medieval.org
AS&V “Gaudeamus” CD GAU 362
2007
Gregorian Chant from the Requiem Mass
1. Introit. Requiem
aeternam
Johannes de SARTO (fl. c.1430-40)
2. Romanorum Rex
English (early/mid. 15th century)
3. Gloria
Guillaume DUFAY (c.1397-1474)
4. Ave regina
coelorum
Jean OCKEGHEM (c.1420-1497)
5. Mort tu as
navré
on CD GAU 215, OCKEGHEM. Missa Au travail suis et al.
Lucy Ballard, Torn Raskin, Jonathan Arnold, Robert Macdonald
English (early/mid. 15th century)
6. Credo
JOSQUIN (c.1455-1521)
7. Absolve quaesumus
Jacob OBRECHT (1457/8-1505)
8. Mille quingentis
on CD GAU 341, OBRECHT. Missa Missa sub tuum praesidium et al.
William Missin, Lucy Ballard, Chris Watson, Matthew Vine, Edward
Wickham, Robert Macdonald
JOSQUIN
9. Nymphes des bois
JOSQUIN
10. Pater
noster/Ave Maria
on The Josquin Companion (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Rebecca Outram, Lucy Ballard, Tom Raskin, Daniel Norman, Edward
Wickham, Robert Macdonald
Pierre de LA RUE (c.1452-1518)
11. Cueurs desolez
JOSQUIN
12. Que vous madame
on CD GAU 306, JOSQUIN. Missa Malheur me bat et al.
Lucy Ballard, William Missin, Chris Watson, Edward Wickham
Heinrich ISAAC (1450/55-1517)
13. Quis dabit
capiti meo aquam?
Gregorian chant from the Requiem Mass
14. Gradual. Requiem
aeternam/In memoria
The Clerks' Group
Edward Wickham
Ruth Massey, Lucy Ballard - alto
Chris Watson, Tom Raskin - tenor
Edward Wickham, Jonathan Arnold - bass
Produced by David Wright, Gemini Sound and Adrian Peacock
All tracks except:
(5, 10) - Jonathan Freeman-Attwood,
(8, 12) - David Trendell
Engineered by David Wright, Gemini Sound
Recorded at The Chapel of St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, 2-3
September 2006
All tracks except: (5, 8, 10, 12) - St. Andrew's, West Wratting
February 1999 (5), - February 2003 (8), July 1998 (10), March 2001 (12)
Designed by Studio B, The Creative People
Cover photograph by Kevin Russ, courtesy of istockphoto.com
Photographs of The Clerks' Group by Colin Turner
Sanctuary Classics
“In memoria aeterna erit iustus: ab auditione mala non
timebit”. As so often in the Gregorian liturgy of the Roman
Catholic Church, the meaning and implication of this statement has
changed in the process of its translation from the Book of Psalms to
the Requiem mass. In Psalm 112 (or 111 in the Vulgate numbering), its
two clauses appear in two separate, albeit consecutive, verses.
“The righteous man will never be moved: he will be remembered for
ever. He is not afraid of evil tidings; his heart is firm, trusting in
the Lord”. The suggestion here is that the evil tidings are of a
worldly nature: a bereavement or loss of property, perhaps. But through
the elision of the verses — “The righteous man will be
remembered forever: he is not afraid of evil tidings” — we
are transported into the theology of the-after-life, of purgatory and
judgement. “Mala” in this sense refer to the rulings of the
Eternal Judge on the Last Day; and in this context,
“memoria” is no longer passive — it entails acts of
commemoration, manifestations of piety towards the dead facilitated by
monetary bequests.
One would expect to find in the will of any well-to-do personage of the
Middle Ages some kind of donation to a church, monastery or convent, in
return for which the dead would expect prayers, Requiem masses or some
such liturgical act to be performed for the benefit of his soul. The
especially pious, and those whose careers had been spent within church
institutions, might make specific requests in such endowments: for
certain candles to be lit on certain feast days, particular antiphons
to be sung or — a common feature in the wills of musicians
— extra food and wine to be given to the singers on the
anniversary of the benefactor's death.
The will of the great Guillaume Dufay is a fine example of how, for a
career musician and cleric, the spiritual impulse is expressed through
provision for the ecclesiastical community. He asks for the choirboys
to pray for him (for he was once one of them), he provides for the
performance of his own polyphonic Requiem mass, and even specifies that
the motet Ave regina coelorum be sung at his death bed. The
text of this sophisticated motet, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, had
been customised for the occasion, and includes the poignant petition,
“Miserere supplicant Dufay” set with music of unprecedented
directness and pathos. Unfortunately for the dying Dufay, a fellow
canon at Cambrai Cathedral happened to pass away a little earlier on
the same fateful day in 1474 and the staff, busying themselves with
arrangements for the obsequies, overlooked Dufay's request. Thus Dufay
went to meet his maker without the melodious accompaniment of the choir.
