Choral Classics: O Magnum Mysterium Clytus Gottwald: The Work and its Interpretation When an ensemble like the Schola Cantorum turns its attention to tradition, the suspicion is quickly aroused that it is trying to compensate for its travail interpreting new music – Ockeghem as recreation, so to speak. Admittedly, for the interpreter who has mastered a score of Ferneyhough, the technical difficulties a score of Ockeghem poses are a child´s game. Instead of technical difficulties, older music presents musical problems of a different order, which are no child´s game to solve. My reason for studying in Frankfurt in the 1952´s was to become acquainted with Adorno; but I also discovered there the music of the Flemish school. The dissertation subject which Helmuth Osthoff gave me led me into the wonderful world of Flemish music, for the composer whose music I was tot treat, Johannes Ghiselin, was a contemporary of Ockeghem and Josquin. In the course of my work I inevitably encountered Webern´s dissertation on Heinrich Isaac, which Guido Adler had placed at the beginning of his edition of Isaac´s Choralis constantinus (Part I) in Monuments of Austrian Music. It was at this time that I recognized that tradition – contrary to Adorno´s assumption that tradition functions in society only as a consolation to repress the brutality of rationality – can also fulfil other functions. Webern did not shun taking Isaac´s counterpoint as a source for motives in his own composition. As early as the double canon Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen op. 2 (1908), Webern´s future use of the canon can be detected, namely as a possibility for producing musical relationships out of what Adorno called “unplowed material”. Or, as Webern put it, to produce anew: Webern bequeathed the tradition to the canon of new music after 1945. Another line connecting the world of Flemish music with contemporary composition can be traced from Ockeghem to Ernst Krenek. Krenek´s book on the Flemish Master (1953) gave the impulse for a concert of the Schola Cantorum at the Donauschingen Music Days in 1980. In this performance I “troped” Ockeghem´s Missa prolationum with parts of Krenek’s Lamentations. Neither Krenek nor Webern can be accused of waving the banner of tradition, nor of having thought of tradition as mere sloppiness (“Schlamperei,” as Mahler put it). Not even the understandable disinclination of a composer toward a music life clogged with the freight of tradition caused either of them to forget that to compose without knowledge of how music has become what it is would be impossible. Since the Schola Cantorum’s founding, I myself have juxtaposed the old and the new on its programs, and I did this for two reasons: firstly, to protect new music from the accusation that it was being expressed in oblivion to tradition; and secondly, to allow a sort of aural interaction in performance between the old and the new. When the old was heard with consciousness of the new, the listener discovered aspects previously not heard. And conversely, when the new was heard against the golden background of the old Flemish composers, new colors could be apprehended. For the old “casts a new light on the present and basks in the present’s light.”
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In a recent article, Wulf Arlt expressed his surprise that historical performances have made a detour around the fifteenth century, despite the fact that, from a musicological point of view, the fifteenth century is among those best furnished with complete editions. Oddly, Arlt directs attention solely to marginal phenomena of the fifteenth century: to English cantus firmus harmony and to chansons and laude whose interpretation can be inferred from the experiences of other centuries. However, he by-passes the central phenomenon of the century – its breathtaking masses. One can only concur with the author when he recognizes that much more than a philological basis is necessary for the meaningful performance of this music: There remain the questions of musical text, scoring, the use of instruments, and so on. The lack of reliable texts on performance practice combined with meagre iconography often leave the researcher no alternative except to refer to the actual text, that is, to the music. And perhaps that is just what Arlt means: One must learn to read the musical text through immersion in its individual expression, in its rationality and its dream. Aesthetically speaking, it was my conviction that I could approach the great works of the fifteenth century under two aspects. (I should preface this with the observation that at first, it was the radical solutions which interested me: the fantastic constructions and the effervescent superfluity of ideas which surpassed the established “state of the material.”) In its utopian aspect – it surplus of ideas – the rise of the mass as a musical form foreshadowed the symphonic form, in that the mass manifested the concept of a large form articulated in several movements. A relationship can be traced between this idea and Hanslick’s notion of absolute music (the autonomous work): The mass as a musical form no longer derived its legitimation from the mass as liturgy, it had become art which derived its element of authenticity not from a religious superstructure, but from its own technical procedures. This is also apparent in the fact that most masses used one of a repertoire of known cantus firmi as their basis: Music was reflecting on music. To turn to the second aesthetic aspect, this music undoubtedly represented part of the knowledge of its time, and, as Michel Foucault has put forth, one of the principle categories of this knowledge was the aemulatio. In reading Paracelsus, one runs everywhere into epistemological conglomerates: The natural sciences proceed abruptly to theology, which then merges into medicine and astronomy; the rational is joined with the magic, alchemy with mathematics; the five openings of the head correspond to the five planets, the eyes are reflected in the seeds of blue wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus). The world is full of signs (signatures) which refer to other things – everything is connected to everything else, and in multifarious ways to God. Of decisive importance for music was Foucault’s conception of how language functioned. Originally, the power a name possessed was transferable to words, since the name resembled the object. But ever since the tower of Babel, all languages were spoken against the backdrop of the lost resemblance to the objects they designated. Although words had become separated from the things they designated, they had not been separated from the world; however, their meaning could be revealed only through patient interpretation. Therein lay the impulse for the growth of a literary genre in which language labored on itself: the commentary. Bible commentaries and glosses, speeches, sermons, commentaries of ancient texts and juridical tracts, of legends and miracles – the principle of resemblance, of aemulatio, permeated all of these: The commentary resembled 2
