Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood by Jessie Ann

Owens; Anthony M. Cummings

Review by: Noel O'Regan
Notes, Second Series, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Mar., 1998), pp. 684-687
Published by: Music Library Association
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684 NOTES, March 1998

A similar graphic problem arises on the Guillaume Dufay to Carlo Gesualdo, from
first syllable of the final hymn verse "Nun- music printing to iconography, from pa-
tium vobis" (p. 116). The transcription does tronage to analysis. A number grow di-
not indicate the cephalicus, clearly seen in rectly from papers published by Lockwood
the facsimile. That the form is mistaken, on musica ficta, imitatio,patronage, and the
however, is indicated by the appearance of Council of Trent; almost all take ap-
the hymn elsewhere in the same manu- proaches that have been championed in his
script (f. 37) where one note only occurs- substantial number of published papers
the reading, moreover, of all the early hym- and books (a list is appended to the book).
nals. The symbol should have been a single- The volume is beautifully produced in
note liquescent. large format, and the quality of its con-
The case is intriguingly different for tributions is consistently high. Most provide
"Rex in eternum vive," where one of the important new work or insights; only a
repetitions (Zijlstra, p. 95) has an extra handful recycle old material or fall some-
note, indicated by a cephalicus,on the sec- what short of the overall standard.
ond syllable of eternum. Although this is Although arranged alphabetically, the
doubtless a stray misread single-note liq- essays fall into a number of categories. In
uescent, some earlier exemplar must itself the opening contribution, Allan Atlas
have had a cephalicus, for the ultimate takes up a challenge, earlier articulated by
model (as in the Winchester Troper) has Howard M. Brown and Claudio Annibaldi:
the two notes, so here we have a species of how to make the musical work of art more
double bluff. central to patronage studies. In seeking
More difficult, and impossible to treat in support for David Fallows's suggestion that
a few lines, are the instances where atro- Dufay's Mon chiermaywas written for Carlo
phied cephalicusare to be interpreted rhyth- Malatesta da Rimini on the occasion of his
mically. An obvious example is in "Solvitur brother's death in 1427, Atlas draws on
in libro Salamonis" (Zijlstra, pp. 102-3), number symbolism. In the process he ad-
and there are important instances in "Cum dresses three questions: the validity of
doctorum" (p. 96), but probable, possible, number symbolism as evidence for prov-
and dubious cases are legion. In short, enance, the problem of counting length in
there is much to be done on the Play of formesfixes with repetitions, and the role of
Daniel, and it is regrettable that this volume the patron in influencing the structure and
has failed to grasp the opportunity to move style of a piece. The numbers certainly add
forward, especially on the musical front. up, but Atlas has to ask himself whether
DAVID WULSTAN this sort of evidence is admissible in the
The Universityof Wales, Aberystwyth absence of any corroborating proof of pa-
tronage for this ballade. In another work-
centered study, Joshua Rifkin examines
Music in Renaissance Cities and Maistre Jhan's Missa de omnessancti, finding
Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis discrepancies between the two manuscript
sources of the tenor, which constantly re-
Lockwood. Edited by Jessie Ann
Owens and Anthony M. Cummings. peats the words "intercedite pro Hercule
secundo duce nostro." The mass was tra-
(Detroit Monographs in Musicology/ ditionally thought to have been written for
Studies in Music, 18.) Warren, Mich.: the accession of Duke Ercole on All Saints
Harmonie Park Press, 1997. [xxxi, 533 Day 1534. The suddenness of this acces-
p. ISBN 0-89990-102-6. $57.50.] sion, however, would have left Maistre
Jhan little time to write a new mass, and
As befits the dedicatee, this is a most im- Rifkin postulates that he reused an earlier
pressivevolume with an all-starcast of au- one, written for a visit of Charles V in 1529,
thors, all connected as students or col- with the consequent need to adapt the orig-
leagues to Lewis Lockwood. The list of inal tenor (Rifkin suggests "intercedite pro
twenty-seven authors reads like a who's Carolo quinto imperator")to a different
who of American Renaissance music his- number of syllables. Jeremy Noble gives a
tory. The term "Renaissance" has a suitably short preamble to an edition of Gaspar von
broad interpretation: the essays range from Weerbeke's motet Dulcis amica deilDa pacem,

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Book Reviews
which he argues was written to celebrate
the setting up of an altar by Pope Innocent
VIII in the Roman church of S. Maria della
Pace in 1486.
