Antonio Mortaro: Vesper Psalms for 12 voices, Part 1 by Edition·S

Vesper Psalms for 12 voices,

Part 1

Monuments of Danish Musical History

The Herlufsholm Partbooks

Vol. 4 The Mortaro Collection, Part 3

Edited by Ole Kongsted

Peter Hauge

Harold Thalange

Christian Tobiassen

Copenhagen 2023

Edited by Ole Kongsted, Peter Hauge, Harold Thalange

Hosted by Musica Ficta Copenhagen and Bo Holten

Project Administrator: Christian Tobiassen

Cover design by Tobias Røder

Printed by Edition·S

Published with Support from Augustinus Fonden and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond

ISBN: 978-87-93750-98-2

Dixit Dominus – Primi toni

Laudate pueri – Secundi toni

Laetatus sum – Tertii toni

Nisi Dominus – Quarti toni

General Introduction

Housed in the University Library of Odense (Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek) is an old collection that originally belonged to the famous Herlufsholm school, founded in 1565. A small part of the collection consists of a number of early music prints and, in particular, some very interesting manuscript partbooks dating from the period around 1580 – 1620

Among the items are vocal works by Orlando di Lasso (1532 – 1594), Marc’Antonio Ingenieri (c. 1535 – 1592), Giaches de Wert (1535 – 1596), William Byrd (1543– 1623), Orazio Vecchi (1550 – 1605) and Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554 – 1612), and of neglected composers we have Melchior Schramm (1553 – 1619), François Gallet (c. 1555 – 1585), Pietro Lappi (c. 1575 – 1630), Antonio Mortaro (c. 1570 – 1619), and Curtio Valcampi (ﬂ. 1602). The music ranges from sacred motets to secular madrigals for a four-part choir and to large, complex polychoral works such as those performed for example in Venice around that time.

The Herlufsholm music collection is of great importance, as it is the only substantial collection of music in Denmark from around 1600, and it reveals a rich musical life that no other archive or library can match. Despite its signiﬁcance, it has only received little scholarly attention, probably because the manuscript material is largely incomplete, somewhat disorganised and, not least, because a large number of the works are anonymous. A close study of the material, however, sheds new light on the musical repertoire around 1600, performance and notational practices, and music education. Most crucially, it raises new questions about how and why such a rich and extensive body of material was acquired by a school far from the capital of Copenhagen and the inﬂuential royal court. The vocal repertoire of the Herlufsholm school presents a wide array of music from almost all over Europe,

enabling researchers to gain a better understanding of the aspects of cultural transfer – the exchange of cultural goods between countries and the connection between Denmark and the rest of Europe.

But other questions are also important to consider, such as how did Herlufsholm obtain the music? Where did they buy (or borrow) it from? And who were the copyists – were they students, teachers or professional musicians? One theory is that part of the collection may have been copied from music prints or manuscripts acquired on travels through Europe initiated and paid for by the court. On several occasions, musicians were sent from the court to Italy to buy music, instruments, even instrumentalists, as well as to receive further training in Venice. But it is also plausible that at least some of the material was copied from printed anthologies that were popular and widely available throughout Europe at the time or could have been purchased from the Copenhagen booksellers importing books and music from abroad, or even have been bought through agents at the book fairs in Frankfurt or Leipzig.

The aim of this ongoing research project is not only to catalogue and describe the collection, but also to contextualise and interpret it, providing insights into issues of performance practice, musical life and education at Herlufsholm around 1600. One important part of the project is to make the vocal repertoire available in modern, easily accessible performance editions oﬀering ensembles a repertoire of music that is rarely performed today. The project is hosted by the vocal ensemble Music Ficta, allowing a close collaboration between music performance, history and theory.

The research undertaken in this project is gratefully inspired by the work of

Professor Dr John Bergsagel, and his own research into the musical life of Denmark in the Renaissance, in particular his theorised connection between the musical travels of Pedersøn to Italy and Trehou to Denmark, amongst others, with the Herlufsholm collection.

These editions are modernised, including modern clefs, bar lines and accidentals. A short biography of the composer(s) and a description of the source used for the edition are also included. Editorial principles, detailed source descriptions and evaluations, and a list of variants and revisions are available online at: edition-s.dk/sub-editions/monuments

Ole Kongsted Peter Hauge Harold Thalange

Copenhagen, December 2023

Antonio Mortaro c. 1570 – c. 1619

The available biographical information on Antonio Mortaro’s life is scarce and partly contradictory, and the information in the major music encyclopaedias is insufficient. Hitherto, the most extensive biography of his life is that of Marina Toffetti in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Biographical Dictionary of Italians), vol. 77 (2012).

Mortaro was probably born in the 1570s in Brescia (northern Italy). The earliest biographical evidence of his life dates from 1595 when he entered the Franciscan monastery in Brescia as a novice, and his earliest printed compositions date from 1587. These compositions, which are three Latin Psalms of David for five voices, are included in a revised reprint of a 1573 collection by Giovanni Matteo Faà di Bruno (also known as Orazio di Faà, fl. 1570), published in Venice in 1587. Mortaro was recognised as a skilled organist and was a prolific composer, publishing at least four collections of secular works and around a dozen sacred works – collections that in many cases were reprinted several times. Most of his works were published by the well-known music printer Ricciardo Amadino in Venice. Sometime between February 1596 and June 1598, he went to Milan where he took up the post of organist at the Franciscan church of San Francesco, where he remained until January 1599. From 1 June 1601 to 26 April 1602, Mortaro was organist at the Cathedral of San Gaudenzio in Novara, after which we have no information about his activities until 1606, when he returned to Brescia.

