The Hilliard Ensemble - Codex Speciálník
Music from a Prague manuscript c. 1500 |
medieval.org
ECM New Series 1504
enero de 1993
Stadtkirche Gönningen
01 - Exordium quadruplate ~ Nate dei ~ Concrepet infanti ~ Verbum caro factum [1:46]
02 - Tria sunt munera ~ Videntes stellam ~ Reges Tharsis [1:24]
03 - In natali domini [2:34]
04 - Sophia nascitur ~ O quam pulchra ~ Magi videntes [1:37]
05 - Congaudemus pariter ~ En lux immensa [1:39]
06 - Magnum miraculum [2:43]
07 - Nobis est natus [2:29]
08 - Salve mater gracie [2:05]
09 - Christus iam surrexit ~ Terra tremuit ~ Angelus domini ~ Surrexit Christus [1:10]
Petrus de GRUDENCZ
10 - Presulem ephebeatum [3:29]
11 - Paraneuma eructemus [1:14]
12 - Presidiorum erogatrix [3:26]
13 - neuma eucaristiarum ~ Veni vere illustrator ~ Dator eya ~ Paraclito tripudia [3:17]
14 - Terrigenarum plasmator [4:08]
15 - Pulcherrima rosa [1:44]
16 - Johannes TOURONT. Chorus iste [2:21]
17 - GONTRÁŠEK. Bud' buohu chvála cest [2:28]
18 - Alexander AGRICOLA. O virens virginum [2:01]
MISSA PETITE CAMUSETTE
19 - Kyrie [2:58]
20 - Gloria [6:01]
21 - John PLUMMER. Tota pulchra es [4:49]
22 - Credo [5:55]
23 - Ave pura tu puella [3:19]
24 - Sanctus [7:10]
25 - JOSQUIN. Ave Maria [5:28]
THE HILLIARD ENSEMBLE
David James
Rogers Covey-Crump
John Potter
Gordon Jones
discografía del Hilliard Ensemble
Codex Speciálník
The
Hilliard Ensemble first encountered the Codex Speciálník when
researching music for their album of Walter Frye (ECM 1476), whose Ave Regina
appears in the manuscript with an extra part, presumably added by a
local Czech composer. The Codex is one of the oldest surviving
collections of Czech renaissance polyphony, and originated in the
Utraquist Protestant congregations of around 1500. The related Strahov
Codex is some 10 to 15 years older, but was used by the Catholics and
may have come from Moravia or Silesia. If 1500 seems rather late for
renaissance music to have reached Prague, it should be remembered that
the Hussite Wars of 1419-1434 had divided the 'nation of heretics' from
the rest of Catholic Europe, and it was only in the last quarter of the
15th century that there was a significant inflow of cultural and
artistic ideas. The Codex Speciálník was not the first collection of
renaissance polyphony: many of its pieces had clearly been in
circulation for some time.
The manuscript is currently in
the Hradec Králové Museum, which acquired it from a Prague antique
dealer in 1901. Leafing through it is an extraordinary experience, as
some musicologists have discovered. Some of it, such as Josquin's AveMaria,
is written in 'white' notation, and other pieces are in black mensural
notation. The binding bears the date 1546, but inside the hard cover we
find the date 1611 together with an inscription saying that in that
year 'Michael Muratt ... gave this Speciálník (ie special songbook) to
the Church of St Peter'. Amazingly, this collection of (by then)
archaic polyphony had been copied by some Protestant church-goers in
Prague in the middle of the 16th century, and they had then used it
right up to the time when the Baroque was knocking on the door.
Recent examination by Jitka Petrusová has revealed the true history
of the manuscript. Its oldest part, the 'corpus', was written on paper
made in Italy and southern Germany in the 1480s and 90s, and it was
probably finished some time before 1500, loosely bound and with an
index of its contents. The 'corpus' continued to be added to by
different hands and eventually incorporated two new fascicles. When the
hard binding was done around 1546 some pieces were moved and a
collection of unison hymns was added. The original pre-1500 copyist had
begun with both Czech and foreign contemporary music, starting with
music for the Mass, followed by motets and songs in white notation. He
then added in black notation older Czech music that was current in the
14th and early 15 th centuries. Later scribes ignored this layout and
added music wherever they found a convenient space.
The
Codex Speciálník is then a large anthology of polyphony that flourished
in Bohemia from the 14th century onwards. The selection here is
arranged broadly in chronological order, but with some concession to
textual considerations. Like the Codex itself, it is probably best
dipped into rather than swallowed whole. To take the oldest pieces
first, these can be described as the remnants of the Czech Ars Antiqua
and Ars Nova. The Codex contains some 50 pieces whose roots reach back
to around 1300, corresponding to compositions found in dozens of 14th
to 16th century sources in western Europe. The most striking
renaissance features are to be found in the works of Petrus Wilhelmi de
Grudencz, the Master of Krakov University, who spent some time in
Bohemia on his way back to Silesia from travels in southern Germany and
Austria. Two of the pieces performed here are 'rotuli', or rounds,
which in later sources were treated as multiple-texted motets. All four
contain the composer's name in an acrostic (spectacularly so in the
case of track 13, which manages to fit in the whole thing).
There are some 150 renaissance compositions in the manuscript, and
only about one third of these are by composers who can be identified.
We know nothing of the two Czechs, Tomek and Gontrášek, and pieces
originating from within the local congregations carry the collective
designation 'sociorum'- by members or comrades. Many of the anonymous
works are based on Czech melodies current at the time (7, 15 and 23).
Equally interesting are the imported compositions attributed to 30
foremost European musicians, among them the Englishmen Bedyngham, Frye,
Morton and Plummer, and the Franco-Flemish composers Barbireau,
Basiron, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, Agricola, Tinctoris and Josquin.
Eight pieces by Johannes Touront suggest that this composer spent some
time in the Czech lands. The Codex also contains a number of secular
chansons that the Prague brethren furnished with sacred Latin texts,
though it is not clear why they should have felt it necessary to
replace the Marian text of the Johannes Aulen motet with the involved
rhetoric of Terrigenarum plasmator (14). We are still searching for the author of the remarkable Missa Petite Camusette, based on the famous chanson by Ockeghem. There is no Agnus Dei according to the Utraquist rite, but why the 'crucifixus' section has been omitted from the Credo remains a mystery.
I hope that with this collection we can progress beyond merely
marvelling at the curious and anachronistic musical feast that is the
Codex Speciálník. This polyphonic song book reflects both a reverence
towards the Czech Gothic and an ending of Bohemian isolation, embracing
Western renaissance style and writing down the new fruits of the
Czechs' own burgeoning culture.
Jaromír Černý
Translation: Karel Janovický