medieval.org
capilla.be
Naxos 8.554516
1996
previously as Magister X + book
Gregorian
1. Requiem aeternam [2:13]
bass
anon., Zeghere van Male Songbook, 1542
2. Preludium [0:57]
recorder, 3 violas da gamba
3. Laus Deo [1:15]
countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass
Thomas FABRI, fl. 1400—1415
4. Ach Vlaendere vrie [2:58]
countertenor, tenor, baritone
Antoine BUSNOIS, c.1430—1492
5. Alleluya [1:25]
countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass
Magister GUGLIELMO (Ebreo da Pesaro?), c.1425—after 1480
6. Falla con misuras [1:26]
3 violas da gamba
Johannes OCKEGHEM, c.1410—1497
7. Ma maistresse [5:33]
tenor, baritone, bass
Thomas FABRI
8. Ach Vlaendere vrie [2:42]
recorder, 2 violas de gamba SW ES
Johannes OCKEGHEM
9. D'ung aultre amer [3:07]
countertenor PVG, 3 violas da gamba
Mattio RAMPOLLINI, 1497—c.1553
10. Bacco, Bacco [1:09]
tutti
JOSQUIN, c.1440—1521
11. El grillo [1:35]
countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass
Heinrich ISAAC, c.1450—1517
12. Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen
[4:47]
baritone, recorder, 3 violas da gamba
anon., MS copied by Ludovico Milanese
13. Sergonta Bergonta
[3:29]
tutti
JOSQUIN
14. Missa 'La sol fa re mi'. Kyrie
[2:15]
15. Guillaume se va chaufer
[1:04]
(attr.) | countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass
anon., Chansonnier de Marguerite d'Autriche, c.1430
16. Cueurs desolez [3:50]
tutti
anon., c.1430
17. D'ung aultre amer [1:25]
2 violas de gamba SW ES
Philippe BASIRON, early XVth c.—before February 1497
18. D'ung aultre amer / L'home arme
[1:57]
recorder, 3 violas de gamba
HENRY VIII, 1491—1547
19. Pastime with good company
[1:35]
tenor, baritone, bass
Tielman SUSATO, c.1500—1563
20. Passe & Medio / Den iersten
gaillarde [3:07]
recorder, 3 violas de gamba
Philippe VERDELOT, 1471/80—before 1552
21. Ogn'hor per voi sospiro
[2:22]
tenor, bass, 2 violas de gamba SW ES
Pierre DE LA RUE, c.1460—1518
22. Mijn hert altijt heeft verlanghen
[4:46]
tutti
CAPILLA FLAMENCA
Dirk Snellings
Marnix De Cat, countertenor — 3-5, 10, 11, 13-16, 22
Jan Caals, tenor — 3-5, 7, 10, 11, 13-16, 19, 21, 22
Lieven Termont, baritone — 3-5, 7, 10-16, 19, 22
Dirk Snellings, bass — 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13-16, 19, 21, 22
Paul Van Loey, recorders — 2, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20,
22
Sophie Watillon, viola da gamba SW — 2, 6, 8-10, 12, 13,
16-18, 20-22
Eugeen Schreurs, viola da gamba ES — 2, 6, 8-10, 12, 13,
16-18, 20-22
Liam Fennelly, viola da gamba LF — 2, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13,
16, 18, 20, 22
Patrick Van Goethem, countertenor PVG — 9
(not in tutti)
Music compiled and transcribed by Eugeen Scheurs, Alamire Foundation
Gambas (based on fifteenth-century models) by Toon Moonen
Descant and tenor recorders (after Ganassi) by Peter van der Poel
Treble recorder (after Ganassi) by Adriana Breunick
With the support of the Government of Flanders.
Capilla Flamenca is a Cultural Ambassadors of Flanders.