The title page of the 1608 print of the collection Messa, salmi, motetti et magniﬁcat a tre chori indicates that he was at La Santa Casa di Loreto. How long he was employed there is unknown. A few years later, however, he was back in Brescia, where he probably remained until he died in 1619. During his active years, he

was also for a short time organist at the Cathedral in “Ossaro” (possibly Osor in Croatia; it is uncertain when this period should be placed in his biography).

In the early 1590s he published four collections of Fiammelle amorose (Flames of love) for three voices, with dedications to the local aristocracy. These canzonettas were popular at the time and all the collections were reprinted several times. Mortaro’s sacred works began to appear in print in 1595, when he was admitted to the Franciscan Order; the ‘liber secundus’ on the title page suggests that a lost ‘liber primus’ must have preceded it. The collection consists of eight- and twelvepart works, dedicated to the provincial superior of the Franciscan Order of the Milanese. This is followed by a series of liturgical works, with dedications to various members of his order: Sacrae cantiones for three voices (1598) – a collection of ﬁfteen motets of which thirteen are for three voices and two for six; and Messa, salmi, motetti et magniﬁcat a tre chori (1599) which apparently was employed by the copyists at Herlufsholm. The latter collection was reprinted in a new edition by Ricciardo Amadino (Venice 1608).

A study of the surviving works by Mortaro reveals three discrete groups of musical works belonging to three diﬀerent periods of his life. Firstly, as a young man who, from the middle of the 1580s to the middle of the 1590s, composed the Fiammelle which were very popular at the time. Secondly, and as a direct consequence of his entry into the Franciscan Order, from around 1595 and for the rest of his life he composed exclusively sacred music, with the exception of a few instrumental works. Thirdly, he edited a collection of instrumental music, Primo libro de canzoni da sonare a quattro voci (Venice 1600), a genre which contributed to his further fame and which was praised by Adriano Banchieri (1568 – 1634) as a model for

the ‘fantasia da osservarsi nell’organo’. A later collection of canzoni was published posthumously in Venice in 1623.

Recent scholarship has pointed to the importance of Canzoni da sonare (1600) and Sacrae cantiones (1598), which was reprinted at least twice, as significant historical examples of the developing concertato style. The rhythmic inventiveness of the secular works is only occasionally found in the sacred music, apparently for acoustic reasons. A sensitivity to acoustics is apparent in Mortaro’s impressive use of echo effects in the Latin sacred polychoral works, composed in the Venetian manner of the Gabrielis. The basis of the style is clearly the avoidance of parallel fifths and octaves, which is not maintained in the doxologies of the vesper psalms, for instance. Sometimes lasting several bars, two of the three bass parts in the twelve-part works, sing in unison, or parallel octaves, functionally reducing the twelve parts to eleven. Both cases reveal an undoubtedly deliberate personal stylistic intention to emphasise the bassline.

The scribes of the Herlufsholm collection were concerned with only pieces that could be used in a Danish liturgical context. Thus the magniﬁcats are omitted and only the ﬁrst three parts of the Mass Ordinary are used: Kyrie, Gloria and Credo (only up to and including “et homo factus est”). Mortaro’s mass is a parody mass based on the madrigal Erano i capei d’oro by Giovanni Maria Nanino (1543 /44 – 1607). As indicated in the Source Description, the Herlufsholm copyists most likely employed the printed edition of 1599 or the second edition of 1608, although it is also possible that they used a now lost print or even an unknown manuscript source. The musical material of Herlufsholm is remarkable as the most comprehensive transalpine collection of Mortaro’s works in Europe.

John Bergsagel has suggested that the Mortaro material is an important key to the understanding of the history of part of the Herlufsholm collection.

This begs the question: how and when did the works of Mortaro arrive in Denmark from Italy? The answer is: we do not know. One explanation could be that the music was bought in Italy by some of the many Danish musicians who visited Italy between 1599 and 1623, until 1612 mainly to study with the organist at San Marco in Venice, Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1555 – 1612). The ﬁrst Danish group of musicians visiting the city included Melchior Borchgrevink (c. 1572 – 1632), Mogens Pedersøn (c. 1583 – 1623) and Hans Nielsen (Giovanni Fonteio, c. 1580 –c. 1626), who studied with Giovanni Gabrieli from 1599 to 1600; or perhaps by Pedersøn who went to Italy again 1605 – 09. It is worth mentioning that in his catalogues for 1616, 1618 and 1620, the Augsburg printer Kaspar Flurschütz advertises the collection including the mass, the motets, vesper psalms and magniﬁcats for sale.

A ‘harmonic’ peculiarity in the Sanctus of Pedersøn’s ﬁve-part mass (1620), which does not appear elsewhere in Pedersøn’s sacred music, seems to be inspired by an identical phrase in Mortaro’s Gloria. This suggests that Pedersøn may have known the Mass, and possibly even the Mortaro himself. The history of Venetian music printing has documented that composers often went to the city to observe and assist with the printing process and proofreading. We do not know if this did occur in Mortaro’s case, whose works of 1606 (Missarum atque sacrarum cantionum novem vocibus, liber tertius) and 1607 (Psalmi ad vesperas, triaque cantica Beatae Virginis, octo vocibus) were published in that city. If Mortaro did visit Venice, he would indeed have had the opportunity to meet Pedersøn in 1599, 1606, 1607 or 1608.

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