medieval.org
Ricercar RIC 318
2011
Flandria
1. Tmeisken was jonck [2:31]
Arnold Schlick
2. Sanctus [4:42]
Missa Tmeisken was jonck
3. Tmeisken was jonck [1:01]
4. Ad te clamamus [1:23]
5. La Morra [2:18]
Francesco Spinacino
6. La Morra [3:16]
Firenze
7. Hora e di maggio [1:04]
8. Tart ara [2:17]
9. Fammi una gratia, amore [4:37]
10. Donna die dentro ~ Dammene un pocho ~ Fortuna d'un gran tempo [1:49]
11. O praeclarissima ~ Alla battaglia [4:48]
12. Agnus Dei II [2:21]
Missa La Spagna
13. Quis dabit capiti meo aquam [5:07]
Wien, Innsbruck, Augsburg
14. La mi la sol [3:17]
15. Las rauschen [2:53]
16. Ich stund an einem morgen [7:11]
Heinrich Isaac ~ Ludwig Senfl
17. En l'ombre d'un buissonet [1:40]
18. Innsbruck, ich muss die lassen ~ O welt ~ Criste secundum
(Missa carminum) [6:07]
19. O Maria, mater Christi [7:11]
Capilla Flamenca
Marnix De Cat: contre-ténor / contratenor
Tore Denys: ténor / tenor
Lieven Termont: baryton / baritone
Dirk Snellings: basse / bas
Jan Van Outryve: luth / luit
Liam Fennelly, Thomas Baeté, Piet Stryckers: violes de gambe
/ viola da gamba
Patrick Denecker: flûtes à bec / fluiten
Oltremontano
www.oltremontano.com
Doron David Sherwin: cornet à bouquin / cornetto
Adam Bregman, Harry Ries: trombones ténors / tenortrombone
Wim Becu: trombone basse / bastrombone
Dirk Snellings: direction / leiding
In samenwerking met Davidsfonds / Eufoda
Conception et direction artistique / Concept en artistieke leiding:
Dirk Snellings
Enregistrement / Opname: Provinciaal Museum Begijnhofkerk Sint-Truiden,
mars /maart 2011
Prise de son et direction artistique / Digitale opname en artistieke
leiding: Jo Cops
Montage: Dirk Snellings & Jo Cops
Illustration / Illustratie: Pieter Bruegel l'Ancien (vers 1525/30 -
1569): La Chute d'Icare
Bruxelles, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts / Brussel, Koninklijke
Musea van Schone Kunsten
©akg-images, Paris
Cet enregistrement a été réalisé en
collaboration avec le Festival de musique à Maguelone
HEINRICH ISAAC: A LIFE IN MUSIC
“Thank the magnificent Venetian ambassador for having requested
these songs... if I knew what kinds he likes best, I could have served
him better, because Arrigo [ = Heinrich ] Isaac, their composer, has made
them in different ways, both grave and sweet, and also capricious and
artful”. Thus wrote the de facto ruler of Florence, Lorenzo
de’ Medici, to his Roman envoy in 1491. Unfortunately the book
that he dispatched is now lost, but, judging from the Venetian
ambassador’s reply, the gift of music by the most prestigious
composer that Lorenzo had at his disposal was a success: the ambassador
calls Isaac his “favourite composer”, and goes on to say
that, when it is time for music, there “is nothing more that I
like to hear”. Echoing Lorenzo’s remarks on Isaac’s
multi-facetedness, he confirms that the book offered examples of
“every form of the art”, and that the composer was skilful
in them all. Isaac impressed, then, in his own time, with his
remarkable ability to compose fluently in many different styles. To
judge from the works of his that have survived, it is easy to see why:
Isaac had no shortage of talented contemporaries, but the sheer
quantity of his music that has come down to us, and the bewildering
variety of styles and forms that it covers, are unparalleled by any
other composer of his generation. Not for nothing has more than one
modern scholar called him a musical chameleon.
Our first insight into Isaac’s rise to fame as one of the most
admired musicians of his day comes from the court of Duke Sigismund of
Tyrol at Innsbruck, in 1484. There he appears in the court records
already as a fully fledged composer, meaning that he must have been
born some twenty years or more before. From other, later documents, it
is clear that he originated from the Low Countries, but where precisely
is unknown. Exactly which of Isaac’s surviving works were
composed in the period prior to the Innsbruck reference remains a
matter of debate. Among the more tempting possibilities are the small
number of songs in Dutch that survive under his name. Of these, a
four-voice arrangement of the popular Tmeiskin was jonck, with
the pre-existent song melody in the tenor voice, was published as a
work of Isaac’s in the collection that launched music-printing as
a business, Ottaviano Petrucci’s Odhecaton of 1501. The
attribution was not included in later reprints, and the piece survives
in other, more reliable sources under the name of Jacob Obrecht, making
it likely that the latter was in fact the composer. Nonetheless, the
piece contributed to Isaac’s public persona, for the Petrucci
attribution was believed and repeated by at least one recipient of the
work, the German organist Arnold Schlick: he published a lute
arrangement of the piece in 1512, reducing the texture to three parts,
and adding gentle decorative figuration.
