The Orlando Consort, a Reminiscence, Part 2

NOTE: All of the music on this program is features the Orlando Consort and our guest Angus Smith. For more information on this ensemble::

http://www.orlandoconsort.com/

I. Josquin Desprez: Motets. Archiv CD463 473-2

Motets are non-liturgical sacred vocal works, not strictly related to the Mass but frequently sung between missal sessions. Their format therefore is basically different from the formal liturgical music of the ‘Mass’.

Most of the Renaissance motets are Marian, related to either the Blessed Virgin or Mary Magdalene. In writing polyphonic settings of psalms, Josquin was a pioneer.

Josquin's motets are not, however, free in form, for he invariably used some kind of compositional constraint on the process, varying from almost strictly homophonic settings with block chords and syllabic text declamation to highly ornate contrapuntal fantasias. The psalm settings which combined these extremes with the addition of rhetorical figures foreshadowed the later development of the madrigal.

Many of Josquin’s motets are for four voices, an ensemble size which had become the compositional norm around 1500, and he also was a considerable innovator in writing motets for five and six voices.

One of Josquin's two settings of De profundis clamavi (Psalm 130), both of which are often considered to be among his most significant accomplishments, is included here. Indeed, psalm settings form a large proportion of the motets of his later years.

This album was recorded for DG (Archiv) in 1999 and reissued late in the 2000s decade by the budget label Brilliant. This was in fact recorded just before Britain's Orlando Consort, a male quartet here augmented with a couple of other singers, went on to wide popularity with their recordings of sacred and secular Renaissance music.

Here the 16 Josquin motets contain some of the greatest hits of this genre.

The Orlando's high level of musicianship, combining both technical accuracy and expression, is everywhere in evidence. Josquin's uncanny polyphonic structures from the simplest of materials at the beginning of a piece is traced with perfect clarity by the Orlando Consort, while the expressive dimension of a piece like De Profundis Clamavi (track 3), with the first-person "voice" gaining power as it climbs out of the depths all the while staying within the confines of a strict canon, is beautifully done.

This album is a brilliant alternative way of performing Josquin.

II. Loyset Compère. Hyperion CD CDA68069.

Since the Orlando Consort issued their earlier recording of music by Compère, over twenty years ago, there has been a major upheaval in our understanding of musical history in the second half of the fifteenth century. Mainly this concerns the birth date of the most famous composer of the time, Josquin Des Prez, once thought to have been born in about 1440 and now believed to be at least ten years younger since it has been discovered that most of the earliest documentation concerned another man entirely who happened to be called ‘Josquin’. But the same has happened to two other major composers of those years: a gorgeous portrait of Jacob Obrecht suddenly came to light, from the school of Memling (it had been in private hands all these years and there was no information even to suspect its existence), clearly stating his age and thus giving him a birth date in the late 1450s; and a recently discovered payment account in Cambrai makes it clear that Alexander Agricola was born in the late 1450s, not the mid-1440s.

Those ten years half a millennium ago may seem of little significance; but they have their impact on the chronology and comparative chronology of almost all music in those years. Compère, described in earlier history books and dictionaries as a ‘lesser contemporary’ of Josquin, now seems a substantially earlier composer. He certainly appears long before Josquin and Obrecht in the manuscripts that we now have; but whereas that was once considered just an erratic feature of their survival it now looks like a fair reflection of the historical picture. The upshot, then, is that Compère now seems to be the true originator of the fully imitative style that was continued and perhaps perfected by Josquin. Nobody much likes talking about ‘originators’ these days: it doesn’t necessarily increase his importance. But it does help to create a perspective from which to hear his music. He was a man fascinated by the way motivic materials can be combined, recombined and shifted around; but he was also a composer who took more risks than many.

Loyset Compère (his first name is a diminutive of ‘Louis’ and therefore has three syllables) was born in about 1445, somewhere near today’s French-Belgian border; but he is first explicitly recorded at the enormous and distinguished Sforza court chapel in Milan from 1474 to 1477. With the public murder of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza on 26 December 1476 the chapel was drastically reduced, and we lose track of Compère for a few years.

But the first piece on this album, the gloriously detailed Magnificat in the first tone, appears in the first of the ‘Gaffuri codices’ at Milan cathedral alongside several other works of Compère. Even though the manuscript may have been copied ten years later, it must represent works that he composed in his three years at Milan; if so, a fairly high proportion of his known sacred music was composed in those three years. Particularly significant here are the motet cycles that he and Gaspar van Weerbeke wrote, as though arising from a need to compose major musical canvases without relying on the text of the Mass Ordinary.

