Pierre de MANCHICOURT / Huelgas Ensemble

c1510
Pierre de Manchicourt born in Béthune at Arras (Atrecht) in French Flanders.

1525
Manchicourt mentioned as a choirboy at the cathedral school of Arras.

1532
The Parisian printer Attaingnant is the first to publish a composition by Manchicourt, the Missa Deus in Adiutorium.

1539
Attaingnant publishes Liber decimus quartus, a collection entirely dedicated to Manchicourt, comprising nineteen of the master's motets. Manchicourt active as choir director of the cathedral at Tours.

1545
Manchicourt becomes firstly "Puerum symphoniacorum," then "Maistre de Chapelle" at Notre Dame of Tournai (Doornik).
Tylman Susato (Antwerp) publishes Le neufiesme livre des chansons à quatreparties. The entire publication is dedicated to Manchicourt's chansons.

c1550
A monumental choir book, Douze messes musicales composées par M. P. De Manchicourt, containing twelve masses by Manchicourt, is produced at the court of Maria of Hungary in Brussels. (This manuscript was brought to Spain in 1556, and is presently in the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat.)

1552
The French writer and satirist François Rabelais (1494-1553) mentions Manchicourt in Le quart livre des faicts et dicts heroïques du noble Pantagruel.

1554
In Louvain Pierre Phalèse publishes a collection exclusively of spiritual works by Manchicourt: Liber quintus cantionum sacrarum vulgo moteta vocant quinque et sex vocum A.D. Magistro Petro Manchicurtio Betunio.

1556
Emperor Charles V relinquishes the throne to Philip II.
Manchicourt is given a prebendary in Arras.

1559
Nicolas Payen, chapel master of the Capilla Flamenca of Philip II, dies in Madrid in May; Manchicourt is named to succeed him as "Maestro de Capilla." He moves to Spain on August 27th.

1560
Manchicourt travels back to Flanders to recruit suitable boys' voices. One of the youths is George de la Hèle, who will himself become chapel master to Philip II (1582-1586).
In the Church of Sainte-Waudru in Mons, Manchicourt is granted a prebend by Margaret of Parma. Afterwards he returns to Spain.

c1560
A comprehensive choir book appears in the chapel of Philip II, containing fifteen works by Manchicourt: three masses, a requiem and eleven motets. (This manuscript is also now in the Benedictine abbey at Montserrat.)

1564
Pierre de Manchicourt dies in October. The archives in Madrid state: "Trespassa le cinquiesme octobre 1564."

Pierre de Manchicourt's call to the court of Philip II as chapel master in 1559 was a sign of the esteem accorded the composer at that time. The greater portion of his oeuvre - 19 masses, 72 motets, 53 chansons, a magnificat, and 9 psalms in polychoral style - had already been printed by Europe's most important publishers: Attaingnant, Du Chemin, Phalèse, Gardane, Montanus & Neuber, and Moderne. In addition, there were several collections dedicated to his works alone (see entries for 1539, 1545 and 1554 above). European manuscripts reveal that Manchicourt's works were performed from Torgau to Saragossa, from Stockholm to well down into Italy.

Manchicourt's colleagues recognized his artistry. A manuscript used by Clemens non Papa (c1510-c1555) contains exercises by Manchicourt; Clemens also wrote two masses on models of Manchicourt. In the introduction to his Psalmi poenitentiales, Orlandus Lassus classified Manchicourt as a very important and excellent composer ("Autores musici praecipui et excellentissimi"). As late as 1617 the organist Alexander Nison, in Rome, copied out a work of Manchicourt's. And it was no less than the French composer Claudin de Sermisy who urged Attaingnant to publish a book of motets with works by Manchicourt.

Manchicourt's familiarity with the works of his predecessors and contemporaries is clear from the models on which he based his parody masses. They include pieces by Jean Lhéritier, Claudin de Sermisy, Jean Mouton, Nicolas Gombert and Jean Richafort.