Recorded in the Chapel of the Irish College, Leuven
from 22nd to 24th September, 1996
Producer: Paul Beelaerts
Engineer and Editor: Jo Cops
Music Notes: Keith Anderson
Cover Painting: Concert by Ambrosius Benson
(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Blois, / Brigdeman Art Library)
The dominant position of Franco-Flemish composers in the musical world
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is testimony not only to the
cultural climate of Northern France and the Low Countries in that
period but also to the example set by Burgundy. Established as a
dukedom under Philip the Bold in 1363, the territory grew through
inheritance and dynastic marriages to include the most prosperous
region of Europe, Flanders and Brabant, while the marriage in 1477 of
the Burgundian heiress Marie, after the death of her father Charles the
Bold, to Maximilian of Austria saw Burgundy revert to France and the
Low Countries to the Habsburgs, The court of Burgundy in its heyday set
an example of magnificence and luxury to the other courts of Europe,
attracting artists of the highest distinction, In England Henry VII,
victorious in the War of the Roses, was among those rulers who sought
to emulate Burgundy, importing artists of all kinds from the Low
Countries, a tradition that continued under his successor, while the
states of Northern Italy fell under a similar influence.
The present album provides a brief conspectus of Franco-Flemish musical
influence in the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth.
It opens with the familiar Introit from the Gregorian Requiem.
This is followed by two excerpts from the Songbook of Zeghere van
Male, copied for the Bruges merchant of that name in 1542, an
anonymous instrumental Preludium and a polyphonic setting of
the brief text for the living and the dead, Laus Deo.
Thomas Fabri was a pupil in Paris of the French composer Jean de
Noyers, otherwise known as Johannes Tapissier, who had served as a
chamber musician to Philip the Bold of Burgundy. In 1412 Fabri was
appointed choirmaster at the Cathedral of St Donatian in Bruges, a city
then at the height of its cosmopolitan prosperity. His Ach
Vlaendere vrie (‘Oh Flanders free’) is one of his two
surviving three-voice secular songs.
A native of the northern French town of Busne, from which he takes his
name, Antoine Busnois may have been a pupil of Ockeghem in Paris. He
was subsequently in the service of Charles the Bold of Burgundy and,
after the latter's death in 1477, of the Duke's daughter, Marie of
Burgundy, until her death in Bruges five years later. Busnois died in
1492 in the same city, where he was employed as master of choristers at
the church of St Sauveur. His four-voice Alleluya is largely
harmonic in conception.
There follows an instrumental piece attributed to the Italian Jewish
composer Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, a dancing-master whose writing on
the art is of considerable importance and enjoyed wide contemporary
popularity for its practical advice. The dance Falla con misuras
has the alternative title Bassa Castiglia. It is a basse-danse,
a court dance that, with its succeeding mesures, reached its
height of fashion at the Burgundian court.
Contemporaries coupled the name of Johannes Ockeghem with that of his
supposed pupil Busnois. Probably a native of Flanders, he served at
Notre Dame in Antwerp and was later employed at the court of Charles I,
Duke of Bourbon, the husband of Agnes of Burgundy, sister of Philip the
Good. From the early 1450s he was in the service of the French court
under Charles VII and his successor, Louis XI, rewarded him with a
number of benefices. The tribute paid to him on a visit to Bruges in
1484 suggests a possible earlier connection with the city and with the
composer in the service of the Dukes of Burgundy, Gilles de Binche dit
Binchois, to whom he expressed his debt. His chanson Ma maistresse
was regarded by his contemporaries as a model of its kind, serving as
the basis of a Mass setting by the composer himself and as a familiar
source for quotation by others. Ockeghem's chanson D'ung aultre amer
(‘To love another’) was also widely known, serving as a
basis for a number of compositions by other composers.
The prosperous city of Florence was a major cultural centre in Italy,
particularly under the rule and patronage of the Medici family, who
became absolute rulers of the city and its surrounding region in 1532.
The musicians employed in Florence included distinguished practitioners
from Northern Europe, but Mattio Rampollini, represented here by a
light-hearted song in praise of Bacchus, god of wine, was a native of
the city, master of choristers at the cathedral and in the service of
the Medici family.