In a thought-provoking piece, Richard
Sherr looks at the career of Carpentras,
arguing that he was employed by Leo X as
papal composer in 1513 precisely because
he was relatively inexperienced and would
do what he was told. Leo wanted to im-
prove the Vatican's daily liturgical services
with cycles of hymns, Magnificats, and lam-
entations. Whether or not as a result of
having spent so much time setting just re-
citing tones, Carpentras was reputed to
have succumbed to madness. Sherr spec-
ulates that the composer suffered from
tinnitus. Despairing of medical advice, he
prescribed for himself what would now
be called cognitive therapy to relieve his
depression: he kept busy by composing and
arranging to have his collected works
published. Anne Hallmark explores the
relationship between Johannes Ciconia
and the Paduan churchman and academic
Francesco Zabarella, which she sees as cru-
cial in the commissioning of a number of
that composer's finest motets. While from
very different backgrounds, she concludes
that the relationship between the two was
one of friendship based on mutual respect,
with Zabarella acting as mentor to the mu-
sician. Paula Higgins takes up mentoring in
a different sense: that of composers' lin-
eage. She explores the rise of a concept of
creative paternity in the Renaissance, with
the master seen as a substitute father to the
student, and musical works "generating"
each other. Hers is a challenging exami-
nation of a changing view of the creative
process around 1500; in the process she
sees the emphasis on paternity as inimical
to women and their creativity, though this
is an issue which needs a wider study to be
completely convincing.
Jonathan Glixon's study of the Venetian
scuole piccole is of the more traditional ar-
chival type but no less valuable for that.
He makes us aware of the hundreds of
lesser confraternities which spent large
sums on patronal feasts, often paid for by
the officers out of their own pockets. These
feasts apart, the more normal diet was
plainchant, sung by the brothers in two
choirs, as well as laude spirituali. Other pa-
tronage studies include George Nugent's
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685
largely speculative look at Palestrina's strat-
egies in obtaining patronage from the
Duke of Mantua by basing masses on
motets by Jachet of Mantua, and Susan
Parisi's rather rambling study of the in-
volvement of Jewish actors, singers, and
musicians in theatrical entertainments at
Mantua in the early seventeenth century.
Another group of papers centers around
printed music. Jane Bernstein reconstructs
the sixteenth-century collections of the
Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel and
the choir school of St. Anna in Augsburg.
The latter involved painstakingly searching
for copies-bearing a characteristic stamp
-in libraries as far afield as Washington
and Cracow. She does not comment on the
nature of the two collections, but calls for
more work of this kind in order to provide
information about collectors and the mar-
ket for printed music. William Prizer's
study of Antico's Third Book of Frottole of
1513 sorts out the status of the three extant
exemplars; he also examines its unique rep-
ertory (largely Ferrarese and Mantuan),
speculating how it might have reached An-
tico in Rome (probably via members of
the nobility and their entourages). Samuel
Pogue furnishes a short piece on Pieton's
recently rediscovered Penitential Psalms.
The largest group of papers deals with
genres or single works from an analytical
standpoint, using a variety of methodolo-
gies. Honey Meconi challenges the authen-
ticity of a group of eight chansons attrib-
uted to Pierre de la Rue in French editions
from 1528 to 1561 on stylistic grounds. She
puts forward one Robert de la Rue, active
in Meaux and sought for Notre Dame in
Paris in 1533, as an alternative composer.
