I N V I O L A T A J O S Q U I N D E S P R E Z J A C O B H E R I N G M A N L U T E & V I H U E L A JOSQUIN DES PREZ (c.1450/55-1521) Jacob Heringman (b.1964) Jacob Heringman Inviolata 1. Ave Maria... virgo serena [8:56] Salve Regina 12. Salve Regina (part I) [5:29] Hans Gerle (c.1500–1570) 13. Eia ergo, advocata nostra (part II) [1:48] Marian motets by Josquin des Prez, intabulated for Inviolata, integra et casta es 14. Et Jesum benedictum (part III) [3:51] solo lute or vihuela by lutenist-composers old and new 2. Inviolata, integra et casta es (part I) [3:59] 3. Nostra ut pura pectora (part II) [2:38] 15. Ut Phoebi radiis/Ut re mi fa sol la [5:25] Jacob Heringman, lute & vihuela 4. O benigna (part III) [2:38] Simon Gintzler (c.1500–after 1547) Six-course lute in E after Frei (early-sixteenth century) by Michael Lowe, Oxfordshire, 1999 1–4, 15–17 Alonso Mudarra (c.1510–1580) Stabat Mater Vihuela de mano in G by Martin Haycock, West Sussex, 2016 5–10 Missa de Beata Virgine 16. Stabat Mater (part I) [6:49] Six-course lute in G after Gerle (c.1580) by Andrew Rutherford, New York, 1997 11–14 5. Kyrie I (glosa) [3:05] 17. Eia Mater (part II) [6:55] Jacob Heringman Missa de Beata Virgine Total playing time [65:07] 6. Christe [1:43] 7. Kyrie II [2:08] Enríquez de Valderrábano (fl.1547) Missa de Beata Virgine 8. Fantasia on Kyrie II [3:10] Jacob Heringman Missa de Beata Virgine 9. Prelude on Mariam coronans [0:51] Alonso Mudarra Missa de Beata Virgine 10. Cum sancto spiritu (glosa) [2:57] Hans Neusidler (c.1508/9–1563) Missa de Beata Virgine 11. Cum sancto spiritu [2:36] Note from the lute player sixteenth-century composers, it restricts itself to the relatively narrow (but highly fruitful) area Almost exactly 21 years ago, I made an of Marian music (mainly motets) by Josquin. album entitled Josquin des Prez: sixteenth- The focus is a great deal narrower. Thirdly, of century lute settings (still available from my many solo projects, the first Josquin album https://www.heringman.com/shop/). This remains closest to my own heart. It set me on was, as far as I can determine, the first a path of studying and living the intabulation recording ever to be devoted entirely to repertoire for the last twenty years, culminating intabulations, and the first lute project ever in this new recording, in which I have taken devoted entirely to the great renaissance the idea a bit further by narrowing the musical composer Josquin des Prez. The world has focus, and by creating some intabulations of changed since that first Josquin recording. my own. We’ve entered a new millennium, and, with it, an era of upheaval in almost every area This last point deserves further elucidation. of human life. Listeners will note that for this recording I have taken the rather large liberty of placing Stepping back from the immediate chaos my own arrangements alongside those of which sometimes threatens to overwhelm Gerle, Mudarra, Neusidler, and Gintzler et al, us, and taking a long view of the music, all of whom make an appearance on the first what has changed? Josquin has been dead Josquin album. What is the thinking behind for exactly 500 years, for one thing. To this? The Historically Informed Performance mark this anniversary, I have made a second movement has always been about playing recording of Josquin lute intabulations. Why music on instruments of the period, using revisit seemingly the same topic for a techniques and practices of the period, second time? making best use of all the information we can gather regarding these and other factors Several reasons. Firstly, Volume 1 met with which might influence what the music sounded an extraordinarily kind reception, and it like at the time. That’s all fine as far as it goes. appears to have caused some to rethink In fact, I’m wholeheartedly in favour, and I the importance of the large body of high value the importance of these considerations quality sixteenth-century intabulations, still as much as anyone. However, Historically a neglected area in performance. Secondly, Informed Performance has sometimes been this new disc is actually different: instead of mistakenly called ‘authentic’ performance. being a compendium of sacred and secular Now we reach the crux of the matter: music by Josquin intabulated by various authentic performance can be defined as performance which is true to the music and historically informed lute performance is true to the musician. Without the latter, it’s to expand the original repertoire. Much not authentic, and I’m not even sure it’s (though not all) of it is now increasingly music. Of course many fine modern players well covered by present day performers. But, of lute