The greatest composer of his day, Josquin des Prez is thought to have
been a native of Picardy. The first certain surviving reference to his
career finds him employed as a singer at Milan Cathedral and later in
the service of the ruling Sforza family, in association with which he
became also a singer in the papal choir. For a time at the French
court, he returned to Italy, to Ferrara. There he was finally succeeded
by Obrecht, when he left in 1503 to return to Northern France, where he
died in 1521. El grillo (‘The Cricket’), a frottola,
puns on the name of the singer Carlo Grillo, employed by Galeazzo Maria
Sforza, whose musical establishment of forty singers included some
score of French or Flemish musicians. It suggests, in its setting, the
song of the cricket.
It seems possible that Josquin spent some time in Florence in the years
1487 and 1488, when his name is missing from the list of singers in the
papal chapel. Heinrich Isaac, a native of Flanders, spent ten years or
more in Florence under Lorenzo the Magnificent, until the latter's
death in 1492. In 1497 he became court composer to the Emperor
Maximilian I, in Vienna, enjoying a certain freedom of travel that took
him back to Florence, where he had married, and to various cities of
the Empire. He died in Florence in 1517. Isaac had been briefly in
Innsbruck on his first journey south to Italy in 1484 and he spent some
time there in 1500 and 1501, when in the service of the imperial court.
His well-known song Innsbruck, ich muss dick lassen is unusual
in its harmonic chorale-like setting.
The manuscript from which the anonymous Sergonta Bergonta is
taken was copied in 1502 by Lodovico Milanese for use either in Ferrara
or Mantua. The language of the text is a mixture of Italian, French,
Spanish and newly invented words.
Josquin's Mass known as La sol fa re mi is based, it has been
suggested, on the solmization of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza's frequent
postponement of payment to his musicians, with the words Lascia
fare mi (Let me see to it). Whatever the accuracy of this
attribution, the music itself is based on the sol-fa notes indicated, A
– G – F – D – E, in transposition. The
light-hearted Guillaume se va chaufer (Guillaume goes and warms
himself) is attributed to Josquin through a misinterpretation of
Heinrich Glarean's Dodecachordon of 1547, where it is included among
the many musical examples given.
Marguerite of Austria, daughter of Marie of Burgundy and Maximilian I,
was three years old when, after the death of her mother, she was
betrothed to Charles, the Dauphin of France, the first of her three
husbands, none of whom were to live long. Subsequently, as Regent of
the Netherlands, she held court at Malines, where she continued to
encourage music and the arts. Collections of chansons made for her
include the anonymous Cueurs desolez (‘Sorrowful
hearts’), suited to a court in mourning.
Two further settings of D'ung aultre amer (‘To love
another’) include an instrumental version dated, from its
manuscript source, to about 1430, followed by a further version, making
use of the well-known melody of L'homme armé and attributed to
the fifteenth-century composer Philippe Basiron, presumably a musician
of French origin. Here the upper part uses the melody from Ockeghem's
chanson, while L'homme armé appears in the tenor.
Henry VIII of England had strong musical interests, as a singer, player
and composer himself and his court entertained a large number of
musicians from the continent. His Pastime with good company
seems to be based on a French chanson of the period, to which it bears
some melodic resemblance.
Tielman Susato was either born in Westphalia at Soest, from which his
name is derived, or in Antwerp into a family of similar origin. He
served as a town musician in the latter city, before turning also to
publishing and to dealing in musical instruments. His collection of
popular dances was published in 1551. His Passe & Medio or passamezzo
is a duple metre dance, followed by a triple metre Galliard.
Born at Verdelot in Seine et Marne in the 1470s, Philippe Verdelot made
his career largely in Italy, working in Florence, in Rome and in
Venice. He is of importance in the development of the Italian madrigal,
of which he was an early master, as witnessed in his Ogn'hor per
voi sospiro (‘Every hour I yearn for you’).
Much favoured by Marguerite of Austria, the Flemish composer Pierre de
La Rue was probably born in Tournai and served in the Burgundian court
musical establishment of Maximilian and then of the latter's eldest
son, Philip the Fair, until the latter's death in Spain in 1506. In
1508 he returned to join the court of Marguerite in Malines, before
retiring finally to Courtrai, where he died in 1518. His Mijn hert
altijt heeft verlanghen (‘My heart is always desirous’)
is included in the album of Marguerite of Austria. A four-part work, it
is based on an earlier anonymous three-voice setting which he
recomposed.
Keith Anderson