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JOSQUIN DESPREZ
Missa D’ung aultre amer, Motets & Chansons
ALAMIRE, directed by David Skinner
Julia Doyle, soprano
Clare Wilkinson, mezzo soprano
Ruth Massey, mezzo soprano
Steven Harrold, tenor
Mark Dobell, tenor
Christopher Watson, tenor
William Unwin, tenor
Timothy Scott Whiteley, bass
Robert Macdonald, bass
with Andrew Lawrence-King, renaissance harp
1. D’ung aultre amer (Johannes Ockeghem)
Missa D’ung aultre amer
2. Kyrie
3. Gloria
4. Credo
5. Sanctus / Tu solus qui facis mirabilia
6. Agnus dei
7. De tous beins plaine
8. Mille regretz
9. Ave Maria
10. Qui belles amours
11. Fortuna d’un gran tempo
12. Planxit autem David
13. Cela sans plus
14. Sanctus ‘D’ung aultre amer’
15. Tu lumen, tu splendor patris
16. La Bernardina
17. Victimae paschali laudes / D’ung aultre amer
18. Adieu mes amours
19. Ile fantazies de Joskin
20. Tu solus qui facis mirabilia / D’ung aultre amer
Josquin Desprez is widely recognized as the greatest of the Renaissance master musicians. He set the standard for the various compositional techniques borrowed and utilized by most composers of his generation and beyond, and became an iconic figure whose art had captivated musicians and scholars for centuries. This recording centres around some of Josquin’s earliest works, and, in particular, his fascination with the D’ung aultre amer chanson composed his teacher Johannes Ockeghem. Also included are some of his most popular motets, and chansons performed here for solo voice (Clare Wilkinson) and renaissance harp (Andrew Lawrence-King).
Recorded in the chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford (12 April 2007), and St Michael’s Church, Summertown, Oxford (24 May, 26-27 June 2007).
Produced and Engineered by Martin Souter
Performing editions by David Skinner
Ita in omnia uersatile ingenium erat, ita naturae acumine ac ui armatum,
ut nihil in hoc negocio ille non potuisset.
His talent was so versatile in every way, so equipped by a natural acumen vigour,
that there was nothing in this field which he could not do.
Heinrich Glarean, Dodecachordon (Basle, 1547)
Few composers of any period have enjoyed the widespread admiration and unanimous praise of countless generations as Josquin Desprez. He is considered to be the greatest creator and innovator of musical composition, bridging the gap between the so-called medieval and renaissance periods, and for some half a millennium his music has stood the test of time. With Josquin came a ‘humanistic’ approach to music-making, and this innate understanding of text, notation and emotion singled him out from among his contemporaries. In recent years we have been able to achieve a closer understanding of his work: first with The New Josquin Edition (although, unfortunately, omitting some compositions on the basis of quality and style) and with what has now become the standard and essential textbook on his life and music The Josquin Companion (Oxford, 1999). But with the even more current explosion in research, led by conferences devoted to Josquin that were based at Princeton and Duke universities in the same year as the publication of The Josquin Companion, there has been constant revision of many aspects of his life and music. While the scholarship has indeed been welcome, new discoveries and observations have somewhat confused our current perception of who Josquin was and which works attributed to him are actually authentic. As David Fallows notes, ‘It seems clear that there is still an enormous amount to be done … some 1,000 sources, manuscript and printed, contain works that are somewhere ascribed to Josquin.’
But whoever the real Josquin was, contemporary reports point to the fact that he must have been a perfectionist. Commenting in 1547, the Swiss theorist, poet and humanist Heinrich Glarean tells us that ‘… he published his works after much deliberation and with manifold corrections; neither did he release a song to the public unless he had kept it to himself for some years.’ In 1562 a more revealing anecdote was related by Johannes Manlius, who stated that when Josquin introduced a new composition to a choir he would wander among the singers listening for imperfections in the harmony. When he noticed an inelegant passage, Josquin would say ‘Be silent; I will change that’. Manlius also noted that he was intolerant of singers making their own changes or embellishments to the music, and that Josquin is known to have berated at least one singer exclaiming ‘You donkey, why did you add embellishments? If I had wanted them, I would have written them myself. If you wish to correct musical works that have been composed in a natural or plain style, then write your own, but leave my works unaltered.’