Amanda Wesner looks at the chansons of
Loyset Compere and charts their develop-
ment from three to four voices; she broad-
ens this to speculate that the four-voice
chanson may have developed in Rome dur-
ing the mid 1490s and was brought back
to France by Compere. Following this,
Lawrence Bernstein looks at the chanson at
the court of Louis XII of France and tries
to fill in the large gap in our knowledge of
the repertory there due to a lack of easily
identifiable sources. He convincingly asso-
ciates a repertory of three- and five-voice
chansons with that court. Many of these
borrow from the chansons of Josquin, sug-
gesting that his influence had a powerful
686
impact on stylistic change and diversity in
the various subgenres of French secular
polyphony then emerging. Peter Urquhart
examines the problems of applying edito-
rial accidentals in chansons by taking three
examples (including Ockeghem's famous
canon Prenezsur moy). He argues that many
of the problems of musica ficta are best
solved, not by reference to theory, but by
taking hold of the music and singing it.
Anthony Newcomb also looks at problems
of unnotated accidentals, taking the late in-
tabulations of a single motet book by Gom-
bert as a case study. Rather than provide
fixed rules, these show the range of pos-
sibilities available to singers and intabula-
tors, while alterations to the notes of some
intractable passages indicate that these may
have been just as problematical then as they
are to us.
Two of the longest and most detailed
articles deal with the music of Dufay.
Graeme Boone examines his early three-
voice chansons and tries to explain the
sound of them in terms of a system of
tonalities based on the four notes D, G, C,
F. He examines the implications for acci-
dentals, signed and otherwise, and broad-
ens the discussion to consider how Dufay
and other medieval composers "heard"
their music, arguing against assumptions
based on outmoded dichotomies such as
successive/simultaneous or harsh-medieval/
euphonious-Renaissance. In a fully illus-
trated article entitled "Guillaume Du Fay's
Second Style," Alejandro Planchart takes a
detailed look at the cycles of mass propers
in Trent Codex 88 recently assigned to Du-
fay and to the 1440s. In particular he stud-
ies the ways in which Dufay elaborates the
plainsongs, exploring features of motivic
development and text placement which
point to the composer's mature works.
Other studies to focus on individual com-
posers include Christopher Reynolds's ex-
aminations of two Gesualdo madrigals in
which he attempts a chordal analysis and
points up the importance of the sound re-
sulting from the merging of composite
lines. Like Boone, Reynolds is keen for us
to use our ears more in analysis. Massimo
Ossi compares settings of Guarini's Mentre
vaga angioletta by Francesco Turini and
Claudio Monteverdi; both responded in
very similar ways to a difficult text which
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NOTES, March 1998
describes the experience of hearing singers
in Alfonso II d'Este's musica segreta. An-
thony Cummings derives a stemma for
Josquin's Alma redemptoris/Averegina. His
complex argument depends somewhat on
Josquin having been in Milan, something
which cannot be taken for granted in the
light of recent scholarship.
Among the isolated topics, Claude
Palisca takes a fresh look at the letter writ-
ten in 1549 by Bernardino Cirillo to his
friend Ugolino Gualteruzzi (published by
Lockwood in his Norton critical score of
Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli). He ex-
amines the milieu in which the letter was
written and was expected to be received
and looks again at Cirillo's suggestions for
church music. Colin Slim investigates the
more than twenty extant versions of a
painting by Bartolommeo Veneto depicting
a lute-playing woman with identifiable mu-
sic. There are at least five different pieces
of music spread over the series, the most
common being a three-voice frottola-lauda
or dance piece. While not coming to firm
conclusions, Slim postulates a lost original
(perhaps by Leonardo da Vinci) of which
all are copies. Jessie Ann Owens's contri-
bution, entitled "How Josquin became Jos-
quin," looks at the Josquin myth and the
reasons for the composer's extraordinary
reputation during his lifetime and through-
out the rest of the century. She includes
some general remarks on the establishment
of a canon in the early sixteenth century
and relates this to the great improvement
in dissemination brought about by print-
ing. James Haar searches for reasons for
the disappearance of the madrigal from
Florence in the 1540s and 1550s; while not
finding any one answer, he looks at the
move of Arcadelt to Rome, the exile of
members of the Strozzi family, the lack of
a music press in Florence and the lack
of any real interest in the genre at the court
of Cosimo I-all of which must have con-
tributed. Finally, Anne Maria Busse Berger
tries to clear up ambiguities in the rela-
tionship between cut and uncut circles
and half-circles in fifteenth-century musical
practice. By reference to theorists and to
the music of Busnois she concludes that cut
signs call for a strict diminution by one-
half, except at the beginning of a piece,
where they cannot be related to anything
Book Reviews
else; only there should they be taken to
signify a tempo "somewhat faster than
usual."