what it commented. Music, too, fell under this influence. The greatest masses on L’homme armé, on Fors seulement, and so on, followed this axiom. They aimed at being commentaries: music about music. In this way, music appropriated the principle of aemulatio, because the resemblances, the countless signatures and correspondences, guaranteed that everything – God and the world – could be reflected in music. Music became a kind of description of the world. Thus, both of the aspects which determine a performance and which mutually influence each other during performance have been defined, namely: the autonomous and the heteronomous aspects. According to Thomas Aquinas, the opus perfectum et absolutum, developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, describes the autonomous character of a work. The work possesses perfectivity, that is, it is finished; it lays claim to perfection, that is, it is completed in compliance with its own conditions; and, it admits perfectibility, that is, it possesses the possibility of renewed perfection under altered conditions, it can be surpassed by other works of the same or another composer. The absolute, which thus accrues to the work, can be regarded as an ontological element: The work is, which means that at the moment the composer sets it into the world, its own history begins. Of course, all questions connected with the text are also connected to the text’s existence: possible readings and variants, as well as the troublesome question of accidentals. Out of all this, the twentieth century interpreter learns that, for these works to be understood, it is not necessary that they be performed in a liturgical service. Since they are autonomous, it is their musical and not their liturgical functioning which determines their value. With regard to their interpretation today, the works, as a description of the world, force the interpreter to take other matters into consideration. It as Ockeghem’s generation that introduced the complete compositional elaboration of all voice parts. With that, hierarchy in musical harmony – an inheritance of the middle ages – lost to a large extent its binding quality. Every part was and is of equal importance, the only exception being the cantus firmus when present. For the cantus firmus was and is the text which the other parts “comment”. And since commentaries have a tendency to be longer than the text they comment, the original text need not be hammered out when the piece is sung, but rather should serve as a reference point, as backdrop. This can be achieved by assigning the cantus firmus a particular articulation. The other parts, with their various aemulationes and correlations, can also be related to the cantus firmus; but the correlations needn’t be underscored by emphasizing the particles (motives). In accordance with the thinking of the epoch, they are parts of a contextural whole from which they derive their meaning. For the interpreter, this means extreme legato phrasing of the predominantly long melodic lines, each of which has its own dynamic climax and relaxation. In Ockeghem’s works, particular attention must be paid to this technique of overlapping phrasing when the cadences are weakened (modern: deceptive cadence) in order to help the flow of the piece as a whole. This fact calls for an aside on harmony. Besides the many innovations which he introduced to music, Ockeghem also strove to develop all vocal parts to an equal degree. This was possible, since he wasn’t obligated to take harmony into consideration. Harmonies were defined solely on the basis of the intervals resulting between individual parts and not as part of a give system of chords. Paradoxically, a harmony is formed, but it doesn’t control the relationship of the voices in the sense that “to double this third here would be wrong”. When voice leading called for it, the third could be doubled. It wasn’t until harmony was conceived of as an “open system” that Ockeghem arrived at complete harmonic homeostatis (an equilibrium produced by a balance of functions) in which the many homeostasis of the world could 3
be reflected, be it those of the human body or those of the Pythagorea firmament. Still remaining is the question of scoring. Purists may point out that, if pieces are performed without instruments, then the upper voices should be sung not by women’s but by boys’ voices. With regard to the Schola Cantorum’s performance practice, the determining factor was not an empirical consideration – lack of boys’ voices, for example, or considerations of rehearsal or travel – but rather a rational one: A critical regard for tradition can’t fail to recognize that certain elements of tradition have irrevocably passed. Among such elements is doubtless the belief that “in all churches, women are to remain quiet,” as St. Paul put it (1 Co 14: 34). However, as already stated, the music in question does not derive its legitimation from its function in church services nor from its theological implications. And there is, therefore, no reason for interpretations to strive toward presenting a supposedly correct historical image which, having no basis in the music itself, is a mere consequence of its historicism. A similar line of reasoning applies to the use of instruments. Although I made different attempts with present-day instruments, as well as with so-called “old instruments,” all attempts were unsatisfactory, for the instrumentalists were unable to produce the necessary articulation nuances (It is possible that today, 30 years later, the situation has improved.). But that was not the only deciding factor. The change in compositional paradigm mention above (mass as symphonic form), which took place in the 1440’s in Cambrai (one should say, “in Dufay’s Cambrai”), was coupled with a change in performance practice. Performances came to be favored with large ensembles of 20 to 25 singers and, just as important, a cappella! Cambrai came to be a model of performance practice for all of Western Europe. Finally, the last factor which settled the instrument question was the following: Before the change in compositional paradigm, the use of instruments had been a result of chance and personal discretion. But the new standard of composition left nothing to chance or to the discretion of the performer, and thus performance practice was obligated to follow suit.
