New London Chamber Choir / Pierre DE LA RUE. Requiem
JOSQUIN. Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae ˇ La Déploration de Johannes Ockeghem



IMAGEN


medieval.org
Amon Ra  CD-SAR 24
1986







Pierre DE LA RUE. Missa pro defunctis


01 - Introit . Requiem aeternam     [4:49]
02 - Kyrie      [2:41]
03 - Tract. Sicut cervus      [4:01]
04 - Offertory. Domine Jesu Christe      [5:09]
05 - Sanctus      [4:13]
06 - Communion. Lux aeterna      [2:54]
07 - Agnus Dei      [3:50]


JOSQUIN. Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae

08 - Kyrie      [2:28]
09 - Gloria      [3:21]
10 - Credo      [6:01]
11 - Sanctus      [5:11]
12 - Agnus Dei      [5:42]


JOSQUIN. La Déploration de Johannes Ockeghem
13 - Nymphes des bois      [6:16]


Recorded at St. Barnabas Church, Finchley, November 1985 by
Gef Lucena (Amon Ra) and David Wilkins (Valley Recordings)   
Performing edition edited by John Milsom



New London Chamber Choir
James Wood






IMAGEN





Like so many of the greatest religious works of the fifteenth century, Josquin's Mass Hercules Dux Ferrariae and Pierre de la Rue's Requiem seem to have been composed not at the whims of their composers but rather for some more specific use. Admittedly, in neither case do we know the occasion at which the work was first performed, and there is even some doubt about the identity of the person for whose funeral la Rue's Requiem was written—perhaps most likely is Ermes Sforza, brother-in-law to the emperor Maximilian, whose obsequies took place in 1503. Josquin's mass is more obviously personalized, for the name of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, is actually made an integral component of the music; but even here we cannot be sure of the precise date at which Josquin composed the piece, though it is obviously a product of the years he spent in Ercole's service. (Josquin appears to have been associated with the Duke from the early 1480's and he served as a singer in the Ferrarese chapel in 1503-4.) One fact is certain however each work was conceived as being something out of the ordinary by the standards of the day, and both masses must have attracted the attention of contemporary audiences no less than they have come to be celebrated in our own time.

Like other Requiem masses of the Renaissance, Pierre de la Rue's unusually elaborate setting is deeply indebted to the plainchant melodies that were inextricably linked with the words of the Missa pro defunctis. La Rue's method of procedure is thus a simple one: for each portion of text, the chant itself becomes the foundation for his music and each movement of his setting therefore draws upon an entirely different melodic source. (In this respect the Requiem differs fundamentally from Josquin's mass, in which each successive movement might be viewed as a variation of the preceding music). So unrelated to one another are the chant melodies of the Requiem that they explore different modes and compasses. By absorbing them into his music, la Rue in turn created a succession of movements that might at first glance seem to be scored for entirely different choirs, some of high voices, others of low, and indeed most modern performers have taken his notation literally and exploited these unusual contrasts; but it is now almost certain that la Rue would have expected his singers to transpose the movements at sight, and an 'equalized' version of the kind recorded here is likely to be authentic.

The Requiem opens with the four-part Introit ("Requiem aeternam") in which the chant melody is first taken up by all voices in turn and made the substance of the entire polyphonic web, then becomes the sole property of the baritone during the verse "Te decet hymnus". (These two methods of construction variously remain the basis of all the succeeding movements). The Kyrie follows; and for its third invocation, la Rue introduces a fifth voice to enrich the sonority. Next comes the Tract ("Sicut cervus"), a setting for contrasted groups of voices of the opening three verses of Psalm 42. In contrast to the Tract's duple metre, the Offertory ("Domine Jesu Christe") proceeds in a broad triple measure. Again, it breaks into five parts during its course, and this texture is maintained in the ensuing Sanctus, with its contrasted Benedictus for four lower voices. The Requiem closes with the three-fold Agnus Dei, preceded in this concert version by the Communion, "Lux aeterna".

Josquin's Mass Hercules Dux Ferrariae is probably the very earliest setting to be strictly based not on a plainchant melody, a popular song or an existing polyphonic work but rather on an entirely original motto theme. The little eight-note tune that gives the work its title is in fact nothing less than a musical transliteration of the dedicatee's name, for it derives directly from the eight syllables "Her-cu-les Dux Fer-ra-ri-ae": "Hercules, Duke of Ferrara". To convert these words into musical sounds, Josquin availed himself of the centuries-old system of solmization (the ancestor of the more recent solfege and Tonic Sol-fa methods), known to all singers of the time, in which the six ascending steps of the shortened scale were given the names "ut re mi fa sol la". By deleting consonants and considering only vowels, the eight syllables of the motto could be converted into their equivalent solmization degrees; thus "hEr-cU-lEs dUx fEr-rA-rI-aE" gives rise to "rE Ut rE Ut rE 1 A ml rE"—or, in terms of modern pitches, D C D C D F E D. Having calculated this motif, Josquin repeated it obsessively so as to form a scaffold around which a large and elaborate polyphonic mass could be constructed. Almost always stated in notes of extended length and equal duration, the motto naturally stands out from the accompanying texture, irrespective of the pitch on which it enters or the voice that carries it.

The mass opens with a tidy Kyrie in which the standard procedure for stating the motto is established: it appears three times in the baritone part, first at low pitch, second in the middle of the range, finally in the upper register, an octave above the first statement; and each time, the motto is preceded by an eight-bar passage for three voices, during which the baritone remains silent. In the Gloria this same procedure occurs twice, first at the opening of the movement, then again at the section commencing with the words "Qui tollis peccata mundi". In the Credo there are three statements, the last of which stands as a further development at "Et in Spiritum Sanctum" the entire motto proceeds first backwards, then forwards again in diminution. In the Sanctus the process of dismembering and foreshortening the motto continues, giving way in the Benedictus to three exquisite duets, each of which has the motto theme as its basis. The Agnus Dei introduces further variations. In the first invocation, the motto is again turned backwards; in the second, it is dropped altogether so that Josquin can show off his skills in writing a strict canon for the remaining three voices; and in the sumptuous third Agnus, the texture expands to six real parts, of which two take it in turn to sing the motto. Not surprisingly in view of its curious construction, Josquin' s Hercules Dux Ferrariae Mass soon became a celebrated work, and composers continued to make use of this method of deriving a musical theme from the syllables of words until well into the seventeenth century.

Josquin's Deploration for Johannes Ockeghem, "Nymphes des bois", was probably written in or shortly after 1497, the year in which this widely respected composer is now known to have died. By the late fifteenth century, laments of this kind had become a standard means of paying homage to the towering figures of music; and it is even possible that all four of the composers who are cited towards the end of Josquin' s piece—Brumel, Pierre de la Rue, Compere and Josquin himself—were especially indebted to Ockeghem by having once been his pupils or colleagues. Though ostensibly a chanson, the Deploration makes use of a classic method of motet and mass construction, for its foundation is a plainchant melody, sung by the baritone voices. Appropriately, this is the Introit of the Missa pro defunctis, "Requiem aeternam", though its intervals have been subtly modified to conform to the plangent phrygian mode. This performance makes use of the reading of the work contained in the great Medici Codex, an early version that seems to come close to Josquin' s original text.

John Milsom