Sacred Music - From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century [CD 5-6]

CD 5

Messe de Notre Dame
01. Kyrie [06:11]
02. Gloria [04:10]
03. Credo [05:49]
04. Sanctus [03:57]
05. Agnus Dei [03:16]
06. Ite miss est [01:02]
The Orlando Consort
Missa Pange lingua
07. Kyrie [02:43]
08. Gloria [04:57]
09. Credo [07:03]
10. O Salutaris [01:01]
11. Agnus [07:04]
Ensemble Clément Janequin, dir. Dominique Visse
Messe 'La Bataille'
12. Kyrie [02:58]
13. Gloria [04:14]
14. Credo [05:49]
15. Sanctus [04:02]
16. Agnus Dei [05:12]
Ensemble Clément Janequin, dir. Dominique Visse

CD 6

 ASSUS, PALESTRINA, BYRD
LASSUS - Missa 'Tous les regretz'
01. I - Kyrie [03:09]
02. II - Gloria [04:37]
03. III - Credo [07:26]
04. IV - Sanctus [03:25]
05. V - Agnus Dei [03:38]
Huelgas-Ensemble, dir. Paul Van Nevel
Palestrina - Missa 'Viri Galilaei'
06. I - Kyrie [03:58]
07. II - Gloria [04:44]
08. III - Credo [07:33]
09. IV - Sanctus [03:23]
10. V - Benedictus [02:10]
11. VI - Agnus Dei I [01:59]
12. VII - Agnus Dei II [02:08]
La Chapelle Royale - Ensemble Organum
Dir. Philippe Herreweghe
13. I - Kyrie [02:25]
14. II - Gloria [05:16]
15. III - Credo [06:56]
16. IV - Sanctus [02:06]
17. V - Benedictus [01:27]
18. VI - Agnus Dei [03:30]
Pro Arte Singers, dir. Paul Hillier

THE POLYPHONIC MASS FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE

Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame was probably composed in the early 1360s. With all the subsequent
developments of western classical music it is astonishing that, even today, performances of this stunning masterpiece can still
have the power to evoke audience reactions ranging from shock to incredulity. Employing dazzling rhythmic exuberance and
a harmonic language that seemingly flies in the face of convention, both medieval and modern, this radical work occupies a
sound-world that defies simple definition. Every generation that has experienced this music has been able to listen to it as if
it were ‘new’ music. Presenting the Messe offers a wonderfully liberating licence to discard pre-ordained musical labels, and
it is this freedom that has inspired the juxtaposition of the pieces presented in this collection. The gap of nearly 650 years
between the composition of the oldest and newest works becomes an irrelevancy.

Machaut’s personal inspiration for writing the Messe may have been intimations of his own mortality. Born some time around
the year 1300, he was, by the standards of his day, an old man and he was in poor health. Despite his international fame as a
poet, he was given little respect at court when attending the Dauphin, Charles, Duke of Normandy, ridiculed in particular for
his infatuation with the teenage dedicatee of his poems, Peronne. All this was set against the background of desperate times:
the Black Death was a very recent memory, and France was still suffering appallingly from the ravages of the ongoing Hundred
Years War. While the Messe would surely have been sung in Guillaume’s own lifetime, his will established a fund that would
help to pay for a posthumous weekly sung celebration of Mass in Reims Cathedral in his memory.

Broadly speaking, the movements of the Messe adopt two styles. The Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei are lyrical and sensual,
employing long, sweeping phrases. Dissonances are paraded totally shamelessly, right up to the point where pain crosses
seamlessly into ecstasy. (Although medieval and modern perceptions of dissonance differ, the harmonies defy the standard
rules of both medieval and modern consonance.) Even in these gentle movements, however, there are moments of intricate
syncopation that relate to the general exuberance of the Gloria, Credo and Ite missa est. Here there is an urgency in the rapid
statement of the texts that is broken only for very specific reasons: the slow statement of ‘et in terra pax’ (‘. . . and on earth
peace’) in the Gloria, for example, is surely a reference to the existing state of war, while, as noted by the Machaut scholar
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ‘ex Maria Virgine’ (‘. . . of the Virgin Mary’) in the Credo pointedly alludes to the dedication of Reims
Cathedral to Our Lady. There is a cumulative power and drive contained in the music, both slow and fast, pulling the listener
onward. For pure, unrestrained fervour and joy, the ‘Amen’ section of the Gloria, with its extraordinary vocal pyrotechnics in
the lowest voice, is utterly remarkable. – A. S.

