Throughout the Middle Ages, veneration of local martyrs and miracle workers continually increased, leading to the creation of location-specific liturgical services and music to celebrate these saints’ feast days. One such creation is Matthaeus Pipelare’s Missa de Sancto Livino. Pipelare drew from a large body of texts and liturgical chant unique to Ghent, ultimately weaving twenty plainsong melodies into his polyphonic mass. His methods of integration varied; while he seldom quoted these chants in their entirety, he typically quoted portions faithfully or modestly paraphrased them. His mass demonstrates that local traditions of liturgy and chant exerted influence upon sacred polyphonic compositions.

Examination of the relationship between Pipelare’s mass and its plainsong sources allows the discovery that Pierre de la Rue’s Missa de Sancto Job was modeled directly upon Pipelare’s Missa de Sancto Livino. La Rue’s treatment of Pipelare’s cantus firmi and melodic motives demonstrates that he was not familiar with the plainsong melodies in their original contexts, or, at the least, he used Pipelare’s mass as his source. La Rue’s mass therefore is another example of the widespread practice in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of finding inspiration for new polyphonic compositions in the materials of existing polyphonic works. Tables and schematic diagrams show the distribution of texts and melodies within the Missa de Sancto Livino and the Missa de Sancto Job.

Works: Matthaeus Pipelare: Missa de Sancto Livino (171, 177, 184-98); Pierre de la Rue: Missa de Sancto Job (199-213).

Sources: Matthaeus Pipelare: Missa de Sancto Livino (200-213).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

English musicians and their music were more prominent on the Continent after 1450 than has previously been thought. Walter Frye’s three masses, five motets, and four chansons demonstrate the particularly English style with which Continental composers had direct contact. Other composers, such as Josquin, Le Rouge, Agricola, Tinctoris, and Obrecht, drew upon Frye’s works in their own compositions. Through manuscript study and comparison of musical structure between his works, it can be determined that most of Frye’s works were transmitted as contrafacta, systematically fitted with new texts in French, Italian, or Latin instead of English. This transmission history demonstrates that Frye’s music was valued on the Continent and that it may be possible to identify more English works in Continental manuscripts after 1450.

Works: Walter Frye: Sospitati dedit (183-84, 193-95, 199), O sacrum convivium (183-94, 199), Ave Regina (187-97, 199), Trinitatis dies (193, 196, 199), O florens rosa (193-94, 199).

Sources: Walter Frye: Myn hert is lust (183, 185-89, 191, 199), Alas, alas, alas is my chief song (183-99), So ys emprentid (183, 185-91, 196-97, 199, 201), The princesse of youth (185, 188, 197).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

Much scholarship has emphasized the development of the cyclic mass as a watershed moment in music history that ushered in the music of the Renaissance. Among these cyclic masses, cantus firmus masses have been singled out as historically and artistically superior to songs, motets, and other masses because of their unified aesthetic and coherence over a larger form. These modern perceptions, however, do not align with fourteenth- and fifteenth-century realities: the writings of theorists, copying records, executors’ accounts, contemporary remarks, and musical manuscripts show that masses, whether based on cantus firmi or not, were not necessarily viewed as larger units until the mid-fifteenth century, and structural coherence was not a primary concern. Rather, mass movements were conceived as separate motets and valued as demonstrations of the greatest diversity of musical expressions and compositional techniques. Modern emphasis on the importance of cyclic masses (and especially the cantus firmus mass) and their unified structural elements were largely constructs of Hegelian- and Enlightenment-influenced thinking. By suggesting that composers such as Du Fay united their music with aesthetic rather than liturgical considerations in mind, nineteenth century scholars portrayed these composers as some of the first self-conscious artists, building upon the past, yet freeing themselves from external constraints and exercising their genius.

Index Classifications: General, 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

Six masses from Trent 88, 89, and 91 take their pre-existent material not from the plainchant repertory, but from secular songs. Four of these masses—Missa Wünschlichen schön and Missa Deutsches Lied from Trent 89, and Missa Sig säld und heil and Missa Zersundert ist das junge Herz mein from Trent 91—draw their tenors from Tenorlieder, polyphonic arrangements of German-texted melodies found only in sources from south Germany and Silesia. These four masses treat their borrowed material in similar ways, of which the most distinctive is the use of “block quotations.” In all four masses, the original song discantus always appears with the borrowed tenor so as to preserve the two parts’ contrapuntal relationship in the model song. These block quotations unify these masses as cycles and give them their fundamental character: some reference to the discantus-tenor framework of the model setting takes place in almost every movement of each mass, with the strongest model statements consistently placed in the Kyrie and in the Agnus Dei. Two other masses, Touront’s Missa Monÿel and the anonymous Missa Gentil madonna mia contain songs of unknown origin that act as a cyclic basis. Like the Tenorlieder masses, these two masses are organized around the use of block quotations of the discantus and tenor voices from the model song and feature the striking restatement of the song in the Agnus Dei. These common elements suggest an “Austrian manner” of song mass composition, reflective of peculiarly Austrian forms and tastes that prevailed where the masses were created.