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Guillaume Dufay: Missa Ecce ancilla domini Both Dufay’s origins and the year of his birth are unknown, but there are several indications that he was born near Cambrai in northern France around 1400. From 1409 to 1412, Dufay’s name appears in the list of the choirboys at the Cambrai Cathedral; the next biographical trace thereafter leads to Italy. It is assumed that Dufay made contact with the Malatesta family at the Council of Constance in 1418, but, at any rate, he was a musician at the court of Pesaro (Italy) around 1420. This can be ascertained from three compositions which date from around this time, one of which is the motet Apostolo glorioso composed for the consecration of a church in Patras (Greece) in which Pandolfo Malatesta was involved as archbishop. After his stay in Italy Dufay returned to the north, to Laon, where he held a canonry; he also had a benefice at Saint Géry in Cambrai. In December 1428, he became a singer in the papal choir in Rome, where he remained until 1433, and there is proof of later ties to the court at Ferrara in northeastern Italy and to the court of the Duke of Savoy in southeastern France. From 1435 to 1437, Dufay was once again member of the papal choir, and as such he accompanied Eugene IV to his exile in Bologna and Florence, where he composed the motet Nuper rosarum flores (March 23, 1436) for the consecration of Brunelleschi’s cathedral. From 1437 to 1439, Dufay served the Duke of Savoy as maître de chapelle, during which time he composed the motet Magnanime gentis to celebrate the treaty between Bern and Fribourg (1438). At the University of Turin he earned a degree in canon law, and in 1437 he received a canonry by papal edict at the Cambrai Cathedral to which he returned in the 1440’s. However, his life in Cambrai was repeatedly interrupted by lengthy stays in Savoy. Dufay, was at the height of his fame, and it was inevitable that his home in Cambrai become a place of pilgrimage for composers of the time. In 1449 he met with Binchois, and Morton and Hayne van Ghizeghem came to visit him. In 1460 Tinctoris spent several months with Dufay in Cambrai; in 1462 and 1464 Ockeghem was his guest; and he corresponded with the famous blind organist in Florence, Antonio Squarcialupi. After many weeks of illness, Dufay died on November 27, 1474, in Cambrai. Previously, he had ordained that his motet Ave regina coelorum be sung at his deathbed, and Busnois and Ockeghem wrote lamentations on his death. His gravestone, rediscovered in 1859, can be found today in a museum in Lille. The mass for four voices, Ecce ancilla domini, is preserved in the Brussels manuscript Bibl. Royale 5557 which was copied in 1463 in Cambrai. According to it, the work belongs to those composed in Cambrai. As cantus firmi, that is, as the textual basis for his musical commentary, Dufay chose two antiphons: Ecce ancilla domini (“See, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me,” Lk 1:38) and Beata es Maria (“Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled,” Lk 1:45). Although normally sung on two different feasts of the Virgin Mary, the composer united the antiphons to form a dialogue between the angel and Mary. Assuredly, the “dramatic” idea of a dialogue (already present in the medieval religious play) doesn’t allow Dufay’s “epic” music much room to unfold. Nonetheless, with the “dramatic” element, a musical practice is prefigured which doesn’t become explicit until the late Renaissance. It is true that Dufay tempered the dialogue principle by modifying the two melodies to make them resemble one another. But he did this only in order to enable the dialogue to represent two aspects of one thing – the divine plan of salvation. The 5
interpretation of dialogue elements in the composition would take us too far afield, although one is tempted to venture such an interpretation based on the alternation between two-voice sections without cantus firmus and tutti sections with cantus firmus. But this practice is also found in other masses, so that there is little ground for such a far-reaching hypothesis. Clearly, however, the setting of the two antiphons differs in their structuring: While the two-voice sections are characterized by complicated rhythmic articulations, the sections with cantus firmus are organized as harmonic fields with simple rhythms. The recording is based on the complete edition. Nicolas Gombert: Musae Iovis ter maximi As with many musicians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Gombert’s biography can only be partially reconstructed. The theoretician Hermann Finck, a nephew of Heinrich Finck, reports that Gombert was a pupil of Josquin, probably during the time when Josquin lived in Condé, and it has been generally concluded that Gombert was born not far from there. In 1526 he was accepted into the court chapel of Emperor Carl V in which he rose to maître des enfants (boys’ choir master), and, as a priest he had benefices in Courtrai, Béthune and Metz. However in 1540, his position in the imperial chapel brought him into dire straits. He violated a choirboy, which resulted in his being banned for a time to a galley. But even under adverse circumstances at high sea, he seems to have continued to compose, and word has it that he finally convinced the emperor to pardon him. Perhaps all that is nothing more than retrospective nonsense, but whatever happened to Gombert afterwards, all trace of him is missing. Gombert’s six-voice déploration on the death of Josquin appeared at the same time as those of Vinders and Appenzeller, but was almost certainly written immediately after Josquin’s death somewhat earlier, in 1521. In his dirge Gombert, who had come to take a freer musical approach, once again adopted the classical cantus firmus principle to honour Josquin. For the cantus firmus Gombert chose “Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis” (“The moans of death surround me”), which was one of Josquin’s favourites. The “circumdederunt me” is sung several times, but each repetition with diminished durations, so that gradually the cantus firmus is completely overcome by the accompanying voices: symbol of inescapable death. The recording is based on the complete edition annotated by Edward E. Lowinsky.