Whether Isaac himself composed the setting of Tmeisken or not,
it is certain that he knew the piece. This is clear from the fact that,
sometime before 1500, though probably after he had left his homeland,
he based a mass on it. The simple tune is subjected to a variety of
“artificial” techniques, for which Renaissance composers
from the Low Countries are famous (or notorious) today. In the first
section of the Sanctus, strict canon is used. The Pleni
and Benedictus put the melody in the top voice, in a song-like
texture, while the Osanna splits it between top voice and bass,
in awesomely long notes. Isaac’s Flemish heritage clearly stayed
with him in later life.
Another work for which an origin during Isaac’s early years in
Flanders has been proposed is Ad te clamamus. The piece is a
section of a larger composition, a complete setting of the Marian
antiphon Salve Regina. Settings of this antiphon, taking the
traditional Gregorian melody associated with the text as a starting
point, were a prominent feature of the fifteenth-century Flemish
soundscape during so-called Salve concerts (performances of
instrumental and vocal music that took place on certain days of the
year and which were free for all to attend). It is not impossible that
Isaac originally conceived the complete Salve setting in such a
context. What is remarkable, however, in the case of Ad te clamamus,
is that the section later took on a life of its own, and circulated
widely as a separate piece from the 1490s onwards, sometimes with the
original text, sometimes with new words, and sometimes without any text
at all (implying instrumental performance). Though short, the section
illustrates an impressively wide array of ways to treat the Gregorian
melody on which it is based: a first phrase uses long notes in the
tenor voice; the next is in imitation between the voices; and
sequential repetition brings the section to a stable close.
Isaac’s 1484 Innsbruck visit seems to have only been in passing,
for he surfaces again, shortly after, in Florence, the city that would
dominate the rest of his life. There, Isaac encountered one of the
liveliest urban musical environments in Europe, under the patronage of
the art-loving Lorenzo whose letter was quoted above. Isaac himself was
employed as one of the singers of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, yet
it is equally clear that he immersed himself in the totality of the
urban environment. Civic occasions often required music, and, in
Florence, among the most important regular such events was Carnival,
the period immediately before Lent. For the 1488 Carnival season, Isaac
composed a work on an unprecedented scale celebrating the recent
Florentine military capture of the fortress of Sarzanello from the
Genoese. The piece — now known as Alla battaglia —
is usually performed instrumentally today, but was originally vocal. A
complete performance would have lasted about a quarter of an hour, as
the music had to be sung three times with a strophic text describing
the battle. Not unusually for Carnival works, the piece was probably
originally performed on a processional wagon as it made its way through
the streets of the city. Alla battaglia must count as one
Isaac’s most popular with modern ensembles, yet an remarkable
letter written by an eye-witness at the première tells us that,
after a spectacular build-up and rehearsals in the utmost secrecy, the
work was met with bewilderment by the unsuspecting Florentine public.
In spite of (or because of) this, there was clearly widespread and
lasting interest in the piece. Sometime in the last decade of the
fifteenth century or early in the sixteenth, it entered a German
source, where it was shortened, and its no-longer-appropriate
occasional text was replaced with a Latin sacred one in honour of Mary,
O praeclarissima. A seamless fit was ensured by the new
text’s careful observance of the music’s accent patterns,
shifting textures, variations of scoring and alterations of meter.