The will of Josquin Des Prez follows a similar pattern to that of
Dufay. He endows at his local church of Condé-sur-l'Escaut a
weekly ‘Salve’ service (in honour of the Virgin Mary and
featuring the chant antiphon Salve regina) and asks that his
motet Pater noster/Ave Maria be sung every year in front of his
house, as part of the annual town procession. Nothing in the text or
construction of this finely woven six-voice motet suggests the specific
function of commemoration: rather, it forms part of a centuries-old
tradition of providing for the greater adornment of already existing
liturgical texts and practices. ‘Death music’ in this sense
need not be gloomy. The Gloria and Credo movements included in this
recording — extracted from an English mass which survives only
fragmentarily — surely owe their existence to such an endowment.
The cantus firmus tenor line which quotes the Introit of the
Requiem mass tells us this. But this is not an overtly mournful or
contemplative mass: indeed, the Lydian mode of the Requiem chant
underpins a polyphony which to our modern ears sounds bright and
extrovert.
The same is true of Romanorum Rex, dating from around the same
time, and which employs the same Requiem tune, albeit embedded within
the vocal texture rather than underpinning it. This motet, honouring
the death of Albrecht II, King of the Romans (the traditional title for
a successor to the Holy Roman Emperor) operates both as a celebration
and commemoration of a political leader, and as a record of the singers
in his employ at the time. De Sarto lists himself, a musical autograph
reinforcing the declaration of pious duty which is the motet's raison
d'être.
Romanorum Rex is self-conscious in other ways. Its structure,
adopting a somewhat old-fashioned technique of isorhythmic organisation
by which rhythmic patterns are repeated at different speeds throughout
the piece, is mindfully clever. And it is around the middle of the 15th
century that we find composers of musical memorials indulging a growing
taste for the consciously artful and the self-referential, matching the
development in humanist literature of topoi in which Classical
and Christian heavenly hosts rubbed shoulders, entertained by the likes
of Rhetoric and Music. Mort tu as navré —
Ockeghem's lament on the death of Binchois in 1460 — is an early
example of a genre which finds its most affecting expression in the
famous Nymphes des bois, a lament on the death of Ockeghem in
1497, Josquin setting a text by Molinet in which nymphs and goddesses
mourn the old man's passing, while the Requiem tune — a fine
thread of Christian orthodoxy — is stitched unnoticed into the
exquisite raiment.
In Nymphes, Josquin darkens the naturally sunny disposition of
the Requiem tune (noted earlier) by transforming it into the minor,
Phrygian mode, and thus creates a sound-world which we more readily
associate with the solemn. It is a gesture which he must have copied
from Obrecht's Mille quingentis, composed to commemorate the
death of Obrecht's father, the Ghent City trumpeter Guillermus Obrecht,
in 1488. However, unlike Nymphes des bois, in which Josquin and
his fellow singer-composers seem to kneel reverentially at the tomb of
their “bon père”, in Mille quingentis
Obrecht fils seems more intent upon blowing his own trumpet
than celebrating his father's talent for the instrument. The archaic
pretensions of the text (probably written by Jacob) and the reference
to himself as Orpheus-like, reminds one of the eulogist at a memorial
service who uses the word “I” far more than etiquette
permits. In Absolve quaesumus, a motet honouring an unspecified
deceased — but likely to be for Obrecht who died in 1505 —
Josquin by contrast opts for a traditional, undemonstrative text.
The laments so far mentioned have all employed elements of the Requiem
Introit; Pierre de la Rue's Cueurs desolez is unusual in its
use of another section of the Requiem mass, the sequence Dies irae.
The text, probably by Jean Lemaire — a poet at the court of
Emperor Charles V's regent in the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria
— is thought to honour the death of Jean de Luxembourg in 1508,
though the work as a whole reflects the general mood of lugubrious
piety which pervades the secular music emanating from Margaret's court,
a repertory which includes also Josquin's Que vous madame. In
its use of the text “in pace inidipsum”, Que vous madame
is related to a complex of works — possibly all laments, either
specific or general — of which the most notable example is
Isaac's Quis dabit capiti.
This funeral motet for Isaac's employer Lorenzo de Medici (d.1492),
sets a text by the Milanese court poet Angelo Polizano. Again set in
the doleful Phrygian mode, Quis dabit capiti is the
quintessential humanist lament, a powerful mix of sacred and secular
references and techniques. Again music is invoked — the music of
the nymphs and of Phoebus — but the work concludes in despair, as
the power of music, which has articulated the sentiments and ambitions
of commemoration since pre-history, retreats. All is mute, all is deaf.
© Edward Wickham, 2007