Antoine Brumel: Missa Et ecce terrae motus Whereas most of the major composers of the fifteenth century had their origins in what was then Flanders, in Brumel we encounter a composer from France whose reputation could compete with Josquin’s or Obrecht’s . It is assumed that Brumel was born near Chartres, for in 1483 he was mentioned in Chartres as horarius et matutinarius, as singer of the day and night Offices. From 1486 to 1492 he filled the function of boys’ choir master in Geneva, where he also had ties to the court of the Duke of Savoy, who “borrowed” the composer for a short period (1489-90). Upon returning to Geneva, he came increasingly into conflict with the chapter authorities, which in August 1492 lead to his sudden departure. In 1497, he was a canon at Laon Cathedral; shortly thereafter, on January 5, 1498, he took over the education of the boys’ choir at Notre Dame in Paris. But soon again, in the fall of 1500, he was in disagreement with the Paris chapter 6
authorities over the acceptance of a choirboy, which, as it had in Geneva, resulted in his abrupt departure. Once again, it was the Duke of Savoy who sheltered the recalcitrant composer (1501-02). But it wasn’t until 1506 that Brumel found his way back to an appropriate post: he became maestro di cappella to Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (and thus Josquin’s successor, who had left in 1505), although the chapel in Ferrara was disbanded in 1510. In 1513 Brumel is reputed to have been in Rome, although this stay cannot be corroborated. The mass Et ecce terrae motus (“And all at once there was a violent earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven,” Mt 28:2) it itself designed to produce a musical earthquake, for its instrumentation and length surpass all previous limits and possibilities. In this respect, it corresponds to experimental works like Josquin’s 24-voice Qui habitat or Ockeghem’s 36-voice canon, works which anticipated orchestral possibilities. Orlando di Lasso, as court Kapellmeister in Munich, had Brumel’s mass copied into a separate choir book and performed the work some sixty years after its creation, as can be seen by the singers’ names he noted by hand. It was Lasso’s interest which enabled the mass to be passed on to future generations, for the Choir Book 1 in the Bavarian State Library has remained until today the only source. Perhaps Lasso had sung the work during his period as choirboy and, deeply impressed by its overpowering sonority, decided to perform the work himself someday, should the opportunity arise. When I was reconstructing the Missa et ecce terrae motus in 1968, it became immediately clear that the mass abolished the restrictions of contemporary musical thought and therefore could not be adequately described using the limited theory of the sixteenth century. At that time I was under the strong impression the première of Ligeti’s Lux aeterna had left on me. This experience led me to the thought that the categories of Ligeti’s music might be related to those of Brumel. It was this connection that caused me to dedicate my micro-aesthetic analysis of Brumel’s mass to György Ligeti. At the time, I found it not very interesting that Brumel occasionally used the cantus firmus as a three-voice canon. What interested me more was how the composer proceeded with the other nine voices, how he solved the technical problems entailed by the unusual number of voices. Brumel made exaggerated use of the possibility arranging the voices into new subgroups, which enabled him to avoid the formation of the cori spezzati (divided choir). In this procedure, all possible combinations from four to twelve voices are exhausted, an indicator that Brumel had included the parameter of part density in his compositional reckoning. It is obvious that when voice density is greater, the harmonic possibilities are fewer, for the necessity of avoiding parallels in harmonic changes involving many voices reduces harmonic flexibility. But Brumel had discovered two decisive things: first, the correlation between voice density and harmonic rhythm as two parameters which only under certain conditions could remain flexible with respect to each other; and second, what today we would call a harmonic field, produced when the harmonic rhythm slows down. However, together with the discovery of the harmonic field came the matter of its articulation. Brumel realized that when he assigned articulations to harmonic fields, he had to start with a scale whose extremes were on the one hand, the vocal parts, note by note; and on the other hand, an internally fluctuating sonority rendered murky by the presence of numerous nonharmonic tones. Between these extremes one can imagine many gradations of thickening, many degrees of what Debussy called grisaille (monochromatic painting in shades of grey). A by-product of this thickening of sonority occurred where several voices in succession reached the same culminating notes, a phenomenon not focused upon until Schoenberg’s Klangfarbenmelodie. It was this unprecedented problem which led the composer to consider methods of musical articulation, contemporaries didn’t dare dream of and which didn’t come into their own until our century, when they have become an integral part of compositional thinking. The fact that the Agnus Dei is 7
missing in the manuscript needn’t be considered a loss; perhaps it was sung to the music of the Kyrie.
Heinrich Isaac: Missa paschalis Although Isaac, like Obrecht, Agricola, La Rue, and Josquin had origins in Flanders, the first attested record of him is from Innsbruck in 1484. He was most likely passing through on his way to Florence where, beginning in July 1485, he served the Medicis for ten years. Besides his duties as singer in the cathedral chapel, he was also obligated to sing in polyphonic masses at other churches (Ss. Annunziata, Baptistery). His activity as a composer brought him close connections with Lorenzo, who arranged Isaac’s marriage with a Florentine woman, and whose children Isaac taught. After Lorenzo’s death in 1492, the chapel was disbanded. Later, in the fall of 1496, Isaac and his wife travelled to Vienna where after long negotiations he was appointed court composer by Emperor Maximilian (1497). In spite of the Hofkapelle’s extensive travels, Isaac was able to undertake journeys of a personal nature as well which, in 1497 and 1499, took him to the Saxon court in Torgau (where he served in the chapel alongside Johann Walter) and once again to Florence. After various stays in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Florence, and Ferrara, he spent two years in Constance, where he had received a commission to compose a polyphonic Mass Proper for the Imperial Diet, the famous Choralis constantinus. Afterwards, he returned to Florence. In 1510, Maximilian bestowed upon him a plot of land in Val Policella near Verona. In May 1514 Lorenzo’s son became Pope Leo X, and, thanks to his intercession, the city of Florence granted Isaac a pension. In 1514 Isaac once again undertook a journey to Austria. At the end of 1516 he fell ill and in March 1517 succumbed to an unknown illness. Among Isaac’s masses there are a number which differ considerably from the Franco-Flemish tradition. They are based instead on a liturgical tradition which had formed mainly in German-speaking countries, the so called alternatim practice. Whereas in countries of the Romance languages the Ordinary was sung polyphonically and the Proper as chorale, in Germanic countries a mixed polyphonic-chorale practice was preferred for the Ordinary as well as the Proper. Thus, for example, the Kyrie was sung exclusively in polyphony, the Gloria alternately as chorale and polyphony, and the