Civic, or possibly theatrical, use is possible also for Fammi una
gratia, Hora e di maggio and La Morra. Fammi
una gratia is a typical representative of Florentine Carnival song
of the time, and a yardstick against which to judge the extraordinary
nature of Alla battaglia: the strophic text, a love lyric in
ballata form, receives a strongly declamatory setting in three voices,
with phrases clearly separated from one another, and a change of
time-signature at the end from two beats per bar to three. Hora e
di maggio, a contribution to the well-established tradition of
songs in praise of Spring, is musically more complicated: the alto and
bass weave a dense texture around the melody (possibly a paraphrase of
a popular tune) in the tenor and top voices. The meaning of the title La
Morra is unclear. Hypotheses include a reference to a game of the
same name and to Ludovico il Moro of Milan. The piece was probably
composed as an original instrumental work, although the fact that it
appears in some sources with the text incipit Donna gentile
warns against drawing too sharp a line with vocal music. Furthermore,
one source calls it Helaes, perhaps in recognition of its
similarities to Isaac’s song Helas que devera. The tenor,
a melody in somewhat longer notes than the surrounding voices, forms
the backbone of the piece. The frequent use of sequential repetition is
especially striking. La morra appears in both three- and
four-voice versions, and, like Tmeisken, it is also preserved
in solo instrumental arrangements, including for the organ, and, in a
collection of 1507 by the Italian virtuoso Francesco Spinacino, for the
lute. Another work possibly intended for instrumental performance is
Isaac’s arrangement of the French song Tart ara. The
original, a song in rondeau form, is a composition (the only one to
survive under his name) by the Burgundian chronicler and poet Jean
Molinet. In Isaac’s beautiful setting, he takes the tenor melody
of the original, sets it in long notes in the middle voice, and
surrounds it with faster figuration on either side.
As is clear from a number of the pieces discussed so far, many of
Isaac’s works are based on pre-existent melodies. Indeed, for the
Renaissance composer, the skilful manipulation of such material was a
primary means of showing their talents. Both Isaac and his
contemporaries customarily drew on both secular songs and the
traditional chant melodies of the church. Yet, alongside these
possibilities, Isaac also had a remarkable ear for less usual materials
and the breadth of vision to consider them worthy of inclusion in his
works. The most unusual include a Muslim call to prayer, a street cry
about sausages, and a courtly dance tune that he must have come across
in Italy, La Spagna. Taking the latter as the basis for a mass,
Isaac kept the model hidden under decoration for most of the setting.
But in the penultimate section, the second Agnus Dei, it is
presented “straight”, in the lowest voice, in a manner akin
to its use in actual dance. The allusion to real dance practices was
enough to cause the section to break away from the mass and appear in
sources independently. Donna di dentro / Dammene un pocho / Fortuna
d’un gran tempo demonstrates yet another way in which Isaac
reacted to the music around him: the piece uses the unusual form of the
quodlibet, a musical type where several pre-existent songs — in
this case all popular Florentine tunes — are combined together.
In 1492 an era in Florentine history ended when Lorenzo de’
Medici died. Isaac marked the death of his beloved patron with an
exquisite motet, Quis dabit capiti meo aquam?. The text, by the
court poet Angelo Poliziano, is full of striking rhetorical techniques
and imagery, and Isaac responded with music that is fully its equal. As
a basis, Isaac took a melodic fragment from the Compline antiphon Salva
nos, which, in its original form, bore the appropriately resonant
text, “et requiescamus in pace”. The borrowed material is
constantly present throughout the entire work, but is most striking in
the second of the motet’s three sections, when the tenor voice
falls silent, and the bass presents it (with its original text) on the
successive notes of a falling scale.
It took little more than two years after Lorenzo’s death for the
Florentine artistic scene to utterly change. Lorenzo’s son Piero
lacked the charisma and vision of his father, and, by 1494, the
Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola had instituted a religious law under
which elaborate liturgical music had no place. The singers of San
Giovanni were disbanded, and Isaac found himself not only without a
position, but immersed in an environment in which his very craft as a
producer of musical art-works was viewed with suspicion. It was clear
that he would have to look for work elsewhere. After what must have
been a very difficult period, he took the highly unconventional step,
in 1496, of leaving Italy for Vienna and the Imperial court of
Maximilian I. With Isaac’s appointment, Maximilian clearly hoped
to elevate his court’s musical standards to a level unrivalled
anywhere in Europe. To achieve this, Isaac entered Maximilian’s
service not as a singer, but as Hofkomponist — court
composer — and thus entered Western music history as the first
musician known to have been employed exclusively to produce musical
works. The position accorded Isaac unprecedented freedom, and was to
have profound consequences both for Isaac’s output, and for the
musical scene in German-speaking lands as a whole.
Isaac’s primary task in his new position was to provide music for
the Imperial chapel. In fulfilment of this, he cultivated two
regionally specific forms — the polyphonic mass proper cycle and
the chant-based alternation-mass — to an unprecedented degree,
and blended them with the most recent Italian trends. Just as
remarkable, in other ways, are the individual motets he produced for
the chapel. These include the imposing O Maria, mater Christi,
a through-composed setting of a Marian sequence, in four sections. A
logical global form is guaranteed by basing the work throughout on the
sequence chant melody, but the diversity of techniques that Isaac
applies to the pre-existent material ensures compelling moment by
moment contrasts.
