Ockeghem@600 | Concert 4 ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI 8 PM Saturday, October 15, 2016 First Church in Cambridge, Congregational 4 PM Sunday, October 16, 2016 S. Stephen's Church, Providence Ockeghem@600 | Concert 4 ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI SOURCES AND SURVIVORS Living in an age of blithely easy access to Philippe Bouton (1418-1515) and produced Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497) cantus digital copies of practically anything, we may at the Bourgeois workshop at the Habsburg- Ave Maria • ml ms jm dm Margaret Lias Martin Near find it hard to imagine just how precious a Burgundian court of Mechelen. The first Johannes Regis (c. 1425-1496) thing was notated music in the years before section of the manuscript is devoted entirely Ave Maria • ml mn dm Ave Maria…virgo serena • om ms jm st pg tenor & contratenor Ottaviano Petrucci developed a system for to Masses by Ockeghem; it seems to have been Owen McIntosh printing polyphonic music, issuing his first planned as a sort of commemorative volume to Ockeghem Jason McStoots book, the Harmonice musices odhecaton (One him and to Johannes Regis, for it also contains Missa Ecce ancilla domini Mark Sprinkle Hundred Songs of Harmonic Music) of 1501. five of Regis’s seven extant motets. (Two of Kyrie • ml st om dm / Christe • mn jm ms pg / Kyrie • ml st om dm Sumner Thompson Gloria • ml st ms dm Composers seem to have worked out their these, too, survive only there.) Sometime after • Credo mn jm dm pg creations on reusable slates, transcribing the Bouton’s death the manuscript made its way bassus — intermission — Paul Guttry results into some sort of exemplar from which into Spanish hands. In the seventeenth century David McFerrin a scribe would produce workaday performance it came into the possession of Cardinal Fabio Ockeghem Il ne m’en chault plus de nul ame • ml ms dm copies or, in special cases, ornately decorated Chigi, later Pope Alexander VII, and eventually Scott Metcalfe presentation manuscripts for nobles or other it wound up in the Vatican Library. Antoine Busnoys (c. 1430-1492) director & fiddle Ma damoiselle, ma maistresse • mn om sm wealthy patrons. Virtually nothing in the hand of a composer survives from the fifteenth century, The Mass featured on today’s program, ?Ockeghem and even copies of treasures like polyphonic Ockeghem’s Missa Ecce ancilla domini, was Permanent vierge • mn jm dm pg st masses or motets are breathtakingly scarce. originally the first work in the codex (its Ockeghem One single manuscript copied shortly after the order was subsequently altered), and its first Missa Ecce ancilla domini Sanctus • ml jm om pg / Benedictus • mn jm death of Johannes Ockeghem in 1497 contains opening was spectacularly illustrated. Indeed, Agnus • mn om ms dm almost all of his settings of the Ordinary of the it is likely that the Chigi Codex survived not Mass (nine complete cycles and three partial because later generations prized the music it cycles), plus the incomplete Requiem. While contained—Chigi’s librarian noted laconically some of these survive in perhaps one other on a leaf of the book that “la musica è stimata source, four Masses are transmitted uniquely in molto buona” (the music is considered very this one manuscript, as is Ockeghem’s short but good)—but because it was so handsomely typically rich setting of the Marian antiphon written and so lavishly illuminated. Ockeghem@600 is a long-term project exploring the complete works of Ave Maria. We owe our knowledge of many Johannes Ockeghem in thirteen concert programs presented between 2015 and 2021. of Ockeghem’s works to a kind of miracle— In addition to the lovely depiction of the Blue Heron is very pleased to have Professor Sean Gallagher as adviser for the entire project. and we have lost at least four other masses, if Annunciation and the colorful marginalia, Pre-concert talk by Sean Gallagher (New England Conservatory of Music) references to them in treatises of the fifteenth note the text in the tenor part at lower left— sponsored in part by The Cambridge Society for Early Music and sixteenth centuries can be believed. not the words of the Mass itself, but those of the plainchant antiphon which Ockeghem has The manuscript in question, the Chigi Codex, taken as the basis of his piece: “Behold the Blue Heron is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. was commissioned by or for the French noble handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according Blue Heron 950 Watertown St., Suite 11, West Newton, MA 02465 (617) 960-7956 [email protected] www.blueheron.org 3 Fifteenth-century songs, the best of which are lent support in a detailed rhythmic analysis exquisitely crafted masterpieces of an artistry by Sean Gallagher, adviser to Blue Heron’s and profundity every bit