Heinrich ISAAC. Missa Virgo prudentissima
Ensemble Gilles Binchois





evidenceclassics.com
Evidence EVCD023

2016






Heinrich ISAAC (v. 1450–1517)
MISSA VIRGO PRUDENTISSIMA
messe à 6 voix
& plain-chant pour les fêtes de la Vierge : Ms. N 41 - Duomo, Firenze





1. Gaudeamus omnes in Domino / Virgo Prudentissima  [5:34]  à 4 voix
Choralis Constantinus II - H. Isaac

2. Introït. Salve sancta parens  [4:11]  plain-chant

3. Kyrie eleison  [6:08]  Missa Virgo Prudentissima

4. Gloria  [6:20]  Missa Virgo Prudentissima

5. Graduel. Benedicta et venerabilis es  [3:45]  plain-chant

6. Alleluia. Post partum  [1:43]  plain-chant

7. Alleluia. Virga Jesse  [2:23]  plain-chant

8. Lecture. Sequentia sancti evangelii secundum Lucam  [0:55]  plain-chant

9. Credo  [9:55]  Missa Virgo Prudentissima

10. Offertoire. Ave Maria  [1:58]  plain-chant

11. Preface  [2:15]  plain-chant

12. Sanctus  [8:30]  Missa Virgo Prudentissima

13. Agnus Dei  [4:05]  Missa Virgo Prudentissima

14. Communion. Beata viscera  [6:48]  plain-chant et polyphonie à 4 voix
Choralis Constantinus II - H. Isaac










Ensemble Gilles Binchois
Dominique Vellard

Anne DELAFOSSE, soprano
Anne-Marie LABLAUDE, soprano
Yukie SATO, soprano
Roman MELISH, alto
Vincent LIÈVRE-PICARD, ténor
Stephan VAN DYCK, ténor
Dominique VELLARD, ténor
Giacomo SCHIAVO, baryton
François FAUCHÉ, basse




Enregistré par Jean-François Felter du 6 au 10 septembre 2015 au Couvent Saint Marc à Gueberschwihr (68)
EVCD023 ℗ 2015 Ensemble Gilles Binchois © 2016 Little Tribeca
evidenceclassics.com - gillesbinchois.com



Le programme « Missa Virgo prudentissima » de l’ensemble Gilles Binchois a bénéficié du soutien de la Cité de la Voix - Vézelay
L’Adami, société des artistes-interprètes, gère et développe leurs droits en France et dans le monde pour une plus juste rémunération de leur talent.
Elle les accompagne également par ses aides financières aux projets artistiques.
Avec le soutien du Fonds pour la Création Musicale.










A CELEBRATION OF ISAAC’S CAREER:
THE MISSA VIRGO PRUDENTISSIMA AND FLORENTINE PLAINCHANT

Giovanni Zanovello

Heinrich Isaac’s Missa Virgo prudentissima stands out as a very rare work in the panorama of the Ordinary settings composed at the turn of the sixteenth century. Its monumental sound, linked to the six-voice texture - mostly used for timbral variety, but occasionally for fullness of sound - the imaginative use of its cantus firmus, and its mature and sure contrapuntal writing make it one of the most successful works by the Flemish master.

Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450-1517) represents perhaps better than any of his contemporaries the musical exchange between Florence and northern Europe. Born and presumably trained in Flanders, he reached the city of the Arno in 1485, where he stayed for roughly ten years. He married a Florentine, Bartolomea Bello, and developed lifelong connections in the city. During the Savonarola years he found employment at the imperial court of Maximilian I, though he never lost touch with the Tuscan capital. He returned from time to time and very likely settled back there in 1502, even though he apparently held no position in any of the city’s musical institutions. Thanks to the intervention of Medici Pope Leo X he was eventually granted a pension, which he held until his death. Isaac is justly famous for his versatility as a composer. His oeuvre betrays a deep curiosity about local musical traditions and an uncanny ability to absorb and elaborate diverse musical languages. The list of his accomplishments in this sense is remarkable, ranging from numerous Italian songs - which reveal a great understanding of the tradition and a conscious attempt at reforming its style - to his contribution to the German Tenorlied, which has been defined in modern scholarship as “foundational”. This variety, in addition to his superb control of contrapuntal techniques and large-form organization has made Isaac one of the most celebrated composers of his generation in his days as well as now.

The centerpiece of this recording, Isaac’s six-voice Mass Virgo prudentissima, belongs to a group of five works based on the Assumption antiphon. One of these compositions is probably earlier, but the other four are very likely part of a unified musical project, as proposed by David Rothenberg. The particular chant used by Isaac bears special melodic variants found in southern Germany, suggesting an association of the six-voice Mass with the Hapsburg court confirmed by its important parallels with the motet of the same name, defined by Rothenberg “one of the grandest motets of the Renaissance”. The composition bears a text in humanistic Latin by Georg Slatkonia (1456-1522), who was in charge of the imperial chapel and later appointed by the emperor as bishop of Vienna. Both the Mass and the motet were very likely conceived for Maximilian’s failed coronation in Rome. As Franz Körndle has demonstrated, however, both compositions were sung at a memorial celebration for Philip the Fair in 1507. Körndle and others have also highlighted the stylistic similarities between the two compositions, which in addition to the special scoring and cantus firmus share a number of stylistic traits, especially in the central movements of the Mass.