Credo was predominantly chorale (which resulted in the fact that this movement was completely lacking in polyphonic masses). Naturally, this type of stylistic disintegration hampered the development of the polyphonic Ordinary as an art form, and it may have cost Isaac some effort to adapt to this model. Too, a certain incentive to conceive of the mass as a commentary on a single musical thought was lacking, since as a rule the polyphonic parts were composed over a given chorale melody. It has been ascertained that Isaac’s six-voice Easter Mass (Missa paschalis) followed a form which was in use in the diocese of Passau. Isaac set the Kyrie polyphonically but not, as was the custom, grouped into three invocations per movement, rather pieced together according to the scheme 1-2-2, which resulted in a series of short movements. The Gloria and the Sanctus were alternately chorale and polyphony, whereas only one polyphonic movement was composed for the three invocations of the Agnus Dei. The Credo is lost. It remains to call attention to a compositional curiosity: the Pleni Sunt Coeli out of the Sanctus, titled “Fauxbourdon.” The Fauxbourdon was a traditional three-part homophonic technique, popular in Flemish music around 1430, whose popularity soon faded. Dufay and his contemporaries used the technique especially for hymn settings. Occasionally, later generations used the Fauxboudon as a musical figure, 8
for example, in the Credo text on the resurrection from the dead (mortuorum). In this way the younger generation could compose a memorial to their forefathers, at the same time indicating that this form of musical language was passé. But the fact that Isaac used the Fauxbourdon at this point must have had a reason other than the one just named. Perhaps the commissioner of the piece had requested Isaac to compose in Fauxbourdon style, and Isaac fulfilled this wish by denouncing the taste of the supplicant as old-fashioned. To one born later like me, the use of Fauxbourdon gives the impression of an open window through which one looks upon a pale landscape. For this reason, I let the three Fauxbourdon voices sing more softly than the others, in order to let the Fauxbourdon appear more than merely historically distant. The brevity of the individual movements and sections forced the composer to use a musical diction different from that of the symphonically conceived mass, namely the diction of the lied. In this way the Agnus Dei, when sung three times, takes on the character of a strophic song, even though the melody doesn’t possess the simplicity and balance of Isaac’s famous Innsbruck song. But that is mere coincidence. The recording is based on the complete edition.
Johannes Ockeghem: Requiem To this day, neither the year nor the place of Ockeghem’s birth has been ascertained with certainty. His family name points to a village in the vicinity of Alost (Flanders), and a series of Ockeghems can be found in the Flemish city of Dendermonde, but the first official record of Ockeghem’s name is in the singers’list at Notre dame in Antwerp, 1443 to 1444. Then, from 1446 to 1448, his name is documented in the accounts of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, who lived in Moulins, France. In 1453, his name is cited for the first time in the payment records of the French royal household in Paris. There it seems he enjoyed the favour of Charles VII, who reciprocated the dedication of several of Ockeghem’s compositions with gifts. In 1459 the king, who was also nominal abbot of the St. Martin monastery in Tours, named Ockeghem treasurer of the church there. Ockeghem’s service at the French court lasted longer than the reigns of Charles VII and of his successor, Louis XI; however, how long he then served as first chaplain under Charles VIII can no longer be ascertained, for the sources have been lost. A letter dated 1472 suggests that Ockeghem also had ties to the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, although he can hardly have been in Milan himself. In 1484, he journeyed to Dammes and to Bruges where a banquet was given in his honour. Possibly, the motive for the trip to Bruges was to visit his friend, composer Antoine Busnois. In march 1487, Ockeghem drew up his testament bequeathing all his possessions to the chapter of St. Martin’s, and finally, at a very old age, Ockeghem died in Tours on February 6, 1497. At this death several elegies were written, the most prominent of which by Erasmus, and that of Jean Moulinet was set by Josquin Desprez. Ockeghem’s Requiem is the earliest extant setting of a Requiem and, perhaps because of this, also his earliest surviving work. 9
Furthermore, whereas in “normal” masses of the Roman Catholic Rite the ordering of the Ordinary and the Proper is flexible (the Proper could be combined with various Ordinaries – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), in Ockeghem’s Requiem both complex structures are joined in a set form. This particularity is also reflected in the fact that later composers worked parts of the Proper into the musical arrangement. All of these factors contribute to the mass’ particular enigmatic quality, as Adorno termed it. Ockeghem’s work begins with the three-voice Introit “Requiem aeternam” and the corresponding psalm verse “Te decet hymnus.” The two to four-voice Kyrie follows which, in accordance with the chorale basis, is comprised of three groups of three invocations, nine in all. The Gradual follows as a further part of the Proper, but, in contrast to the form used today, with the text “Si ambulem in medio umbrae mortis” (Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil,” Ps 23:4) and the verse “Viga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt” (“Your rod and your staff comfort me,” Ps 23:4). Also the Tract with its verses uses a different text: Sicut cervus desiderat”(“As the deer pants for water, so I long for you, O God,”Ps 42:1”). Besides, it contains more verses than is usual today, among which the awesome text “Ubi est deus tuus?” (“Where is your God?” (Ps 42:3). This part, incidentally, is the only subsection of the Tract set for four voices. The remaining subsections are for two or three voices and in their bleakness and severity are reminiscent of Job’s words, “Naked I came from my mothers’s womb, naked I shall return”(Jb 1:21). The Offertory is the last of the sections set to music. It, too, has many subsections and wavers between two and four voices. It is to be assumed that the sections of the Requiem not set – for example the sequence “Dies irae” and the Communion “Lux aeterna” – were sung as chorales. Although all sections and subsections of the work paraphrase the corresponding chorale melodies, the writing is everything but unified. Whereas in the first parts, the Fauxbourdon clausulae (cadential formulas; cf. Isaac’s Missa paschalis) give the music an archaic patina, toward the end the music, it subsides in ever larger arcs, in spite of its many sections (e.g., in the “Quam olim Abrahae” of the Offertory). This fact has led many a researcher to the false conclusion that the Requiem was composed in part by Dufay, then completed by Ockeghem. Without wanting to pursue this thought further, it nonetheless must be acknowledged that the work in its disparity imparts the impression of the mass in general, before Dufay and his contemporaries came upon the idea of forging the parts of the Ordinary into the unifying compositional principle of the symphonic whole. Granted, disparity is more obvious in a Requiem, considering its content, than in a masterwork, unified, consistent, well-rounded, free of every contradiction: life as a fragment. The recording is based on a score I reconstructed for the performance.