Taken together, this collection repre-
sents the most up-to-date work in a whole
variety of areas over the period of 1430 to
1600. Particularly useful are the extensive
bibliographies in footnotes which provide
current literature surveys for a whole range
of topics. For new graduate students there
could hardly be a better place to get an
overview of the best recent scholarship.
The editors are to be congratulated on a
fine tribute to a worthy recipient.
NOELO'REGAN
Universityof Edinburgh
Marc-Antoine Charpentier. By Cathe-
rine Cessac. Translated by E. Thomas
Glasow. Portland, Ore.: Amadeus
Press, 1995. [558 p. ISBN 0-931340-
80-2. $39.95.]
Over the past half century Marc-Antoine
Charpentier has steadily emerged from
his undeserved obscurity. Of the many tal-
ented composers to have a career sup-
pressed by the power and intrigues of Jean-
Baptiste Lully, Charpentier may have been
the greatest. To his credit he managed to
work productively throughout his career
despite the circumstances, working in the
services of the Dauphin, Mademoiselle de
Guise, Philippe d'Orleans, and the Jesuits.
He left us the largest corpus of French
Baroque sacred music of any of the late-
seventeenth-century French masters. For-
tunately, nearly all his music survives in
well-preserved originals. While there is still
much to learn about this important figure,
the English edition of Catherine Cessac's
Marc Antoine Charpentieroffers musicians
and scholars a major new comprehensive
compendium of information relating to
Charpentier, his music, and his times. The
publication of an English translation of
Cessac's book is most welcome and should
do much to further the understanding and
appreciation of this major seventeenth-
century figure.
In addition to serving the English-
reading audience, this book also provides
significant minor revisions to the 1985
French edition. Important new findings are
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687
included-for example, reference to the
1991 identification by Patricia Ranum of a
visual likeness of Charpentier is included
along with a plate, not included in the orig-
inal French edition, bearing that image.
The book is coherently and logically or-
ganized. An opening chapter presents an
excellent essay reviewing Charpentier's
place in history. The next seven chapters
proceed chronologically through his early
years and the initial decades of his career.
Five chapters are then dedicated to the
principal genres: motets, Latin oratorios,
masses, airs and cantatas, and the instru-
mental music. The final two chapters deal
with the last years of Charpentier's career
as tutor to the Duc de Charters and maitre
de musique at Sainte-Chapelle. The fifteen
chapters are framed by a brief preface and
a postscript that continues the discussion
on the rebirth of interest in Charpentier's
music and his importance.
Several valuable reference sources are
appended. The first appendix includes
the Latin text and English translation of the
"Epitaphium Carpentarii (H. 474)," a fas-
cinating musical epitaph in which Charpen-
tier dramatized his posthumous return to
earth in the form of a ghost and speaks
candidly of his career ("I was a musician,
considered good by the good musicians,
and ignorant by the ignorant ones"). A sec-
ond appendix contains the full English
texts of Charpentier's theoretical writings.
A full chronological table of his works fol-
lows in tabular form, including title, scor-
ing, identification of genre and text, date,
and location in Charpentier sources. A sec-
ond table offers a classification of the works
by scoring, and a final listing presents a full
catalog of the works. The comprehensive
bibliography has been updated from the
French edition and includes entries as late
as 1995.
One of the great strengths of this book
is its compilation of the past half century
of research on Charpentier into one vol-
ume. That achievement is complemented
with new findings shedding meaningful
light on the composer, his life, and his
times. Cessac has gleaned much from pri-
mary sources, including the MercureGalant
and other printed sources, and from the
archives, in which she clearly has spent
a considerable amount of time. Her own