For the next decade, until he turns up as a singer at the French royal court, we have no direct information about Compère. But three of his songs have texts credited to ‘Bourbon’, who seems to have been Duke Jean II of Bourbon (1427–1488), himself a substantial patron of music and resident mostly in Moulins, where he was well away from the baleful influence of his brother-in-law, King Louis XI. Documentation of the music at his court is confined to a chapel-list from the late 1440s (with Johannes Ockeghem among its members); but there are very good grounds for believing that in the 1480s he included not only Compère but also Hayne van Ghizeghem among his musicians. The poems of ‘Bourbon’ are found in Compère’s rondeau settings Vous me faites morir d’envie (track 5) and Ne doibt on prendre quant on donne (track 7). The similar style of the rondeau settings Dictes moy toutes voz pensées (track 3) and the enormous Mes pensées ne me lessent une heure (track 9) suggests that they too may be from the same years.

Those four songs all witness a composer endlessly and resourcefully exploring the possibilities of imitation and motivic manipulation. All are in three voices, occupying three different ranges but with little sense of any one voice being more important than the others. All have passages of considerable floridity in all three voices. All have moments that seem not entirely to work, as though the composer’s contrapuntal ambition was a little beyond his technique (one respect, perhaps, in which he was an innovator, pushing the boundaries). And all are examples of the late flowering of the formes fixes in French song, with music that is almost strophic but has irregular details that make for a far broader musical design: these formes fixes dominated French song for almost two hundred years but began to lose favour in the years around 1480, being almost entirely ignored by Josquin and Obrecht: Compère and Agricola seem to have been their last serious exponents.

The entirely different style of his four-voice songs, with homophonic declamation and freer musical forms, must belong to the following years. As far as the manuscripts allow us to judge, the strophic Ung franc archier (track 6) would be from the late 1480s. But its basic structure occupies a new world: the top two voices are in canon at the fifth, though the interval after which the lower voice enters changes; and the two lower voices use the same material in a less rigorous way. And its text is also of an entirely different kind—strophic, telling a story that is folksy and more or less incomprehensible, though concerning the activities of a peasant soldier.

Une plaisant fillette ung matin se leva (track 4) would be from the 1490s, when Compère was apparently at the French royal court. It is part of a genre that arose around that time: again in four voices, and setting a strophic text but through-composed with new music for each stanza. As before, though, the writing shows the fascination with motivic materials that was present in his earlier works. What is different here is that the text is entirely comprehensible and explicit, describing how the scantily clothed young girl meets a man ‘at arms’, and happily reflects on whether the result will be a girl or a boy: that kind of poem, which became very popular in the sixteenth century, is almost unknown in the forme fixe generations, when the emphasis was always on propriety. Some time around 1480, the whole nature of European music changed; and Une plaisant fillette ung matin se leva is in many ways one example of music that simply could not have happened earlier.

It is harder to date the other two songs included here. The mysterious Au travail suis sans espoir de confort (track 8) could well be the earliest of them all, since its two lower voices occupy the same range, in a manner that is very rare after about 1470. Its text, and to some extent its music, quotes from three songs by Ockeghem, two by Dufay and one by Hayne van Ghizeghem—this last probably composed in the 1460s. Presumably this was a jeu d’esprit and hardly intended to be taken seriously; but the various disparate musical materials are—as elsewhere in Compère—united by the use of motivic tricks.

The motet–chanson Tant ay d’ennuy / O vos omnes (track 2) combines a sad love-song in the upper voices with a text from the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the bassus. It survives in many manuscripts but none dating earlier than the mid-1490s. Nevertheless, the virelai form of the upper-voice text, the way the chant is used, and many further musical details align it with Josquin’s Que vous ma dame / In pace, very likely dating from the 1470s.

Those proposed datings for Compère’s music lead to an interesting conclusion. For Compère, as for so many other composers of the fifteenth century, there are far more datable manuscripts for the songs than for the sacred music, and it becomes much easier to trace a composer’s musical career by looking at the songs. Although Compère lived until 1518 there is nothing in his known secular music that is likely to date from after about 1505. But that should surprise nobody: if he was indeed born in about 1445 he was in his mid-fifties by the turn of the century. Josquin seems to have continued composing until almost the end of his life in 1521 but, as the newly emerging picture seems to show, he was younger than Compère. Compère’s musical output must have come mainly from the years 1465–1500.