Despite the prestige of being Imperial Hofkomponist, it is
clear that Isaac longed to return permanently to Italy. In 1502 he
competed for a position at the glamorous court of Ferrara. We are told
that he composed a “very fine motet on a fantasia called La
mi la sol la sol la mi, in just two days” as part of the
selection process. The title refers to a symmetrically constructed
eight-note melody (A-E-A-G-A-G-A-E) that determines the overall
structure of the work as well as dominates its melodic material. The
tenor presents the melody first in fantastically long notes, then
repeats it in increasingly reduced note values until it catches up with
the three surrounding parts. At the same time, the surrounding
figuration spins ever-new variations from the same melody. Isaac lost
out to Josquin Des Prez, despite the fact that he was recommended as
the best of the candidates. He was, in fact, to remain in
Maximilian’s service for the rest of his life, though allowed
reside in Florence for much of the time.
At the Imperial court, as in Italy, Isaac was very active not only in
the field of sacred music but also in other domains. French song
— the true international secular repertory of Isaac’s time
— probably made up a part of his non-sacred Imperial activities. En
l’ombre d’un buissonet is one such piece, if the fact
that it survives only in German sources is to be taken as indicative.
The song actually consists of two arrangements of the same popular
melody. In the first, the melody is broken up and used to create a
dazzling variety of textures, while the second has the two uppermost
voices in canon.
Of more fundamental importance was Isaac’s pioneering development
of secular songs in German. Among these is found Innsbruck, ich mus
dich lassen, undoubtedly Isaac’s best-known work today,
thanks to its adaptation, in the mid sixteenth century, into a Lutheran
chorale. Despite its fame, the song is profoundly atypical, both in its
poetic structure and in the Italianate textural clarity of its music.
It is a song that could only have been written by a composer with
Isaac’s profile. Alongside the plain version, it also exists in a
second form, with the melody in canon between tenor and top voice. Much
more typical of sixteenth-century German song is Las rauschen,
with its melody in the tenor voice in longer notes, and faster
figuration around it in the bass, alto, and soprano.
Isaac was known not only as a composer but also as a teacher. It was
during his time at the Imperial court that he gained his most famous
pupil, Ludwig Senfl (1488/89-1543/44). Isaac clearly inspired devotion
in those with whom he was acquainted, for it is only through
Senfl’s diligence in preserving his master’s work in
elegant manuscript copies that a great deal of his music survives. But
Senfl was more than just a medium: his own surviving oeuvre is of
extraordinary quality. Connections between the two composers can be
found at many levels, but one of the most obvious is in works that
directly relate to one another. As Isaac laid the foundation for the
sixteenth-century flowering of German song, Senfl, with his many
hundreds of Lieder, was undoubtedly the most important composer
to pick up the baton. Among his songs are many that set the same poems
as those of his teacher. The settings of Ich stund an einem Morgen,
a touching song in the old tradition of lovers parting at dawn,
comprise one of the most impressive groups. Isaac’s setting is
for four voices, with the melody is in the tenor, but enriched by
imitating most of its phrases in the other parts as well. Senfl
composed no less than five settings using the same tenor melody: the
pieces have an almost laboratory-like quality, as the composer explores
the compositional possibilities inherent in the material with different
numbers of singers and a dazzling array of textures. The three-voice
version presents the melody in the lowest part. The two four-voice
versions differ dramatically from each other, with one taking the
melody primarily in the tenor voice with faster surrounding parts, and
the other presenting it in the tenor as well as the two outer voices
(in strict parallel 10ths throughout) simultaneously. The five-voice
setting places each phrase of the song melody in the two lowest voices
in various kinds of strict imitation, with more rapid declamatory
motivic material above.
The programme of the present CD, then, presents a life in music. But it
is also more than that: it reveals the life of music — music
that, once composed and sent out into the world, was transformed,
manipulated according to new contexts and needs, and used as a source
of new inspiration. The correspondence between Lorenzo de’ Medici
and the Venetian ambassador is thus not the only evidence that we have
of Isaac’s success in his own time and throughout the sixteenth
century after his death. Such pieces as the lute intabulations of his
works, Ad te clamamus, O praeclarissima, and the mass
sections that became separated from their parent-works can only be
explained by a genuine desire, on the part of sixteenth-century
audiences, to experience and enjoy Isaac’s music in whatever
format and environment they found most convenient. While much has
changed between then and now, the chance for us to do the same remains
very much alive.
DAVID BURN