the equal of the later Ockeghem@600 project.1 Permanent vierge art song repertory, were often copied into combines a French rondeau with two Latin- pocket-size volumes for collectors. (Whether texted cantus firmi, both Marian antiphon such chansonniers were ever used by musicians is chants, in a hybrid form known nowadays as doubtful: they tend to be decorated objets d’art, a motet-chanson. The French poem glosses not performing materials, and in any case it is the text of yet another antiphon, Mulier amicta virtually certain that fifteenth-century singers sole, which the scribe wrote sideways in the performed songs from memory.) A typical margin. The words are from Revelation 12:1: example is the so-called Dijon chansonnier “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; from c. 1465-1470s, the only source of a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon Permanent vierge. Although unascribed in under her feet, and upon her head a crown of Dijon, the song is copied there between two twelve stars.” other anonymous songs that are elsewhere —Scott Metcalfe ascribed to Ockeghem. The attribution of 1 Permanent vierge to Ockeghem, first proposed Sean Gallagher, “Syntax and style: rhythmic patterns in the music of Ockeghem and his contemporaries,” Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi C VIII 234, fos. 19v-20. by the nineteenth-century music historian Full-color digital images are available at http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Chig.C.VIII.234. in Philippe Vendrix, ed., Johannes Ockeghem. Paris: August Wilhelm Ambros, has recently been Klincksieck, 1998, pp. 681-705. to thy word” (Luke 1:38). This and later entries format seen in Chigi, in which all the voices of of the antiphon text, alongside and sometimes a polyphonic texture appear adjacent to each directly below the words of the Mass, appear other (not in score), scribes and printers were to instruct the performer to sing “Ecce ancilla beginning to favor partbooks, one for each domini” where the tenor part quotes the chant, part. The partbook format brings with it a new an audible sign of the Mass’s dedication. danger, that one (or more) of the books might not survive. This is precisely what happened Manuscripts may be fragile bearers of cultural with Petrucci’s Motetti a cinque of 1508, which artifacts like polyphonic music, but prints is the only source of Regis’s five-voice setting of from the early sixteenth century have not the Marian sequence Ave Maria…virgo serena. fared all that much better. Petrucci’s books Our performance employs a reconstruction were published in very small runs, most of of the missing voice by Theodor Dumitrescu. which has disappeared. Less than half of the (Quite a lot of the material in this motet may first edition ofOdhecaton remains, just one sound familiar from Josquin’s celebrated work copy of the second edition of 1503, and five beginning with the same text. Dumitrescu has of the third of 1504. And in the early years of also proven that Josquin is not the innovator in the new century a new format was becoming this case, but is rather emulating the now less more popular. Rather than the choirbook well-known master of the previous generation.) Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale MS 517, fos. 165v-166. Digital images at patrimoine.bm-dijon.fr/pleade/img-viewer/MS00517/viewer.html. 4 5 TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS Ave Maria gratia plena, dominus tecum: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: Te collaudat celestis curia, The heavenly host praises you: benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus blessed art thou among women and blessed is the tu mater es regis et filia. you are the mother of the king, and his daughter. fructus ventris tui Jesus Christus. Amen. fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ. Amen. per te reis donatur venia, through you the guilty are forgiven, per te justis confertur gratia. through you the just receive grace. Ergo maris stella, Therefore, star of the sea, Ave Maria gratia plena, Hail Mary, full of grace, verba dei cella tabernacle of the word of God, dominus tecum, virgo serena. the Lord is with you, serene virgin. et lucis aurora, and light of the dawn, paradisi porta, gate of paradise, Benedicta tu in mulieribus, Blessed are you among women, per quam lux est orta: through whom the light appeared: qui peperisti pacem hominibus who gave birth to peace for men natum tuum ora pray to your son et angelis gloriam, and glory for angels, et benedictus fructus ventris tui and blessed is the fruit of your womb, ut nos salvat a peccatis that he absolve us from sin qui coheredes ut essemus sui who, through his grace, made it possible et in regno claritatis, and in his kingdom of light, nos fecit per gratiam. for us to share his inheritance.