Yet Manchicourt was not a household name. His work was too eccentric, at times even obscure. There is no question that he had a penchant for harmonically daring counterpoint. Dissonant changing and passing tones pervade his music. He made liberal use of cross-relations (simultaneously sounding the same note in two voices, but with different accidentals). His dissonance resolutions (e.g. of six-four chords) create conflicts with other voices. Again and again Manchicourt leads the listener down the wrong track: leading tones prepare cadences which never arrive.

Manchicourt's art also involves challenges for the singers. Seeming candidates for musica ficta lead to dissonances with other voices. Thus Manchicourt continually delays the establishment of mode by means of leading tones. But this contrapuntal adventure is skillfully wrapped in a web of polyphony. Manchicourt's preference for six-part writing is no coincidence - it leaves the composer more room for cross-relations and changing notes.

Manchicourt was a master of detail. His works are not easily conquered because his polyphony is one of magnificently detailed ornamentation. The "flamboyant" Gothic style expressed by the play of his lines is rooted in a melodic motor seldom found in the work of his contemporaries. Homophony (identical rhythm and text underlay in all voices) occurs only sporadically. While some of the voices participate in a cadence, others often begin new points of imitation, masking the cadence. This drawing out of the cadential process makes for an endlessly flowing polyphony. Manchicourt's works do not rest until the final chords.

Manchicourt's personal stamp reveals itself in text-setting as well. At times the texts themselves are marked by his hand. For example, he changes the order of bible verses in Usquequo piger dormies; in the Gloria and Credo of the Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus, he layers different texts over one another.

However idiosyncratic Manchicourt was in adding his own highly personal stylistic touches, he managed to achieve this independence within the boundaries of the Flemish polyphonic tradition.

Manchicourt's spiritual and secular works form two quite separate oeuvres. Although his approach to chansons was more traditional, he created some exceptionally beautiful pieces in this genre. The eight-part Faulte dargent is a prime example of his ability to balance introverted art, polyphonic contrast, and piquant details.

It was the musical greats who acknowledged Manchicourt's mastery. In a collection of motets published in Geneva in 1580, Orlandus Lassus calls Pierre de Manchicourt one of those composers "qui per Europeam in nunc usque annum nomen obtinuerunt"- who should have a name in all of Europe, now and for all time.

Reges terrae
This monumental six-part motet dates from Manchicourt's later period. It exists in two manuscripts, one in the Leiden municipal archives, the other in the conservatory library in Brussels. The composition is based entirely on imitative counterpoint, the themes of which Manchicourt chose very carefully. A striking fifth-motive (sometimes modified to a fourth) establishes the "majestic" main theme. Manchicourt sets the text "Eamus in Judeam" (let us go to Judea) to a suggestively rising motive of six scale-steps. He depicts the image of kneeling and greeting ("procedentes") with a falling fourth. This Three Kings motet is a stunning synthesis of Manchicourt's characteristic style: a pervasively imitative texture, thickened by overlapping imitations, combined with daring employment of dissonances.

Kyrie
The Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus is in a masterly choir book in Montserrat, a manuscript supposedly in Manchicourt's own hand. It is highly likely, therefore, that he performed it with his church choir.
All of the melodic elements of this work come from the Pentecost sequence "Veni, Sancte Spiritus." The Kyrie - like the other parts of the mass - is indebted to the Gregorian aesthetic; mode and melody are clearly modeled on the sequence material. Above all, the opening phrases of the Gregorian melody are heard, carried chiefly by the first and second superius (soprano) and the tenor. This part of the mass is unusually long - not least because of the numerous repeated imitations in the middle section.

O Virgo Virginum
An early work, published by the Parisian printer Attaingnant in 1534, this six-voice composition was written on the antiphon for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th. The tenor secundus is a canon at the lower fifth (subdiapente) of the contratenor secundus. The polyphony here is still clean and richly melismatic, with few ornamental stock phrases. The vocal writing avoids the bass range entirely, and the emphasis is on the upper voices.

Gloria
Frequent cadences and a more syllabic structure characterize this section, with a calm tempo on the words "Jesu Christe." Manchicourt divides the text evenly among the different voices. In the second part the two-beat measure suddenly changes to a faster meter, each beat becoming a measure of three pulses (tempus diminutum). At the contemplative "Jesu Christe" the music returns to duple time. The vocal conception matches the ceremonious character of the text. One of the two contratenor parts in the Kyrie is replaced here by a second superius.

