Antoine BRUMEL. Missa Et ecce terrae motus / Huelgas Ensemble - REPOST

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Antoine BRUMEL. Missa Et ecce terrae motus / Huelgas Ensemble - REPOST

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Who was this Antoine Brumel? He was a difficult person in every respect and a selfwilled and eccentric composer. A difficult personality is not unusual for a musician, yet his idiosyncrasy was recognized even in his own lifetime.
According to the standards of his time, Brumel's music knows no boundaries, is daring and never strictly academic. Whether this concerns imaginative musical structures, the working-out of counterpoint or the writing of repetitive forms - it is always more or less "outrageous".
The most fascinating of Brumel's works is without a doubt his twelve-part mass ET ECCE TERRAE MOTUS.

Brumel's twelve-part harmony is not structured in a traditional manner, but rather is made up of twelve equal voices that are divided according to vocal function into four groups of three voices each. Each part has a characteristic vocal register. Group I contains three superious parts. Group II is made up of three high tenor voices (i.e. no countertenors), while Group III consists of "normal" tenors and Group IV is composed of three bass parts. Each of the three voices within each group comprises the same vocal register; their lines constantly cross one another, however. In addition, Brumel, who is especially interested in a daring, virtuosic interplay of contrapuntal lines, employs the crossing of voices between groups. In certain passages (e.g. in the Credo at the words "invisibilium" and "sedet ad dexteram") a bass voice not only rises above the entire tenor group, but even above all the countertenors, as well.

The six tenor parts (three high and three "normal") make up the tightly-structured core of the polyphony. Odd melodic progressions and the crossing of voices are not unusual in these parts. The high second tenor has the same register, for the most part, as the third tenor and goes down to a low A. The high tenor parts are called countertenors in the manuscript, but should not be confused with what today is considered the characteristic countertenor voice. The Tenor III part, in contrast, extends down to a low F and lies lower at that point than all the bass lines. It is hard to imagine the vocal virtuosity Brumel was envisioning while composing this mass. Melodic leaps of an octave regularly occur. The vocal ranges are pushed to extremes and some passages are only performable by using Renaissance vocal techniques such as falsetto and changes in vocal color.

The twelve-part mass is built on a cantus firmus derived from the beginning of the Easter antiphon ET ECCE TERRAE MOTUS. Brumel actually restricts his cantus firmus material to the first seven tones of the antiphon. Further tones are added only in the cantus firmus of the Agnus Dei IL Brumel adopted the G mode from Gregorian chant. All parts of the mass were composed in the seventh mixolydian mode with the exception of the Christe and the Agnus Dei II, both of which constitute middle sections and end on C chords.

Paul van Nevel

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Antoine BRUMEL. Missa Et ecce terrae motus / Huelgas Ensemble - REPOST

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