Works: Anonymous: Missa Wünschlichen schön (214-37); Anonymous: Missa Deutsches Lied (214-37); Anonymous: Missa Sig säld und heil (214-37); Anonymous: Missa Zersundert ist das junge Herz mein (214-37); Touront: Missa Monÿel (237-38); Anonymous: Missa Gentil madonna mia (237, 248-55).

Sources: Gregorian Chant: Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor (220-21), Credo IV (Credo Cardinale) (220-21); Anonymous: Sig säld und heil (221-22).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

Scholars have perceived polytextual Franco-Flemish polyphony from 1450 to 1530 as medieval (rather than Renaissance) in style. In reality, such polyphony from this era demonstrates complexity, obscure symbolism, deliberate artificiality, and ingenuity that are all mannerist features from a more Renaissance than medieval spirit.

Polytextual polyphony from this era exhibits the mannerist tendency to demonstrate obscure relationships through uniting disparate texts and musical topoi in a deliberately artificial and ingenious form. Motets on sacred subjects were constructed on secular cantus firmi or on liturgical melodies whose original text differed from that of the polyphonic setting. Double- and triple-texted chansons often quoted one or more pre-existent melodies whose musical style and textual content differ radically from their polyphonic context. Besides uniting diverse melodic and poetic styles, the double chanson in its mature phase fuses antithetical structures, combining the asymmetrical formes fixes with symmetrical forms in canonic layout. As a result, each composition displays a starling disparity of musical styles. This disparity of styles is what distinguishes Renaissance polytextual polyphony from medieval polyphony: medieval polyphony strove to unify various elements into a coherent whole, while Renaissance polyphony deliberately juxtaposed various elements in a complex manner.

Works: Busnois: Puis qu’aultrement – Marchez là dureau (20-27); Compère: Plaine d’ennuy – Anima mea (28-29); Josquin: Videte omnes populi (30).

Sources: Anonymous (Sarum chant): Circumdederunt me (30).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

To secure Ives’s compositional reputation against modernist criticism, revisionist scholars have adapted the untenable position that Charles Ives was a modernist composer. Such characterizations attempt to situate his music within Western European tradition and refute the categorization of Ives as an experimentalist. Two critical processes, the idea of experimentalism and the use of musical analysis, are important to understanding how Ives’ reputation was created. In post-1974 Ives scholarship, music analysis is often used as a determinant of aesthetic value. It is frequently employed to “prove” that Ives’s music is systematic and logical, and by extension is skilled and therefore valuable. This motivation also lies behind scholarship which demonstrates how Ives’s music is more “traditional” and how it relates to European art music. For example, some scholars have tried to show how Ives’s uses of musical borrowings fit into a European tradition. Such traditionalist studies seek to redefine the term “experimentalism” as it was originally conceived in the 1930s by Cowell—a type of music which deliberately sought to break with European tradition—to a term that signifies compositional uniqueness. The motivations of such analyses, which have attempted to place Ives’s musical reputation within a context of “skill and value,” should be examined. Perhaps Ives’s music, aspects of which (such as his uses of pre-existing music) intentionally undermine conventions, should not be subject to formalist analysis and scholars should instead examine the validity of evaluating Ives through a modernist lens rather than characterize his music as modernist.

Works: Ives: Tone Roads No. 1 (104), Study No. 5 (104), The Cage (104), Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass., 1840-60) (105-6).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Kate Altizer, Chelsea Hamm, Amanda Jensen

The manuscript Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini, Basevi 2439 contains three sacred tricinia pieces, one by Ghiselin and two by Pierre de la Rue. They share multiple stylistic traits: considerable length, textless dissemination, foundation on a plainchant cantus firmus, and active superius and tenor voices that are often closely imitative and share short melodic motives. La Rue’s pieces are most interesting because of their interrelationship with other contemporary pieces. His Sancta Maria virgo uses a pre-existent melody and text that have not been identified. What is traceable is Nicolas Craen’s borrowing from La Rue’s Sancta Maria virgo, using the beginning, middle, and end of the secunda pars for the beginning, middle, and end of his Ecce video. Craen’s work is a straightforward parody but is an early example of this type of reworking, and the relationship is completely disguised through use of a different title. La Rue’s Si dormiero is part of a possible subset of the sacred tricinia genre: pieces of sacred origin with incipits that begin with the Latin conjunction “si” followed by the first person singular future perfect tense of a Latin verb. This interconnectedness is underscored in the final piece in Basevi, Ninot’s Si bibero, a secular Latin work that invokes multiple such “si” pieces through text and music fragments. By borrowing music from sacred pieces in his secular work, Ninot perverts their texts and adopts their musical style, fitting and flaunting the very genre of sacred tricinia.