Three Chansons
As noted above, Manchicourt's chansons are fundamentally different from his sacred music. Longs temps mon cueur languissoit is a four-voiced miniature, written wholly in Franco-Flemish imitative style.
Faulte dargent is an eight-voice chanson. The use of a more declamatory style in places (e.g. at the words "il se faut tenir quoy") follows the Parisian chanson tradition. With its frequent cross-relations, dissonant changing tones, surprise cadence forms, and rich variety of voice combinations, this is one of Manchicourt's masterpieces.
The third chanson, [/i]Ô cruaulté logée en grand beaulté[/i] is set to a text by the French poet Clément Marot (1496-1544). The composer here achieved a perfect balance between homophonic and melismatic passages.

Credo
The Credo reveals how much this mass is indebted to the Gregorian style. Manchicourt changed the disposition of the voices in this section in order to highlight a segment of the Gregorian motive used here, situating it in the highest tessitura (a-d', see diagram, motive 3) of the Dorian melody. To accomplish this, Manchicourt set the Credo for the following unusual combination: one superius, one contratenor, but two tenors and two basses. The bulk of the counterpoint thus lies in the tenor ranges, exactly in the span of the above-mentioned motive.
The Credo consists of three parts. The middle part (the Crucifixus) is in four voices and begins with an imitation whose rhythmic contour immediately signals the cross motive: notated in a 2/2 meter, the melody continuously declaims a three-beat Cross-rhythm.

Maria Magdalene
This five-voice motet was published in 1539 by Gardane, in Venice. The work is a textbook example of classical counterpoint, in which the melodies are perfectly matched to the symbolism of the text. For example, Manchicourt set the text "quem quaeritis" (whom ye seek) with melismatic, circular melodies, while "surrexit" is rendered with a head motive marked by prominent leaps of a fourth or a fifth. The two-part motet is in A-B-C-B form: both sections end with an identical, richly worked-out Alleluia.

Sanctus
The majestic, spun-out melismas on the word "Sanctus" which open the movement culminate (at "Dominus Deus Sabaoth") in a modulation to B-flat - a modally distant cadence in G Dorian. The music then returns to the main mode. In other respects Manchicourt recalls the original vocal disposition in this section.
"Pleni sunt coeli" is written for three high voices, two superius parts and a tenor. The Hosanna is again for six voices, with a point of imitation that runs from bottom (2nd bass) to top (1st superius). The imitation is based on the "Consolator optime" section of the Gregorian melody (see diagram, motive 4), which belongs to the upper fourth of the sequence's tessitura. From the eleventh bar of the Hosanna the 2/2 time suddenly switches over to three in a tempus diminutum. This gives the counterpoint an unexpected and strong drive, which carries through all the way to the final chord. After a three-voice, somewhat more darkly colored "Benedictus" for tenor and two basses, the Hosanna sounds once more.

Usquequo piger dormies
The odd-sounding text from the Old Testament's Proverbs is a warning to all sluggards to heed the example of the industrious ants. The composition is an exquisitely worked out miniature. Manchicourt chose the somber Phrygian mode for rhetorical reasons. He used melismas to render the "sleeping" in the text (donnitabis, dormias). The second part contains a homophonic passage - unusual for Manchicourt - at the text "quae cum non habeat ducem." In this "sleepy" composition the principal melodic intervals are major and minor seconds. At the beginning of the second section, the melody rises by steps of a second, with great suggestive power.The piece is sung here a fourth lower than notated.

Agnus Dei
The last part of the Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus is a calm composition. In contrast to the majority of his colleagues, who often set the Agnus Dei as a concluding contrapuntal tour-de-force - complete with canons and an increased number of voices - Manchicourt decided on a meditative ending, in keeping with the text.
In this movement, Manchicourt lays bare most of the themes he took from the Gregorian sequence. He composed this section as a sort of "testament" to the other movements of the mass, going so far as to quote six-part passages from earlier sections literally. Thus, for example, the text "miserere nobis" is sung to the same music as the "Adoramus te. Glorificamus te" of the Gloria. In the Agnus Dei the circle is closed.