Johannes Ockeghem: Missa prolationum Beyond the shadow of any doubt, Ockeghem’s Missa prolationum is one of the masterworks of the fifteenth century. To begin with, it contradicts the old prejudice that notation is nothing more than a means to indicate what should be played, which then brings Adorno’s admonition to mind, not to confuse the printed music with the music itself. Indeed, mensural notation, which in the fifteenth century had developed into a highly complex system, differs from today’s notation in that the value of the longer notes is not constant; rather, their value can be changed by the time-signature, the use of which was different from its use today. In mensural notation, the time-signature 10
indicates whether a brevis is to be subdivided in two or in three. The time-signature which in the relationship brevis-semibrevis determines double or triple meter was called the tempus. The mensural sign which in the relationship semibrevis-minima determines double or triple meter was called the prolati. Thus it becomes clear why the notation of the Flemish Masters functioned not only as a means of communication between composer and interpreter, but also as a source of motives for the composer, an attribute which Ockeghem would exploit masterfully, as we shall see. Ockeghem came upon the idea that by combining the four mensurations (tempus perfectum, tempus imperfectu, prolatio major, prolatio minor), one could write for four voices in a way that need be notated for only two voices. The stipulation was to put different timesignatures in front of each of the two voice parts. In this way, both of the singers of a single part read the same text from the same part, only with different time-signatures. This type of canon – in which two voices enter simultaneously but which then, as a result of the different mensurantion, gradually move apart – was called the proportion canon. This alone represented an immense challenge to the composer’s ingenuity, but, not content to stop there, Ockeghem increased the complexity to an unsurpassable height by also altering the intervals between the canon voices. In the first Kyrie there are two canons in unison. The Christe is a canon at a major second. Here, of course, great difficulties result in the overall sonority, which Ockeghem solved by using a combination of rests and verbal instructions to the effect that the second voice should enter later, a major second higher. As a result, the Christe consists of four successive duos. The second Kyrie, again for four voices, is a double proportion canon at the third. In the Gloria, Ockeghem changed the interval of every second voice, which now began at the lower fourth. The Credo is built on the upper fifth, the Sanctus on the sixth, the Pleni Sunt Coeli on the lower seventh. In the Hosanna the octave is finally reached. In the Benedictus and in the first Agnus Dei, Ockeghem again takes up the lower fourth. The second Agnus Dei, for two voices, is a canon at the upper fifth in which the upper voice sings twice as fast as the lower, and for the last Agnus Dei, the fifth is retained as canon interval. Although the Missa prolationum was planned as an autonomous work (only his own technical procedures were binding), the mass’ historical relevance can’t be denied. By advancing through rationalizing an element of contemporaneous knowledge – the aemulatio – to its extreme limit, the work goes beyond the boundary of this knowledge; for the canon is, in whatever form, the highest form of aemulatio : self-resemblance. In the midst of a dense network of relationships and resemblances, of signatures and correspondences which invariably result in the same recognitions, small kernels of rationality are formed, which pierce through the network. The aemulatio is the precondition for the limitation of the system, but also that which at the same time transcends it. Be that as it may, Ockeghem is not ostentatious with the work’s technical achievements, rather, the conceals them for the listener. But only concealed could technique produce what contemporaries so admired in Ockeghem’s music: suavitas. Today we would say: “beauty.” The recording is based on a score I reconstructed for the performance.