THE RENAISSANCE MASS

During the Renaissance, masses were the most highly regarded genre of polyphonic music because of their religious ‘status’
and because they were a means of measuring the mastery of compositional technique. Destined for the liturgy, the polyphonic


Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. In this respect the creation of the cyclic mass was the most novel and durable
musical invention of the fifteenth century. In its final form, the mass was compositionally organised in five parts forming a
cycle unified by a melodic element common to the five movements called the cantus firmus (fixed chant). This ‘borrowed’
melody appeared throughout the mass as an unchanging ‘constant’. The principle was not new in itself: in the Middle Ages
polyphony was born out of the addition of a new voice to an existing Gregorian melody. The true innovation was in the
construction’s monumental character (five parts) beginning with a single element. It should be pointed out that the cantus
firmus, most often presented in long note-values, could come from either the secular or the religious repertory.

However, in the cantus firmus mass the added voices were generally not based on the borrowed melody, sung by the tenor. On
the contrary, in the paraphrase mass the cantus firmus largely supplied the thematic material for the voices that ‘surrounded’
this melodic core. The cantus firmus mass might be compared to a medieval painting that juxtaposes several disparate scenes
around the principal theme. The paraphrase mass, in which all the voices are generally ‘equal partners’ united by their
melodic relationship, derives from a conception proper to the Renaissance where perspective establishes links between all the
elements. The Missa ‘Pange Lingua’ by Josquin Desprez (c.1440-1521), the most famous composer of his time, certainly
constitutes one of the most eloquent examples of the paraphrase mass: in all parts of this magnificent work the melody of the
Gregorian hymn serves as the starting point for rich imitative counterpoint infusing all the voices.

Built on the hymn Pange lingua (in the third tone) for the Feast of Corpus Christi, Josquin’s composition is clearly intended
for the Corpus Christi Mass. At least two of the manuscript sources which have come down to us designate it as Missa de
Venerabili Sacramento.

Musicologists agree that it is a late work, probably composed in the last fifteen years of his life (around 1515). In any case,
Petrucci does not seem to have known it in 1514, because he did not include it in his third volume of the composer’s masses.
Moreover, it was not to be published until much later, in 1539, in the Missae Tredecim by the German publisher Ott. In about
1517, at any rate, it was already known in Italy, because the lutenist Vincenzo Capirola put it into tablature. The mass seems
to have been very well known and widely performed throughout Europe: it is found in at least sixteen manuscripts and four
printed editions in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

The tune of the hymn Pange lingua serves as the material or ‘subject’ throughout the Ordinary. In this the mass stands apart
from other works like Josquin’s Missa ‘De Beata Virgine’, where in fact it is the melodies of the Ordinary that furnish the
respective subjects for each of the movements: this mass is, therefore, placed under the sign of variety, as in a plainchant
Ordinary. By contrast, the Missa ‘Pange lingua’ is all formal unity, like the masses constructed on a single theme, such as
the Missae ‘L’Homme arme’ or ‘Hercules Dux Ferrariae’ by the same composer. However, the use made by Josquin of the
fundamental melody is quite different from the old cantus firmus technique used all through the fifteenth century – in the
two masses mentioned above, for example. Here the tune is treated with great freedom: paraphrased and developed in all
the parts, it irrigates, as it were, the polyphonic texture, essentially constituted of counterpoint in imitation. The reader will
understand, however, that the liturgical intention, superficially neglected, is here transcended to make way for a more elevated
sense of the liturgical situation, that of the Feast of Corpus Christi itself, emblematically stamped on the whole work by the
‘popular’ tune of the hymn, Pange lingua. – J.-P. O.

The two masses left by Janequin (in fact, the polyphonic setting of the five sections of the Ordinary, which publishers and
copyists got into the habit of designating by the term Missa, followed by a musical reference that enabled the piece in question
to be identified) belong to the technique called the missa parodia: the composer borrowed, either from one of his own works


adapting it to the Latin text of the Ordinary which was familiar to everyone. The composer’s skill in using the basic material
of the earlier piece, drawing close to it and moving away from it without becoming incoherent, according to the prosodic and
semantic demands of the new situation, was at that period regarded as confirming his prestige quite as effectively as a new
work would.