and other early instruments are known in performance, a few exciting first steps are for their authentic (in the true sense of the only now beginning to be taken in the word) playing. For me personally, being direction of tackling those other areas: authentic means interrogating, interpreting, improvisation and intabulation. I would arranging, and even recomposing the consider my efforts in this recording to original vocal music, because these are be well rewarded if my colleagues and all ways of being true to my craft. It’s what students were to find them attractive lutenists did. It turns out that Historically enough to consider either using them in Informed and Authentic are not mutually their own performances or, better still, exclusive. What did lute players do creating and performing their own throughout the sixteenth century, apart intabulations of this magnificent vocal from playing the existing repertoire of repertoire. dances, intabulations, and freely composed music? They improvised on pre-existing © 2020 Jacob Heringman chord progressions of the day. They extemporised preludes and fantasias. And they appropriated vocal music and Listening to Josquin’s lute arranged it for their instrument. As I’ve We think of Josquin simply as a composer, discovered, it’s an excellent way of coming traces of whose music survive both in to understand Josquin’s splendid polyphony manuscripts and in some of the earliest from the inside. That’s part of the point printed music books. There is a comprehensive, of it. And by doing it for decades, and immaculately researched complete edition of immersing myself as much as possible in his works in which every note surviving in the vocal originals as well as in the staff notation is accounted for, and his a surviving intabulations of the time, I've cappella works are among the most recorded put myself in a position in which I now of all renaissance composers. But to consider find myself feeling ready to try my own Josquin simply as an excellent accumulator hand at intabulating, doing exactly what of notes is to miss the impact of his music sixteenth-century lutenists did. on his contemporaries and on his successors long after his death, and in focusing so much It seems to me that the next step in on the choral origins of his works we obscure the real performance history of his music. fact. Many are quite short, often excerpts from takes care of some of the potential harmonic voices still baffles scholars, and may have been The many surviving manuscripts and prints longer pieces (such as sections of mass or melodic transgressions but still leaves a composed for a meeting of the Order of the are testament to his huge popularity as a movements) and were chosen for their musical curious creative window for the singers to Golden Fleece, an esoteric chivalric Marian composer of choral music, but the many coherence as well as practical considerations exploit, so we can never know how Josquin order founded by Philip the Good. It is more intabulated sources (the so-called that would fit the music under the fingers. would have interpreted his own music. possible that Josquin wrote both the music secondary sources) show that his music was Although the arrangers obviously knew the The intabulations eliminate this area of and the tortuous Latin poem linking the Virgin enjoyed in countless different ways for many words associated with the musical lines their speculation: they don't tell you what pitch to to Greek, Jewish and New Testament figures generations. For his contemporaries he was listeners may well not have done. At a time play but they do tell you where to put your for a meeting of the Order that didn’t in the a singer, choir director, composer, and when there was very little dedicated written fingers in order to produce a particular end take place. Petrucci published the motet almost certainly a lutenist. secular music (or any sense of the modern pitch, so in the case of Inviolata, for in 1505 so it would have been widely known, categorical distinction between sacred and example, we know the results of Hans but no intabulations from the period are Marian devotion flourished in the fifteenth secular) the newly crafted versions may Gerle’s modal decision making. Other known to exist. Both Ut Phoebi and Ave Maria century, generating not just visual art and gradually have lost whatever devotional intabulators will have come to different (another motet with no surviving intabulations statuary but a vast corpus of music for the significance they may have had, and evolved decisions, which is one of the mysterious from the period) only just fit within the liturgy and for private devotion.