Josquin’s success as a composer was not only down to his craft but the fact that he was himself an extremely competent singer, serving for some years in the Papal Chapel where he would have had access to some the finest musicians in Europe who could perform his compositions. Intimate practical knowledge as a performer would have guided many of his musical decisions when composing; indeed, one might imagine that a composer in the late fifteenth century would have great difficulties if he did not possess sound practical performing skills. John Milsom hits the mark is saying that ‘A singer of Josquin’s day was more than a maker of beautiful sound. He was an orator, a projector of words, sense, and meaning.’ Such was his popularity that after his death in 1521 other composers sought to emulate his style; compositions were often found to be reattributed to Josquin as they would then become more respected and marketable. In 1540 the German editor and composer famously recalled hearing that ‘… a certain eminent man saying that, now that Josquin is dead, he is putting out more works than when he was alive.’ Other anecdotes and elegies abound from other theorists and Josquin’s own pupils, notably Jean Lhéritier and Nicholas Gombert, but as Patrick Macey has noted, it was the Italians who seem to have singled him out for praise, although at times Josquin’s reputation seems to have exceeded his art: in a 1528 publication Baldassare Castiglione related that there was a particular motet performed at the court of the Duchess of Urbino which pleased no one until it was discovered that Josquin was the composer. Cosimo Bartoli in 1567 stated that ‘just as Josquin has so far had no one who could surpass him in composition, so Michelangelo, among all those who have cultivated these arts, stands alone and without peer.’ The most famous testimonial is from Germany, where in 1538 Martin Luther exclaimed that ‘Josquin is the master of the notes, which must do as he wishes, while other composers must follow what the notes dictate.’
Since the sixteenth century Josquin has transformed from the great singer/composer to the legend – almost, it seems, untouchable – and now in the twenty-first century more and more recordings are devoted to his music; still, many works remain unheard by his modern admirers. This programme departs from the conventional by focussing on some of Josquin’s earliest compositions, and introducing the ‘renaissance’ harp to his chanson repertory. The centrepiece is what must be Josquin’s shortest, and possibly earliest Mass cycle D’ung aultre amer (tracks 2-6); the model is a three-voice rondeau quatrain (track 1) by Josquin’s teacher Johannes Ockeghem (c.1410-1497). Owing to certain stylistic alliances with the Milanese school, the Mass was originally thought to date between 1473 and 1479 when a ‘Josquin’, thought to be the composer, was a singer in the Duomo in Milan. However recent scholarship suggests that the composer did not have close connections with the Milanese court until the 1480s. The unpretentious style is typical of shorter Mass settings of the time, and the telescoping of the text in the Gloria and Credo recall earlier practises. For the Kyrie, Sanctus and Angus Dei, Josquin uses the D’ung aultre amer melody as a head motif in the superius, while a single statement of the tenor part in Ockeghem’s rondeau is stated in the tenor of each movement. The Gloria and Credo are paired in that they begin in the same way and constructed with homophonic declamation of the text, although two statements of Ockeghem’s tenor appear in the Credo providing a bipartite structure to accommodate the longer text. The substitution of motets for sections of the Mass was a feature of Milanese liturgical practice. This happens in the Sanctus, where in place of the Benedictus the first part of Josquin’s Tu solus qui facis mirabilia serves as an elevation motet (the text ends with the words ‘Rex benigne’ – benign King – which Jennifer Bloxham suggests to be ‘a musical culmination for the liturgical highpoint of the mass ritual’).
The general scoring of the Mass is exceptionally wide in each of the four parts, especially in the superius and bass, which is perhaps an indication of the early Josquin finding his compositional feet; however his harmonic fingerprints are here emerging nearly fully developed. Both parts of the motet Tu solus qui facis mirabilia (track 20) appear in Petrucci’s Motetti de passione, de cruce, de sacramento, de beata virgine et huius modi (Venice, 1503). The scoring of the second part is noticeably different from the first: here the D’ung aultre amer tune appears twice in the superius, while the altus range extends upwards by a minor third, necessitating (at least in a modern performance) a downward transposition. It may be that the second part was composed after the Mass cycle, and specifically for inclusion in Petrucci’s publication.
Josquin deployed Ockeghem’s Dun’g aultre amer melody and tenor in two other works. The single Sanctus D’ung aultre amer (track 14) was published in Petrucci’s Fragmenta Missarum (1505); the date and its more polished style suggest a later composition than the Mass. The Benedictus is particularly fine with the hauntingly static harmony at ‘qui venit in nomine domini’. In Petrucci’s publication the Benedictus is followed by the motet Tu lumen, tu splendor patris (track 15); it is not related to the D’ung aultre amer but an extremely moving, and purely homophonic setting of a verse from the hymn Jesu salvator seculi; it is most likely intended as an alternative elevation motet to replace the Benedictus. The final work in Josquin’s D’ung aultre amer cycle is Victimae paschali laudes (track 17), which appears in Petrucci’s Motetti A (1502). It is thought to be among Josquin’s earliest surviving motets, though stylistically it seems the most mature within the ‘cycle’. Ockeghem’s tenor is nowhere to found, but the melody is quoted fully in the superius part while in the secunda pars Josquin quotes another famous chanson text, this time by Hayne van Ghizeghem (c.1445-d. before 1495), De tous bien plaine (Josquin’s own three-part arrangement of this tune is recorded on track 7). Petrucci’s imprint gives only the text incipit so the Latin has been provided for this recording, following, on the whole, Ross W. Duffin’s solution in A Josquin Anthology (Oxford, 1999).