This anthology ends with a problem piece—a problem only in that it is not clear whether it is by Compère. Most of the sources for O bone Jesu (track 10) are from Hispanic lands and three of them credit it to Spanish composers: the two earliest name Anchieta and Peñalosa; another names Antonio Ribera. But Petrucci’s third book of Motetti de la corona(1519) credibly gives Compère as the composer; and in these years there is not much evidence of Spanish music in Italian sources. All four composers were active during the first two decades of the sixteenth century; and there is nothing technically here that is beyond any of them. Either way, it is a gorgeous piece, compact, simple and moving. It was one of the most loved sacred works of the early sixteenth century, still being copied almost two hundred years later. It plainly deserves to be recorded. And we hope that hearing it after nine pieces that are certainly by Compère will help the listener to decide whether it belongs.

Composed By [attibuted to] – Loyset Compère

III. The Toledo Summit. Harmonia Mundi CD HMU 907328.

From Classics Today: These days a major event usually is accompanied by swarms of television cameras, blathering announcers, and the very latest “hot” pop star prancing, leaping, and (badly) lip-synching to some canned, ultimately forgettable electronically processed McMusic. How far we’ve come in the 500 years since the occasion commemorated on this CD–the ceremonial visit of Philip the Fair of Burgundy to Spain, hosted by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella! In addition to the banquets, outdoor recreations (including a battle re-enactment), and church services, the five-month-long stay involved numerous musical performances, utilizing the considerable talents of the most prestigious Aragonese and Castilian choirs in addition to the hand-picked band of Burgundian singers and composers Philip brought with him. Although we don’t know exactly what was sung at these events, including liturgical ceremonies at Toledo Cathedral, we do know who the composers on the scene were, and combined with other information found in contemporary songbooks and other documents, we can speculate with some reliability.

As explained in the detailed notes, The Orlando Consort–countertenor Robert Harre-Jones, tenors Charles Daniels and Angus Smith, and baritone Donald Greig–has chosen a program designed to “highlight” the summit’s main events through the music of the composers who were either present or whose works were part of the repertoire of the cathedrals and courts in question. It’s a welcome mix of sacred and secular, and includes the poignant Versa est in luctum (“My harp is turned to mourning”) by Peñalosa, which may have been sung at a memorial for Ferdinand and Isabella’s son-in-law who died during Philip’s visit. Agricola’s Je n’ay dueil (“I have no grief that does not come from you”) is a secular piece similarly compelling with its dolorous melody and affecting beauty, highlighted by countertenor Harre-Jones’ ideal, pure, plaintive vocal quality.

Throughout, the four singers seem completely focused on creating an ensemble whose sound takes a significant measure of its form from the music’s style and text–in other words, unlike many early music groups, this one doesn’t just deliver each piece with the same perfectly blended, elegantly shaped, yet homogeneous vocal character. The sad, contemplative, and more serious pieces immediately put us in that mood because the singers express the texts that way–not simply by modifying the tempo, but more by varying vocal color, reserving accents for only special moments, and allowing a particular voice prominence where the melody demands. This may or may not be completely conscious on the part of the singers–it may just be a result of their grasp of and immersion in the music–but it’s very effective nevertheless.

On the other hand, the livelier pieces–including an anonymous, 42-second-long song with ricocheting voices (“Now you dance; After you, after you,” etc.), La Rue’s Autant en emporte le vent (“So many does the wind carry off”), and Pedro de Lagarto’s Andad, pasiones, andad (“Go on, passion, go on”)–properly emphasize rhythmic (usually syncopated) features and take delight in shading certain words for their importance and special effect. The sophistication and sheer beauty of the two Peñalosa selections–including the closing piece, the Credo from his Missa L’homme armé–makes you wonder why more attention hasn’t been paid to this composer by early music groups.

Somewhere in the middle of this nearly 75-minute program some listeners may wish for an occasional break from the very distinctive four-voice a cappella sound–an instrumental piece or two?–but that’s purely a matter of choice. You don’t have to listen to the whole thing at once. And for most of us, hearing so much of this glorious, ancient music, expertly sung and ideally recorded, provides a happy respite in a world that in certain critical areas (except for those lip-synching, hyper-processed, tonally challenged pop stars) hasn’t really changed much in 500 years.