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Josquin De Prez: Missa Da pacem If Ockeghem was the grand patriarch of fifteenth century music, Josquin’s characteristics place him closer to the Renaissance. Although Josquin owes much to Ockeghem (he was most likely his pupil), Josquin made no attempt to conceal his technical mastery. Nothing demonstrates this difference more drastically than a letter from a contemporary “talent scout” to Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. In it, a report is given on the results of negotiations with Josquin and Isaac for the position of maestro di cappella at Ferrara. It is recommended that the position be given to Isaac, for Isaac is “easier to get along with and will deliver more compositions. It is true that Josquin composes better. But he only does so when it suits him, and not when another wishes it. And, he demands 200 ducats salary, whereas Isaac is content with 120.” Ercole, however, decided for Josquin, but Josquin didn’t remain long. After Ercole’s death and the outbreak of the plague, Josquin left Ferrara in 1505 and returned to the north, where he spent the rest of his days in Condé on the Scheldt. Josquin was born in Hainaut (Flanders), like Lasso after him, and he spent time as a choirboy in St. Quentin (Northern France). As a young man his beautiful bass voice brought him engagements in Italy. From 1459 to 1472 he was a singer at the Milan Cathedral, and in 1473 he was taken over by the Chapel of the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza, also in Milan. In 1479 at the latest Josquin, now a priest, left Milan and went to Rome where, from 1486 to 1494 with some interruptions, he was a member of the papal chapel. There he was also in the service of the eccentric Ascanio Sforza who, although not a priest, had managed to become a Cardinal. Ascanio surrounded himself with famous artists and at times enjoyed their company, but for the most part he left them to pursue their leisure. It was there that Josquin composed his mass on the solmization syllables, la sol fa re mi, in this way parodying Ascanio’s motto: “Lassa far a mi” (“Let me do it”). At some point Josquin must have tired of “la dolce vita” in Rome, for in 1501 he is mentioned as a singer at the court of Lous XII in Blois on the Loire. Thereafter he went, as described above, to Ferrara. On August 27, 1521, he died in Condé. The American musicologist Edgar H. Sparks went to great lengths to prove that the Missa Da pacem was not composed by Josquin, but by “his” composer, Noel Bauldeweyn, a diligent choir master at Mecheln. (Such conflicting attributions are commonplace in the music of this period.) Spark’s attribution of the Mass to Bauldeweyn is traceable to a single source, the Munich manuscript Mus. 7, which was written between 1514 and 1520. In two other manuscripts of a later date, Stuttgart Mus. 46 and Toledo 19, Josquin is mentioned as the composer of the Missa Da pacem, but the main testimony for Josquin’s authorship is the Missae tredecim quatuor vocum (1539) printed by the Nuremberg publisher Johann Ott. Certain publishers have been known to increase the salability of their editions by including a work of Josquin, whether authentic or spurious. But in his publication Ott included not only the Missa Da pacem but also the masses Fortuna desperate, L’homme armé super voces musicales, and Pange lingua, all of which are beyond doubt works of Josquin. Ott thus had no motivation of marketability for printing a specious edition. Sparks maintains that Stuttgart 46 is a copy of the Ott publication. This is not the case. The Stuttgart Codex is dated “1539 M.I.” “M.I.” can mean “menso lunio” or “mense lanuario,” from which can be concluded that the Stuttgart source originated parallel to but independent of Ott. Another substantiating fact is that the Stuttgart source transmits a second Josquin mass, Gaudeamus, which doesn’t appear at all in the Ott edition (which is purportedly independent of the manuscript). Gösta Neuwirth, who at my request undertook a gematric analysis of the Kyrie, came to the not surprising result of 990 tones (brevis/semibrevis) and 88 rests. Converted to letters, that 12
makes 99 = Josquin and 88 = Desprez. Thus in spite of the fact that the editorial board decided not to include the mass in the new complete edition, there is no reason to doubt Josquin’s authentic authorship. Da pacem is a commentary of the traditional anthiphon “pro pace,” as timely today as 500 years ago: Give us peace in our time, Merciful Lord There is no other Who can fight for us, Only you, our Lord. Josquin doesn’t use the melody as a cantus firmus (which, with its long note values would dertermine the extent and form of the movement); instead, in this work he brings various types of cantus firmus use together. The first Kyrie does begin like a conventional cantus firmus movement with anticipatory imitation and long note values. But as early as the seventh measure the system dissolves: the tenor takes up the rhythmic flow of the other voices, and particles of the antiphon Da pacem migrate in difficult to recognize forms through all the voices. Michel Foucault has described the essence of the commentary calling it an endless approach toward the commented object, and his description applies with full force to this music. The give melody is buried under constructions to the point that in the end everything is turned into the antiphon melody: Da pacem! In the last Agnus Dei, the four-voice texture expands to six voices. The expansion is thus not only additive (in that two voices are simply added), but also constructive. The chorale melody, now mensurated in long note values, is divided into a three-part canon, and the three contrapuntal voices must therefore make do with a minimum of motives. After renouncing all elegance and eloquence, the music swells up like an archaic monolith, and in this way projects with inescapable gravity its contents: the summons for peace. The recording is based on the old complete edition.
