Johannes Ockeghem (c.1430-c.1495) - Masses - Beauty Farm (2017) {fra bernardo Digital Download fb1701743}

Beauty Farm founded 2014 by Markus Muntean and Bernhard Trebuch is a vocal group focused to the Franco-Flemish polyphony of the renaissance. The international ensemble is based in the carthusian monastery at Mauerbach (Austria). The singers are members of well known ensembles. Beauty Farm exclusively records for frabernardo. Going back to the roots Beauty Farms reveals the secrets of polyphonic masterpieces …

One of the most striking features of renaissance music is the ­assiduous re-use of musical material: composers strived more for artful and ingenious re-working than invention. There is no ­better example of this than a short song calling for man to take up arms – L’homme armé. At any rate, this simple but spiritually and politically meaningful melody was employed more often than any other as the so-called cantus firmus in some forty mass settings dating from 1450 to 1600 by almost every prominent composer of the time. Appropriately enough, its martial character serves as a battlefield for each to jostle for position with regard to his predecessor in finding ever newer and more refined techniques of treatment.
Even if the origins of this prodigious tradition may seem relatively unimportant, there are enough convincing arguments to suggest that Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa L’homme armé, composed around 1455, may have been the first of its kind. Primarily, for such a subtle and subversive composer as Ockeghem, it is remarkably simply written: the melody appears straightforwardly in the tenor once each in the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus, twice in the ­Gloria and almost three times in the Credo. In this movement, the melody breaks off after the middle section of its last statement and is also transposed down a fifth. In the Agnus Dei it is even transposed down an octave, bringing it into the lowest bass register so that the final part of the mass sounds altogether darker and, with numerous flat signs, more melancholic. With its lengthy, beseeching duets and sombre ending, the third Agnus expresses a moving plea for peace at the end of a mass on the ­armed man.
Another argument for assigning an early composition date is that the cantus firmus is only seldom taken up (but then quite audibly) in the other voices. In the Credo, a fanfare-like motive is repeated throughout all voices to the words «et iterum» (and He shall come again) and, for the Holy Ghost, «qui cum patre et filio simul adoratur» (who, with the Father and the Son, is together adored) the melody’s striking opening phrase is heard in three voice parts. Both examples can be interpreted as symbolic word painting.
And yet, in comparison with the awkward voice leading of Ockeghem’s Missa Caput (certainly an earlier work) and despite the constraints of the cantus firmus’ four-bar structure, the composer can be seen here developing his own individual style. Melodies appear to float endlessly through musical space, voices are drawn compactly together and then broken up kaleidoscopically into individual lines again; they are rhythmically compressed, speeded up and in the next moment powerfully slowed down once more, as in the second section of the Gloria («Qui tollis») or in the textural diversity of the Sanctus. In any case, the piece was evidently considered worth adding to the repertoire of the 15th century’s most demanding vocal ensemble, the papal choir, at the end of the 1480’s.

Since the 16th century, Ockeghem has been stuck with the reputation (based on only a few works) of being an eccentric experimenter and constructor of canons. Yet his only authentic three-part mass, the Missa quinti toni, would suffice to refute this view once and for all. With its steady rhythmic pace, clear structure and bright modality (the «fifth tone» of the title is a near equivalent of the modern F major) this piece reveals Ockeghem’s calm and lyrical side. Fabrice Fitch admiringly classifies this mass as «understatement»: the smallest phrase spun out in the tenor ­suffices as an opening motif for all five movements. Although apparently freely composed, a «motivic network» of falling thirds and rising scales suggest an inner coherence and, perhaps, a lost model such as a chanson. In any case, it is often reminiscent of the intimate art song of the time, its numerous imitations for example recalling the chansons of Ockeghem’s colleague Busnois.
Specific circumstances surrounding its creation may be responsible for the restrained character and limited number of voices. There again, the work is quite expansive both in length and vocal range, spanning two and a half octaves from the highest note in the descant to the lowest note in the bass. Only a handful of Ockeghem’s three-part chansons («Baisies moy» and «Fors seullement») exceed this range. This results in an unusually wide tonal spectrum, and a clear division of registers makes it easy to follow each individual voice. The freedom of melodic invention and the occasional unexpected inflection show that this is the work of a composer intentionally keeping his abundant imagination in check and, in the second Agnus, where the lengthiest upper voice duet of the whole movement is followed by a shy, note by note bass entrance, unafraid of displaying an underlying sense of humour.
Wolfgang Fuhrmann
translation : Roderick Shaw