Works: Johannes Ghiselin: O florens rosa (168-69); Pierre de la Rue: Sancta Maria virgo (169-73, 180-81), Si dormiero (173-93); Nicolas Craen: Ecce video (171-73); Ninot: Si bibero (176-96).

Sources: Anonymous: O florens rosa (168-69); Pierre de la Rue: Sancta Maria virgo (171-73), Si dormiero (173-92).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

Nearly fifty extant masses and a few other pieces are based on the L’homme armé tune that probably dates from the first half of the fifteenth century. One of the earliest polyphonic settings of this tune, the combinative three-voice chanson Il sera par vous – L’homme armé located in the Mellon chansonnier, was most likely composed by Du Fay at Cambrai in Burgundy. Du Fay’s authorship of text and tune is consistent with his friendship with Symon le Breton (to whom the text refers in a jesting manner) as well as stylistic similarities with some of Du Fay’s other works. Shortly afterwards, Du Fay and Ockeghem each wrote masses based upon the L’homme armé tune, although it is unclear what relationship they have to Du Fay’s Il sera par vous – L’homme armé. These masses were probably written around the same time, as they borrow and pay tribute to the other through musical style or technical aspects. These three works, therefore, stand at the beginning of polyphonic composition based on the L’homme armé tune.

Works: Anonymous: Il sera par vous – L’homme armé (Mellon chansonnier) (314-18, 325-28); Busnois: Missa L’homme armé (326, 336, 351); Ockeghem: Missa L’homme armé (327-34); Du Fay: Missa L’homme armé (327-34).

Sources: Anonymous: L’homme armé (Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS VI E 40) (307-9); Anonymous: Il sera par vous – L’homme armé (Mellon chansonnier) (314-18, 325-28).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

The origins and authorship of a fifteenth century mass found in Siena, Biblioteca comunale degli Intronati, K. I.2, have been subject to much scholarly debate. This mass uses a variety of songs as cantus firmi, most of which remain unidentified. The identification of two cantus firmi, however, supports the idea of Obrecht as composer of the Siena mass. One cantus firmus from the Agnus Dei of the Siena mass is found in the Agnus Dei of Obrecht’s Missa Plurimorum carminum I. The second cantus firmus is derived from the German chorale Ach Gott von Himmel sieh darein, first published in 1410 as a German song with the words Begirlich in dem hertzen min. Two other works also borrow this chorale, Obrecht’s Laet u gehnoughen liever Johan and an anonymous Gaude mater in gaudio. The similarities in melody and structure between these three works lead to the conclusion that Obrecht composed both the Gaude mater in gaudio and the Siena mass.

Works: Anonymous: Missa (Siena, Biblioteca comunale degli Intronati, K. I.2) (447-76); Gaspar van Weerbeke: O salutaris hostia (457-71); Anonymous: Gaude mater in gaudio (457-71); Obrecht: Laet u ghenoughen liever Johan (457-71).

Sources: Obrecht: Missa Plurimorum carminum I (456-58, 471-77); Anonymous: Begirlich in dem hertzen min (456-71).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

A prominently depicted theme in Medieval liturgy, religious art and drama, and folkloric practices was that of Genesis 3:15, in which a savior of humankind crushes the head of the serpent (i.e., the Devil). This promise of the victory of good over evil is represented musically in three fifteenth-century polyphonic masses and a Marian polyphonic motet. These four works use as a cantus firmus the melisma on the word “caput” (head) from the Sarum antiphon Venit ad Petrum. Therefore, incorporation of this melisma (which represents the “head” of the serpent) creates a specific meaning (the conquering of the devil/sin by Christ or the Virgin Mary) that unites these four seemingly disparate works.