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Schola Cantorum Stuttgart It is generally thought that our ensemble was founded in 1960 as an instrument for performing music of the 15th century, the era from Dufay to Josquin, and contemporary music. However, the history of the ensemble goes back even farther, to 1957, and the music goes back to the Middle Ages. The ensemble’s early period was one of many experiments, or efforts at improving on existing musical material at hand. These experiments consisted of performing Gregorian chants to organ accompaniments derived from harmonies based on the melodic lines, notes normally heard in succession being transferred into the vertical plane and played simultaneously. This was inspired by the “harmonies of the aura” which occur when chants are sung in a resonant Gothic cathedral, the notes thus being prolonged beyond their actual values. Our accompaniments were a further refinement of the effect. While I was writing my dissertation on the music of Johannes Ghiseling (a contemporary of Josquin) under the supervision of Helmuth Osthoff in Frankfurt, I became more and more enamoured with this music of the “old Netherlanders”, as the musicologists say. Of course, I wanted to eventually perform a lot of it, including some things which I had transcribed myself from the old mensural notation. I wanted to disprove the established scholarly opinion which only credited the music’s construction, but not its “sensual fulfilment of the idea” (Hegel). In 1960, we decided to increase our numbers and put it to the test, and it was not long until we were convinced. The rigorous polyphony was not just dry paper but served the sole purpose of variation of sound color. Suavitas and intellectus were united on the highest of artistic levels. Whoever gets involved with ancient music of the Netherlands cannot get far without also encountering the names of two exponents of modern music: Ernst Krenek, having written a monography about Ockeghem; and Anton von Webern, who wrote his dissertation about Heinrich Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus. Webern’s predilection for canon and his ceaseless efforts to include the element of sound as a structural principle were doubtlessly inspired through his familiarity with Isaac’s music. Webern’s Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen, a piece we have often sung, is a small but very illustrative example. The step from the old Dutch masters to modern music was almost one of necessity. Hindemith’s Mass of 1963, his “swan song”, was similarly inspired; I wrote a detailed analysis of it entitled “Coming Home to the Masters”. We gave the work its German premiere, and this had far-reaching consequences for us. We had not become famous overnight or anything of that sort; the effect was of a more internal nature. We had to reinforce the soprano section to perform the Hindemith work. The resulting number of sixteen singers (4-4-4-4) was established, and this proved to be a source of inspiration for many composers yet to write for us. If one is not a professional choral singer, as I was, it is certainly difficult to imagine the humiliation of the low social prestige imposed on this vocation by the hierarchies of musical life. Our frustration was increased by the fact that the repertoire normally performed by these professionally trained voices was mostly written for amateurs. Not only is there no opportunity to show what is possible with the voices, but also, one has constantly hold back so as not to detract from the homogenous, balanced sound preferred by amateurs. Therefore, there 14
was great incentive to show what these poor choristers could really do. The number of 16 singers seemed ideal for both kinds of music – differentiation of solo voices as well as producing a balanced body of sound. This solo-choral duality was a seminal factor even in music of the Netherlanders, which was also written for professionals. However, the tendency towards emancipated solo singing soon gave rise to a characteristic problem in works demanding homogeneity, such as in Ligeti’s Lux aeterna. Trying to solve the problem in the traditional, subjective way taught by my teacher Kurt Thomas, I began to work away at sanding down the rough edges. This method only succeeded in hiding the basic problem, not solving it, as it is diametrically opposed to the concept of emancipation. Therefore, I slowly began to transfer the responsibility for homogeneity to the singers themselves. A balanced sound, when it was called for, became the result of active communication in the spirit of Habermas, and not of the conductor’s efforts. The singer had to learn to relate his own sound to that of his colleagues, to hear himself as part of the whole – or, as ancient philosophers have put it, to “transcend the material state and go out of one’s body”. Our recording of Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen is certainly our most successful effort at this way of communicating. Then we encountered the music of Dieter Schnebel in 1965 and found the dialectic of solo-choral writing articulated in a totally new way. The growing forces of productivity in society at that time were also evident in his compositions. In his music, they were a reality; in our interpretation, a potential. This dynamic combination of reality and potential was the motor necessary to set the ensemble’s brilliant and unique career into motion. There was hardly a composer of the younger generation at that time who did not write for the Schola, hardly a festival of contemporary music where we were not invited to sing. Over eighty works, occasionally of breathtaking difficulty, were programmed either as world or national premieres. The list of our guest conductors included reknowned personalities such as Pierre Boulez, Ernest Bour, Friedrich Cerha, Peter Eötvös, Michael Gielen, Bruno Maderna, Mauricio Kagel, Heinz Holliger, Francis Travis, Matthias Bamert, Krzysztof Penderecki and Dennis Russell Davies, among others. The “gang of stars” as Kagel once good-humoredly called us, decided to retire in 1990 after thirty years of performing. This step was taken not just because we are getting on in years, but also because a new era in composition has appeared. Reality and potential do not correlate anymore; the two vectors, once convergent, now continually diverge along their paths into the future. For those who do not wish to repeat themselves, this is the sign to say “Adieu”. Clytus Gottwald
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Clytus Gottwald Clytus Gottwald was born in 1925 in Bad Salzbrunn/Schlesien. He attended the Gymnasium Striegau/Schlesien from 1936-40, then transferred to the Musische Gymnasium Frankfurt am Main. Graduation 1944. Post-war vocal study with Gerhard Hüsch and choral conducting with Kurt Thomas. 1954-58 assistant to Marcel Gouraud. 1951/52 and 1955-60 studies in musicology, sociology and protestant theology in Tübingen and Frankfurt am Main. 1961 received doctoral degree in Frankfurt with a work on Johannes GhiselinVerbonnet, a composer of the Josquin generation. 1958-70 cantor at the protestant Paulus Church in Stuttgart, his work there having its main concentration on new church music and new liturgical forms (informal worship services). In 1960 he founded the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, at first with the idea of performing 15th century music, that is of the Dufay-Ockeghem-Josquin era. As of 1964 however, the group’s accent changed over to contemporary vocal music. From 1961 up to today he has been a specialist for music palaeography, a recipient of a stipend from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (field: cataloguing of historical musical notation). As of 1967 temporary-, as of 1069-88 full editor for contemporary music at the Süddeutschen Rundfunk in Stuttgart. 1074-78 member of the planning commission of the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (direction – Piere Boulex). Several concert activities, also as guest conductor (Swedish, Finnish and Danish radio choirs, Choir of Radio della Swizzera Italiana Lugano, Groupe vocal de France, Nederlands Kamerkoor, etc.). Numerous musicological publications. 1985 professor.
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