A Blue Heron Christmas

Program: #24-51   Air Date: Dec 16, 2024

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Just announced and brand new for the season, the wonderful Cambridge, Mass. ensemble gives us a program of Christmas and New Year’s in 15th century France and Burgundy.

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from recording Christmas & New Year’s in 15th Century France & Burgundy featuring the Blue Heron Ensemble directed by Scott Metcalfe. It is on the Blue Heron label and is CD BHCD 1014.

A celebration of the Christmas season, from Advent through the New Year, in music from the courts of 15th-century France and Burgundy. Festive and sonorous music by Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Regis, Jacob Obrecht, Josquin Desprez, Antoine Brumel, and others.

In tenebris et umbra mortis

By mid-December in the northern hemisphere, the days have been getting shorter for six months. The fall brings more and more darkness, and by the time winter finally arrives, northern Europeans live more in darkness than in light. At the winter solstice Paris sees just over eight hours of daylight; the Low Countries, further north, endure even shorter days. Whatever the reasons early Christians settled on December 25th to celebrate the birth of Christ, observing the savior’s birthday just a few days after the solstice locates the feast at the cusp of the year, when the sun begins, imperceptibly at first, to climb again in the sky. The penitential, prophetic, and preparatory season of Advent falls during the darkest weeks of the year. It is there that our program begins, “in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

Advent

The plainchant antiphon O clavis David is one of a series of seven ancient “O antiphons” sung to the same melody, one for each of the seven days before Christmas Eve. The antiphons, each beginning with the interjection “O,” address the Messiah to come with various acclamations: “O Sapientia” (wisdom), “O Adonai” (Lord), “O radix Jesse” (root of Jesse), “O clavis David” (key of David), “O Oriens” (morning star), “O Rex” (king), “O Emanuel” (“God with us”). The initial letters of the words following “O” spell out the promise in a reverse acrostic, SARCORE, “ero cras”: “Tomorrow I shall be there.” An eighth antiphon for Christmas Eve, O virgo virginum, was often added to the original seven. In it, the daughters of Jerusalem demand of the Virgin Mary that she explain the unique wonder of her conception of Jesus. She admonishes them that what they seek to know is a divine mystery.

Obrecht’s Factor orbis quotes both O clavis David and O virgo virginum, one at the end of each half of the motet, along with texts and some tunes from seventeen other liturgical items. The liturgical texts, mostly for Advent, are introduced by a plea to the Maker of the world to hear the cries of his servants “on this day that brings light.” The musicologist Jennifer Bloxam interprets Factor orbis as a sermon in music, an exegesis of the scripture “Canite tuba in Sion” (“Sound the trumpet in Sion,” Joel 2:1), but to fully comprehend this sermon as it is preached musically is impossible, for at times five different texts are sung simultaneously. The motet’s continuously shifting textures bring now one, now another text to the foreground. The opening plea, sung in imitative duet by the highest voices, comes to a cadence as a third voice enters with “Veni Domini,” “Come, Lord,” whereupon the duetting voices, joined by the bass, break into the acclamation “Noe!” The entrance of the tenor on the cantus firmus “Canite tuba” is marked by a long hemiola in all parts. At the introduction of two non-Advent texts, “Deus qui sedes super thronos” (Epiphany) and “Media vita in morte sumus” (Lent), the texture changes from counterpoint to homophony. The effect is heart-stopping. The homophonic texture is in turn swept away by a return to counterpoint that moves twice as fast as anything beforehand, and this concludes the first part. This “double-time” music reappears to wind up the second part, now at a somewhat slower speed determined by the proportional relationship between the mensurations of the two sections, gathering all the voices together for the final cries of “Noe!”