A Caput mass by an anonymous English composer served as progenitor of two other masses composed on the same cantus firmus: Missa Caput by Ockeghem, composed in the late 1450s, and a Missa Caput composed by Obrecht in the late 1480s. Ockeghem’s use of canon, Obrecht’s migration of the Caput melisma through all voices of his mass, and both composers’ employment of the cantus firmus in the lowest voice (thereby creating unusual harmonies) serve as musical illustrations of the struggle and ultimate victory of Christ and the Virgin Mary over the Devil. While the Caput mass tradition died out by end of the fifteenth century, Richard Hygons set the Marian text Salve regina to the Caput melody around 1500, tying in the increasing importance of the cult of the Virgin Mary with existing traditions of Mary as “she who crushes the dragon’s head.”

Works: Anonymous: Missa Caput (537-41, 567-72, 581-84, 595-602); Ockeghem: Missa Caput (539-41, 567-72, 581-91, 595-602); Obrecht: Missa Caput (539-41, 567-72, 581-84, 592-602); Richard Hygons: Salve regina (598-600).

Sources: Anonymous: Missa Caput (537-41, 567-72, 581-84, 595-602); Anonymous (Sarum antiphon): Venit ad Petrum (541-72, 581-84).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

Ives’s eighteen German songs form an important link between his earlier and later works. The songs demonstrate his wish to conform to prevailing art music trends in Europe while also exhibiting his determination to be original and push inherited musical idioms to the limit. Ives’s German language songs were likely a personal project, influenced by his previous composition of sentimental ballads. His rich harmonic language in these sentimental ballads deviated from the norms of the genre, an approach Ives continued in his German songs by using unorthodox harmonies, forms, and melodies. His German songs may be classified in three categories based on approximate composition date: 1894-1897, 1897-1898, and 1898-1902. Songs from the first group are the most conservative and are most similar to sentimental ballads. Those from the second group use poems that were associated with earlier settings by European composers and thus invite direct comparison with the European masters. Songs from the third group continue the ideas Ives initiated in the second group and use increased dissonance and chromaticism in the service of text expression. A table of all of Ives’s German songs lists reworked and alternate titles, text incipits, authors, and sources.

Works: Ives: Leise zieht (144-47), An Old Flame (149, 155), At Parting (150-55, 158), My Lou Jennine (153-56), Feldeinsamkeit (157-62), Zum Drama “Rosamunde” (159, 163), Du bist wie eine Blume (159-60), Wiegenlied (160), Wie Melodien zieht es mir (160-62), Ich grolle nicht (157-63), Die Lotosblume (160), Mir klingt ein Ton (160-61), Weil’ auf mir (163-64).

Sources: Grieg: Gruß (144-47); Mendelssohn: Gruß (144-47); Robert Franz: Leise zieht durch mein Gemüth (144-46); James Rogers: At Parting (150-53); Schumann: Ich grolle nicht (161); Brahms: Feldeinsamkeit, Op. 86, No. 2 (162-63).

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: Nathan Blustein, Amanda Jensen, Christine Wisch

Four German manuscripts of the fifteenth century (Lochamer Liederbuch and Fundamentum organisandi, bound together as Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus. MS 60413; Schedelsches Liederbuch, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cim. 351a; and Buxheimer Orgelbuch, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cim. 352b = Mus. MS 3725) contain a number of French, Italian or English pieces that were adapted or altered through instrumental arrangement or replacement of the original English, French, or Italian texts with German or Latin texts. These four manuscripts form a cohesive group with regard to time of origin and contents, as each manuscript includes foreign pieces also present in the other manuscripts. Therefore, these manuscripts are useful for understanding dissemination of foreign works, demonstrating the popularity of well-known composers such as Du Fay as well as the popularity in Germany of lesser-known composers such as Johannes Touront.

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen

Oswald von Wolkenstein, a fifteenth century German poet and composer, is unique in that his works have been handed down in manuscripts devoted to him alone. By comparing these two manuscripts (Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2777, known as Wolkenstein manuscript A, and Wolkenstein manuscript B) with other Germanic and non-Germanic manuscripts, it has become clear that Oswald used pre-existent melodies as a vehicle and starting point for his newly-created texts. Twelve polyphonic songs in these manuscripts have been identified as contrafacta of pieces that were widely disseminated throughout Germany. Furthermore, he did not make contrafacta of only older Ars Nova pieces, as had previously been assumed by scholars. He also used contemporary Burgundian polyphonic pieces, as is evident from the newly discovered models A son plaisir by Pierre Fontaine and La plus jolie by Nicolas Grenon.

Works: Oswald von Wolkenstein: Vierhundert jar auff erd (192-99, 203-7), Wer die ougen will verschüren (200-207), Ave mater o Maria (207-14).

Sources: Pierre Fontaine: A son plaisir (192-99); Nicolas Grenon: La plus jolie et la plus belle (200-207).

Index Classifications: 1300s, 1400s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen