventeenth century writing. (iv) L 54324 f. 6r-v, fragmentary, longer trope text, with most of both Contra parts for the first section and most of the Superius and Tenor for the second. Text; the Tenor cantus firmus of this Mass cycle is the ‘caput’ melisma from the end of the Sarum antiphon Venit ad petrum, which was used for the mandatum or pedilavium ceremony (the washing of the feet) that took place on Maundy Thursday. The cantus firmus is presented in two guises, with the triple statements being more or less identical and the duple statements forming a second nearly identical set. Further, see the section on structure. The Kyrie trope used here (Deus Creator) has been presented with six of its nine verses, with the six equally split between the two sections of music. However this is not the only option and merely presents this English troped Kyrie as continental singers of the 1450’s might have seen it. No. 29b presents a more fully texted Kyrie as it might have appeared in insular copies (using all of the Deus Creator verses). Our version of the trope follows that in Marrocco, W. & Sandon, N. (eds), The Oxford Anthology of Medieval Music (Oxford, 1977) p. 29. The trope (GS plates 1+ & 2+) was commonly used in the Sarum rite for more important feasts. [Superius]; 1: the ‘Caput’ title appears above the Superius, & there are gaps in both the Superius and first Contra after the clefs and m signs, presumably for majuscule initials which were never entered. / 6: rest om (supplied from Lucca) / 49,3-4: Trent 89 reads dtd-sbr m (editorially emended, since none of the sources give a reading which would be satisfactory against the slightly faulty lower parts here. See below.) / 51: p div follows 2 / 80: 2 A (corr using Lucca) / 82: 1 not dtd (this isolated breve without a dot might be read as imperfect by mistake) / 96,3: corr from col err / 102: 4 F (corrected for the sake of consonance) / 167: erasure follows 1. Contra [primus]; 1: this voice is not given its full name on either Trent 89 page-opening / 16,3-4: Trent 89 reads m m (corr using Lucca) / 61: p div follows 2 / 162: Trent 89 reads B A (editorially emended to avoid a second against the Tenor, despite no other sources giving this reading) / 246: 2 G (editorially emended to avoid a second with the lower voices. Lucca gives br C for 246). Tenor; 22 & 145: the ‘Caput’ incipits are in majuscules like the voice-names in this Mass / 32: 2 C (corr using Lucca) / 48-51: all sources read ligd col L col br uncol L as here, resulting (in this reading) in a structural fourth at 49,2.1 Version 29b of this Kyrie resolves this problem. / 59: p div follows 2 / 61 & 80: likewise / 76- 77: entered on a short end-of-stave extension / 78-104: due to lack of space, the end of the Tenor’s first section is entered on a roughly drawn part-stave at the bottom of the page / 102: 2 G (corr using Lucca) / 156: 1 L (corr using the Gloria Tenor) / 157: 1 om (conj supplied from the Gloria Tenor) / 161-171: om (supplied from Trent 88) / 191-211: Trent 89 gives 24.5 measures of rests (only 20.5 are needed) and some of these rests are drawn on an end-of-stave extension. Contra secundus; 48,2: corr from col err / 60: given as 2 ligd semibreves, with alteration intended / 76: erasure follows 1 / 78: p div follows 2 / 80 & 90: likewise / 94: p div follows rest / 95: as at 60 / 100-104: due to lack 1 See the Strohm EECM 49 edition p. 42 for examples of how each source gives this problematic passage. © Robert J. Mitchell 2018 1409 of space, the end of the Contra secundus for the first section is given on a small part-stave at the bottom of the page / 202: rest is poorly drawn & looks like a breve rest / 214: 1 B (below). Underlay; only the Superius has trope incipits, which are given as follows. ‘Kyrie Deus creator’ (1), ‘eleyson’ (20), ‘Kyrie tibi laudes’ (22), ‘Kyrie Laus virtus’ (77), ‘eleyson’ (102-103), ‘Xpe’ (105), ‘eleyson’ (143-144), ‘Xpe’ (147), ‘eleyson’ (189-190), ‘Xpe’ (193) & ‘eleyson’ (250-251). This scheme broadly follows the six- verse disposition of the originally nine-verse trope previously described. The Contra primus has the following incipits. ‘Kyrie’ (1), ‘eleyson’ (20), ‘Kyrie’ (23), ‘Kyrie’ (51), ‘eleyson’ (102-103), ‘Xpe’ (105), ‘eleyson’ (143-145), ‘Xpe’ (148), ‘eleyson’ (218-222), ‘Xpe’ (225) & ‘eleyson’ (250-252). This voice also seems to require rpts of ‘nate’ at 132-134, ‘de morte’ (173-175) & ‘pascue’ (204-211), and a dieresis has been given above the ‘y’ of ‘-leyson’ at the end of both sections of music (so that pronunciation matches my underlay where ‘-leyson’ is a three-syllable word). The Tenor has the incipits ‘Kyrie caput’ and ‘Xpe caput’ for each section, and the Contra secundus has no text apart from ‘Kyrie’ at its start. Texting of the two lowest voices seems problematic in all movements of this Mass. Singing the Tenors to ‘caput’ seems to work, as does wordless vocalisation of the second Contra. Bibliography (‘edition’ here refers to editions of the whole Mass); Besseler, H. (ed), Dufay Opera Omnia II, no. 4 (edition, 1960). Strohm, R. (ed), Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music VI: Mass Settings from the Lucca Choirbook (EECM 49, London 2007) pp. 46-81 (edition of Lucca plus completion from other sources). Planchart, A. (ed), Missae Caput (Collegium Musicum no. 5, Yale, 1964. Editions of this Missa Caput as well as the Ockeghem and Obrecht Caput Masses). Feininger, L. (ed), MPLSER Series I Tomus II, no. 8 (edition, Rome, 1951-52). DTȌ 38 pp. 17-46 (edition, 1912, unreliable and with an unorthodox description by Franz Schegar which alleges borrowings from Gregorian chants in the outer voices). Gerber, R. (ed), Sacred Music from the Cathedral at Trent… no. 11 (just the Kyrie and Agnus versions in Trent 88, 2007). Bukofzer, M., ‘Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study’ in Bukofzer, M, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Dent, 1950) pp. 217-310 (still the standard article on the Caput Mass, and the first published identification of its cantus firmus). Bukofzer, M., ‘Caput Redivivum: A New Source for Dufay’s Caput Mass’ in JAMS 4 (1951) pp. 97- 110 (description of Coventry, which contains fragmentary readings of subsequent movements). Bent, M. & Bent I., ‘Dufay, Dunstable, Plummer: A New Source’ in JAMS 22 (1969) pp. 394-424 (description of L 54324, its contents, and its reading of the Missa Caput). Walker, T., ‘A Severed Head: Notes on a Lost English Caput Mass’ in Bernstein, L. (ed). Abstracts of Papers Read at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Saint Louis, Missouri, December 27-29, 1969 pp. 14-15 (which asserts that the Missa Caput is far more likely to be English than a work of Dufay). Strohm, R. ‘Quellenkritische Untersuchungen an der Missa Caput ‘ in Finscher, L. (ed), Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance, 2: Datierung und Filiation von Musikhandschriften der Josquin-Zeit (Wolfenbüttler Forschungen 26. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983) pp. 153-176. Bent, M. ‘Trent 93 and Trent 90: Johannes Wiser at Work’ in I Codici Musicali Trentini I (1986), pp. 84-101. Planchart, A., ‘Fifteenth-Century Masses: Notes on Performance and Chronology’ in Studi Musicali 10 (1981), pp. 3-29. Robertson, A. ‘The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet’ in JAMS 59 (2006), pp. 537-630. Concordant readings I do not attempt here to collate all of the readings for the Missa Caput movements note-by-note. The reason for this is that the studies by Reinhard Strohm cited above cover the Missa Caput very well and duplication of their findings would be pointless. So a description of the readings’ differences will suffice for each movement. The Trent 89 reading for the Kyrie seems to stand near the end of a process in which the Mass was exported from England and recopied numerous times which resulted in many corruptions. The Kyrie in Trent 89 repeats many of the probable mistakes in Trent 88 (e.g. the omitted Superius rest at 6, the obvious Superius error at 49, and the probable error at Superius 102,4 shared by all readings which gives F instead of E). The emendation provided for the latter avoids what I consider to be an unwelcome seventh. © Robert J. Mitchell 2018 1410 The Trent 89 Kyrie may have been copied directly from the Trent 88 reading. Lucca represents a different line of transmission in view of its mistitled Tenor (‘Caput drachonis’) which may indicate confusion with an Epiphany antiphon of that name.2 Lucca uses all nine verses of the Deus Creator trope in the upper voices (its first-section Superius ends at ‘reddens vite’, which is the textual split point in our Kyrie version no. 29b and is the end of the trope’s fifth verse).