The Kyrie and Gloria both have a full statement of the Virgo prudentissima antiphon in long notes. The Credo starts with a beautiful contrapuntal duet for the First Cantus and Contratenor, to which Isaac later adds the lower Vagans. Only at “Et ex patre natum” do the Tenor and Bass enter, the former with the first two segments of the Marian antiphon in long notes, the second with a slow motif. Later, at “per quem omnia facta sunt”, the Marian melody moves to the top of the range, at the first Cantus, still in long notes. The movement is a masterpiece of varietas, including effective sections in reduced scoring (“Et resurrexit”), together with an alternation of textures ranging from free counterpoint to homophonic episodes in which all the voices declaim the text together. The same aesthetic informs the Sanctus, which in the first measures already maps the whole gamut of the voices, two by two, starting with the first Cantus and plunging down to the Vagans and Bass. Compared to the Credo, this movement is more dynamic, with moments in which a rhythmic propulsion is urgently felt. Two versions of the Agnus survive in different sources, possibly pointing to an alternatim performance, in which a plainchant statement (sung or performed on the organ) could be inserted between the first and second one. In this recording only the first one is used twice, in alternation with an Agnus in plainchant. In the same way, the presence of two Christe eleison allow nine statements of the invocation Kyrie / Christe / Kyrie, again alternating plainchant or organ and Isaac’s polyphonic sections, and this is the choice made for this recording. Throughout the Mass, the antiphon Virgo prudentissima works both as a structural element and in audible form in the upper voices, like at the beginning of the Kyrie, Credo, and Sanctus, where it gives way to the contrapuntal elements that make us hold our breath phrase after phrase during the entirety of this polyphonic masterpiece.

The program of this recording imagines a Florentine celebration, possibly during a visit of Pope Leo X, to whose influence Isaac owed the financial security of his last years. The polyphonic movements of Isaac’s Mass Ordinary are integrated with plainchant used at the Florentin cathedral - where Isaac worked as a singer - and bookended by two beautiful motets from the composer’s famous posthumous collection of Mass Propers, the Choralis constantinus. These are introit Gaudeamus omnes for Assumption, which features the same antiphon found in the Mass, and the communio Beata viscera. In Gaudeamus omnes Isaac uses the strategy of placement of pre-existing material discussed for the Mass and common throughout the Choralis. We hear the full antiphon in the tenor part, after the intonation “Gaudeamus”, while the top voices and the Bassus sing the introit text starting with “omnes in domino.” The roles are reversed in the verse. After the intonation “Exaltata es sancta Dei genitrix”, the top voices sing “Virgo prudentissima” and the bottom ones continue with the introit “super choros angelorum ad caelestia regna”. We have no documentation of such a celebration in Florence - the plainchant used in the six-voice Ordinary differs from the intonation used in Florence and the Propers of the Choralis never circulated in Italy, as far as we know - but this imaginary liturgy constitutes a fitting modern celebration of Isaac’s career, divided between the imperial court and the city of the Arno. After all, the composer produced some of his best music for the imperial court but ended up spending most of his adult life in the Tuscan capital. This duality is symbolically captured in this recording, in which the clean melodic lines of the Florentine chant beautifully alternate with the rich yet clear texture of Isaac’s most important imperial Ordinary, with the antiphon for the Virgin connecting all the polyphonic movements.






GILLES VELLARD
& THE ENSEMBLE GILLES BINCHOIS
Biography

Since 1979 Dominique Vellard has been the inspirational driving force behind the Ensemble Gilles Binchois : more than 35 years of research and performance that have led to the creation of some essential recordings, especially of music from the medieval and Renaissance periods.

If the leading role which Dominique Vellard held in the emergence and the growth of the “French school” of medieval music - in particular for the totally new way in performing the Gregorian chant - gave him an image of medievalist, his interest for the other periods of the early music is unwavering. Alternating these repertoires going from the 10th to the 19th c. is for him a way of freshening permanently the enthusiasm.

The basis of the ensemble is around fifteen artists, joined year after year by young singers ans instrumentalists, most of them trained at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. This offers to the young artists a professional springboard, and to the ensemble it brings new colours and a renewed source of vitality. Dominique Vellard has recorded more than 50 albums of which about forty at the head of the Ensemble Gilles Binchois.

The Ensemble Gilles Binchois is supported by the Ministry of Culture (DRAC of Burgundy - Franche-Comté) and by the Regional Council of Burgundy.