The Missa ‘La Bataille’, on the superb invitatory opening of Janequin’s La Guerre (a piece that should be regarded as
much as a cantata as a chanson), was published in Lyon in 1532 by Jacques Moderne in a sumptuously printed collection of
six masses ‘by famous authors’. It is thought to date from Janequin’s period in Anjou. The singer familiar with the earlier piece
has no difficulty in grasping the spatial characteristics and the almost heraldic sonorities which are maintained throughout
the mass. But the most thrilling aspect of all is perhaps the ‘conversion’, through the grace of God and the composer’s skill,
of a battle-song (which was listened to in fear and trembling) into a song of peace in the three settings of the Agnus Dei, so
simple and direct. – J.-Y. H.

Lassus’s mass is not built on a monophonic melody, but on a polyphonic chanson by Nicolas Gombert, Tous les regretz,
which gives the work its name. Lassus retains all the basic ingredients of Gombert’s chanson: the six voices, the ‘tonality’
(Dorian mode on G), the melodic elements, and the striking harmonic twists. But of course he does not confine himself
to meekly reusing Gombert’s material. He takes over and transforms the themes, embroidering them, developing them
to adapt them to the text and structure of the mass. In so doing, he produces a textbook example of the sixteenth-century
‘parody mass’, a technique whereby a pre-existing work, while still remaining the basis of the piece, underwent a complete
contrapuntal metamorphosis. – P. V. N.

The publication dates of Palestrina’s works offer no reliable evidence, in the present state of our knowledge, of their exact
place in his creative career. A fair number of these publications were posthumous, as is the case, for instance, of the Missa
‘Viri Galilaei’ (based on the motet of the same name), which was published only in 1601, seven years after the composer’s
death, in the Missarum . . . Liber Duodecimus, by Scotto of Venice.

Here the initial subjects of the two parts of the motet from which the mass is derived provide the opening invention of each of
the main parts respectively of the movements in several sections. Palestrina demonstrates a consummate mastery of the art
of variation, worthy of contending with the most inventive instrumental composers: a virtually inexhaustible practice of truly
virtuoso combinatorics, handled without a trace of aridity. Technique is here deployed to serve the text, as is borne out by the
musical exploitation of the numerous anaphoric movements of the Credo and the Gloria – in other words, in the service of
the Christian message.

The association of musical images of the Ascension (‘Ascendit Deus’) and the Crucifixion is not the result of chance, but
a deliberate choice replete with meaning, an illuminating metaphor, a provocative and significant brachylogy: Palestrina
composes as a preacher, his polyphony is a sermon. What he is offering us here is no less than a theological commentary on
Jesus’ words as reported by St John: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying
what death he should die’ (John XII. 32-33). – J.-P. O.

William Byrd’s settings of the Roman Catholic liturgical texts are a remarkable testament not only to his immense musical skill
but also to his tenacity. He was apparently a convert, since the brothers whom John Harley writes about in his recent biography
(1997) were Protestant. William could have accommodated his religion to the prevailing climate. Instead he chose the harder


Byrd wrote three settings of the Ordinary, one each for three, four and five voices, and took the possibly dangerous course
of having them printed (if not officially published). As Peter Clulow has demonstrated, Thomas East, Byrd’s regular printer,
undertook the work, leaving the slim four-page partbooks untitled, possibly as a precaution. The four-voice setting was
the first to be printed, in 1592-93; it makes a specific reference to the ‘Meane’ Mass of Byrd’s early Tudor predecessor, John
Taverner, as well as following its ground plan fairly faithfully – a strategy that raises significant questions about Byrd’s intent.
In the Sanctus, Byrd uses Taverner’s opening point of imitation (in a much more developed manner) and, to hammer home
what he is doing, he also briefly refers to Taverner’s ‘tail motif’, a passage at the end of the Hosanna whose slightly archaic
character Byrd camouflages by making it appear to arise quite naturally out of his preceding line. – P. Be.