Of the two other motets on this recording Ave Maria (track 9) is also thought to be an early work that seems to fit the ‘Milanese’ style. It probably dates from the mid 1470s and is generally considered to be superior to many contemporary works by older and more established composers of that decade. Glarean, commenting some 75 years later, exclaimed that the motet ‘… can be justly set above any number of the new songs emerging daily.’ In contrast, Planxit autem David (track 12) is a mature work, and one of Josquin’s most monumental exercises in dramatic declamation. The text is from 2 Samuel 1:17-27 and conveys David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan. Glarean, again, provides a most suitable description of the work:
Concerning the beginning of this song, I have no doubt that some are going to exclaim: "Mountains are in labor, but a funny little mouse is born" [Horace, Ars poetica I. 139]. But they do not consider carefully that throughout this entire song there has been preserved the mood appropriate to the mourner, who at first is wont to cry out frequently, and then, turning gradually to melancholy complaints, to murmur subduedly and presently to subside, and sometimes, when emotion breaks forth anew, to raise his voice again and to emit a cry; all these things we see observed very beautifully in this song, just as it is also apparent to the observing. Nor is there anything in this song that is not worthy of its composer. He has everywhere expressed most wonderfully the mood of lamenting, as immediately after the beginning of the tenor, at the word "Jonathan."
Josquin’s secular works stand in great contrast to his sacred output, and the music reflects more courtly pursuits than religious themes. Of the 36 secular works for three voices listed in volume 27 of The New Josquin Edition six are flagged as a composition ‘of doubtful authorship’; a further thirteen are labelled ‘spurious’ and omitted from the edition. The five un-texted compositions, seemingly secure in the Josquin canon, are here recorded with a ‘renaissance’ harp, and all are well suited to the instrument (tracks 7, 10, 12, 16, 19; see Andrew Lawrence-King’s note below). Of these Ile Fantazies de Joskin and La Bernardina contain no reference to borrowed material, and are among the earliest examples of freely composed instrumental works that were to become standard in later generations.
Of the texted works, there is little in the sources to suggest whether they should be performed by voices, instruments or a mixture of both. The three recorded here represent Josquin’s differing stylistic approaches to the genre. Milles regretz (track 8) is a late work and freely composed, and one of his most beautiful settings; the theme is typical of the romantic chansons of the period. Less typical is the vibrant, almost ‘fantasia-like’ setting of the old ballad tune Qui belles amours (track 13) which sparks an interplay between the upper voice and the lower three, especially at the word ‘souvent’. Adieu mes amours (track 18) is a very late example of a rondeau, though the music departs from the conventional forme fixe. The theme is, again, one of the agonies of love, the text imparting colourful erotic undertones.
David Skinner, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
A Note on the ‘Renaissance’ harp
Andrew Lawrence-King
The typical European harp of Josquin's time was what we now refer to as the "Gothic" harp, a delicately built instrument with about 24 strings of plain gut, mentioned in Machaut's Le Dit de la Harpe as early as the mid-14th century. As described by Glarean in his Dodecachordon (Basle, 1547), this gives the harp a diatonic range of just over three octaves from low FF, corresponding to the normal renaissance range of human voices from bass to soprano.
The harp would be re-tuned to the mode of each piece, and Bermudo's Declaración (Osuna, 1555) gives tunings with sharps in one octave, flats in another, to suit the requirements of particular modes. More complex chromatic tunings could be employed, within the practical limits set by the need to preserve a reasonable string-tension for each note. Bermudo also describes how players would temporarily raise the pitch of a string for an occasional sharp by pushing one finger against the string, but often it would be more effective to adjust the music 'to create polyphonic lines suitable for the harp.'
The sound of the renaissance harp was characterised by a 'buzzing and rattling sound of the strings, when they hit and are struck against the wooden pins that hold the strings in the body of the harp'. According to Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum II (Wolfenbüttel, 1619), this resonance, similar to the trompette effect on a hurdy-gurdy or the sound of tromba marina, 'is what the man in the street would call typical of the harp.'