The six-voice motet O virgo virginum ascribed to Josquin sets the O-antiphon in its entirety, quoting the complete plainchant melody in the top voice and alluding to it in the five others.* The composer deploys the six voices in antiphonal groups, often setting the three highest voices against the three lowest. Equally characteristic of the piece is the hypnotic overlapping of short motives (as at “fiet istud” in the prima pars and “Filiae” at the beginning of the secunda pars). A disorienting metrical shift at “hoc quod cernitis” heightens the sense of mystery: here the mensural organization shifts proportionally from two beats per bar to three, but at the same time an extended hemiola at the next higher level of organization divides every pair of bars into three, disrupting the listener’s sense of pulse.

Emulation & homage

The composers on our program represent several generations of musicians from northern France or modern-day Belgium. Du Fay was born near Brussels and trained as a choirboy in Cambrai; his contemporary Malbecque seems to be from Maalbeek, north of Brussels. Grenon hailed from Paris or nearby, Ciconia was a proud native of Liège, like Arnold de Lantins, and Cordier proclaimed his birthplace as Reims. Regis’s birthplace is unknown, but he spent most of his working life in Soignies, about 50 miles northeast of Cambrai. Josquin was born near Saint-Quentin in Picardy, Obrecht in Ghent in Flanders, and Brumel possibly near Chartres.

As northern musicians followed their itinerant careers, many making their way to Italy, their paths crossed in one place or another—Malbecque sang with Du Fay in the papal chapel, Arnold de Lantins with him in Rimini; Du Fay and Grenon worked together at Cambrai Cathedral, which attempted (unsuccessfully) to hire Regis; Brumel succeeded Obrecht as maestro di cappella in Ferrara, where Obrecht had succeeded Josquin—and the music they composed was disseminated into all the corners of Europe. Whether musicians knew each other personally or not, they knew each other’s music, and it is common to come across instances of compositional emulation or rivalry, within and between generations. Regis’s O admirabile commercium, Obrecht’s Factor orbis, and Brumel’s Nato canunt omnia form a trio of works in which Obrecht’s and Brumel’s motets pay homage to that of the older Regis. All three motets are for five voices and feature multiple texts and cantus firmi: Reinhard Strohm has described O admirabile commercium as a “huge Christmas pie,” stuffed full of antiphons and gospel texts, plainchant and popular devotional songs or cantiones. Regis, who seems to be reinventing the motet each time he composes one, reserves one of his most genial inspirations for the close of O admirabile, a marvelous suspension of forward motion at the (possibly nonsense) words “Sus, valla sus in orisus,” as if the jubilant choir falls suddenly into a reverent hush at the cradle of the newborn.

The relationship of Nato canunt omnia, in particular, to Regis’s motet is unmistakeable. Brumel’s work quotes one of the same Christmas cantiones, the rollicking “Magnum nomen domini Emanuel”—an unusual moment of pure levity in a highbrow genre—and the striking, heraldic fifths that begin the secunda pars (“Puer natus est”) are taken directly from O admirabile (which is itself alluding to a plainchant melody), with more voices thrown in for good measure. Where Factor orbis conveys the penitence and prophetic mysticism of Advent, Nato canunt omnia is filled throughout with the high spirits of Christmas, manifested not least in a superabundance of jaunty cross-relations (e.g. F natural and F sharp sounding in close proximity or simultaneously).

All of the music discussed above quotes plainchant melodies. So too do Du Fay’s settings of the Advent hymn Conditor alme siderum and the Christmas sequence Letabundus. Both are intended for alternatim performance, each strophe of plainchant answered by a strophe in polyphony in which the topmost voice sings an elaborated version of the chant melody.

New Year’s with the Valois

Europeans have long celebrated the season around the winter solstice with the ritual exchange of gifts and wishes for good luck and a prosperous new year. The custom in its present form coalesced around the feast of Christmas only in the late nineteenth century, but its roots in western culture can be traced as far back as the ancient Near East. Romans of the imperial era marked the Kalends of January with a festival several days in length, during which the people offered tributary gifts called strenae to the emperor in exchange for presents of money. Medieval Europe absorbed the Roman New Year’s festivities into its own calendar, modifying them somewhat according to the evolving sensibilities of the Christian church, but the tradition of giving presents at New Year’s persisted despite the efforts of the church to suppress what it regarded as pagan beliefs in good luck omens and the efficacy of ceremonial gift exchange. In France, the Latin strena passed into the vulgar tongue as estraine (estreine, estrenne, étrenne, etc.), retaining its meaning of “omen of good fortune” as well as “New Year’s gift.”

New Year’s was celebrated with peculiar intensity at the courts of the Valois nobles who ruled both France and Burgundy in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and members of the courts exchanged precious gifts in enormous quantity. Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy from 1364 to 1404, disbursed an average of 6.5 percent of his annual budget on estraines, while his nephew and political enemy Louis d’Orléans spent no less than 19,000 livres at New Year’s in 1404. (At the time a good horse or a finely ornamented harp might be had for around 50 livres, a house for 100 or so.) Illuminated books, jewel-encrusted saltcellars, enamelled serving vessels, golden cups, reliquaries, pendants, brooches, rings, horses, dogs, hunting falcons: all changed hands in an ostentatious public ritual that honored the chivalric virtue of largesse, reinforced social ties and obligations, established position within the courtly hierarchy, and allowed the rich and powerful to flaunt their wealth.

Just as it does today, all this flamboyant materialism sometimes benefitted those further down the social ladder, the artisans and craftspeople who fashioned the sumptuous objets d’art prized by their noble commissioners. The makers of New Year’s gifts included poets and musicians, and it is a small irony that while one single, superb little golden and bejeweled tabernacle is the only known estraine aside from manuscripts to have survived—much of the rest having been dismantled, melted down, and sold off to finance the endless wars pursued by a bellicose and perpetually cash-strapped nobility—more than two dozen songs remain to us that commemorate the occasion. (Ten of them are by Du Fay, including Entre vous, gentils amoureux, which appears on Blue Heron’s recording of music by Du Fay, bhcd 1001.) While we don’t know the exact circumstances in which New Year’s songs were written, we can imagine that a courtier would provide a composer with verses to set to music, and the song would then be presented to the courtier’s lady love or perhaps performed at a public celebration. In exchange for his estrenne a courtier might hope to win the lady’s amorous favor, while the musicians could expect a gift of money or household necessaries.

We know, for example, that in January 1454 Johannes Okeghem presented Charles VII a book of music as a New Year’s gift, receiving in return four ells of scarlet cloth worth 44 livres, while in 1459 a single song “most richly illuminated” earned him another 44 livres.

(Sadly, neither book nor song is now known to be extant.)

In keeping with the conventions of chivalric love, these fifteenth-century New Year’s songs are not boisterous, champagne-inspired toasts. Elegantly crafted and finely wrought, their merit was measured in part by their ingenuity and their estrangeté or novelty, which the poet Christine de Pizan considered an essential quality of a gift. Most are marked by a graceful sort of melancholy, for courtly love can never be consummated, only yearned and suffered for. Along with the songs we include a short instrumental composition based on a song; a garbled first line in an English manuscript (“Auxce bon youre delabonestren”) is all that remains of the original text, but the reference to the day of the estrenne makes it clear that this too was a New Year’s gift.

Advent

  1. Plainchant O clavis David
  2. Jacob Obrecht Factor orbis
  3. Plainchant O virgo virginum
  4. Josquin Desprez (?) O virgo virginum
  5. Guillaume Du Fay Conditor alme siderum
  6. Antoine Brumel Ave Maria gratia dei plena

Christmas

  1. Johannes Regis O admirabile commercium
  2. Du Fay Letabundus
  3. Johannes Ciconia Gloria Spiritus et alme
  4. Brumel Nato canunt omnia

New Year’s Day

  1. Nicolas Grenon La plus belle et doulce figure
  2. Guillaume Malbecque Dieu vous doinst bon jour et demy
  3. Anonymous Auxce bon youre delabonestren
  4. Arnold de Lantins Amours servir et honnourer
  5. Baude Cordier Dame excellent ou sont bonté, scavoir
  6. Cordier Ce jour de l’an qui maint doist estrenier