George de la Hèle

Program: #24-21   Air Date: May 20, 2024

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from recording Georges de la Hèle featuring El León de Oro directed by Peter Phillips. It is on the Hyperion label and is recording CDA68439; for complete information:

https://elleondeoro-com/

From Gramophone Magazine: George de La Hèle (1547‑86) was one of a last wave of composers from the Low Countries to occupy a key post at a major European court, specifically that of Philip II, where he was preceded as chapel-master by Payen and the better-known Manchicourt and succeeded by Rogier (all of them short-lived). His Missa Praeter rerum seriem is usually mentioned only in connection with other works based on Josquin’s enormously influential late motet but it is of more than academic interest: the addition of a seventh voice recalls Rore’s Mass, of course, but La Hèle ups the ante by adding yet another, as was then customary in Spain. Unlike Rore and Lassus, he allows Josquin’s motet to drift more often out of earshot, but otherwise his treatment of it is (one might say) textbook imitation Mass style. 

The accompanying motets are by the composers named above, several of them in two sections; again, they embody a classic ‘Franco-Flemish’ motet style that endured until the end of the century. The shorter ones, Payen’s Virgo prudentissima and Manchicourt’s ingenious Salve regina, are the most satisfying.

The great strength of this recording is the transparency of its textures, which allows the parts to come through individually while preserving the monumentality that such a scoring obviously motivates – all the more remarkable given the size of the choir, which is large by modern standards in this repertoire (nearly 40-strong). That is due to canny direction and a bright acoustic, which together achieve a sound strongly reminiscent of Cupertinos. That will be recommendation enough to lovers of Iberian (or indeed Franco-Flemish) polyphony. Regular readers will expect me to say that I prefer a fuller and deeper timbre, and therefore a lower pitch-standard (for a composer such as Manchicourt especially) but the clarity and precision of these interpretations is very satisfying.

The inspiration behind this album was to explore the work of a neglected school of Flemish composers, who were living in Madrid towards the end of the Renaissance period, and to ask a Spanish ensemble to sing it. It was our intention to mix Spanish flair with Flemish erudition, though it would have been the Flemish element which their commissioner, Philip II of Spain (r1556-98), who employed all these composers, really appreciated. It was well known that the traditional style of Flemish sacred composition suited his severe tastes, encouraging him to build an entire chapel choir, called the Capilla Flamenca, around the Flemish idiom.

During the reign of Philip’s father, Charles V, the musicians at the imperial chapel came from a variety of backgrounds, a result of the fact that they had to follow a very peripatetic monarch wherever he went. It seems likely that on a visit to Ghent, Charles met Cornelius Canis, a local composer who, in 1542, was given the responsibility of taking four choirboys from the Low Countries to Spain. This was by no means the first time such a journey was undertaken, but it set a precedent for Madrid. Canis became the maestro de capilla in Madrid, a post which he handed over to Nicolas Payen (also called Nicolas Colin) when Charles abdicated in 1556. Payen, the first of the composers represented on this album, thus became the first maestro for Philip II, who never employed a Spaniard in that role. This policy would not be changed until 1634, when Mateo Romero (who in his turn had been brought to Madrid as a choirboy from the Low Countries as late as the 1580s) retired and Carlos Patiño attained the post. The last documented transfer of choirboys from the Low Countries to Madrid was made in 1594.

From the beginning of Philip II’s reign in 1556 until 1634, music at the royal court was divided between the Capilla Real and the Capilla Flamenca. The first was largely made up of Spanish instrumentalists, the second largely of Flemish singers who, in nearly eighty years, were able to build up an astonishing repertoire of music in their native style, in a foreign land. As this recording shows, the style was carefully preserved, even though later composers, like Rogier, experimented with the Baroque cori spezzati style. But the nucleus of this repertoire was brought from Flanders and established in Spain first by Canis, then Payen (maestro between 1556 and 1559), who passed it to Manchicourt (maestro between 1560 and 1564), Jean Beaumarchais (1565-70), Geert van Turnhout (1571-80), George de La Hèle (1581-86) and Philippe Rogier (1586-96). It is this succession of masters, largely unknown today, that we have set out to explore. Our search has been seriously influenced by the impact of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, in which the 70,000-volume royal library, housed in the Ribeira Palace, was completely destroyed. Among the losses was most of Philippe Rogier’s music, and just about all of Géry de Ghersem’s (his only known Mass setting has survived because he included it, presumably as a boast, in a publication of Rogier’s Masses he was supervising after the latter’s death, which had been printed in multiple copies).

As my list indicates, Nicolas Payen was one of the first Flemings to leave a mark in Madrid. He was born in Soignies, where he sang in the choir of St Vincent, but by the age of thirteen he had already been sent to Spain, presumably as a choirboy (voices broke later in those days). By the 1540s he was rising in the chapel hierarchy, becoming successively a clerk and a chaplain, until finally, in 1556, he took over the post of maestro de capilla. Little of his music is available today, and limited research has been done on his life. His Virgo prudentissima is securely in the sober style of his Flemish training, though enriched by some unexpected turns of harmony. Its dense texture and low scoring are strongly reminiscent of the music of Nicolas Gombert, always rich and sonorous, using the technique of imitation in inventive and interesting ways. In fact, there is a dual attribution to both composers across the six available sources (three to each), though the Gombert ones are earlier. The work was in print by 1539. If it was by Payen, it shows him to have been a quintessential Flemish composer, at least in his youth, and a very good one.

The key figure in the early part of this history is Pierre de Manchicourt, particularly favoured by Philip II. It is known that Manchicourt was a choirboy at Arras Cathedral in 1525, director of the choir at Tours Cathedral in 1539, master of the choirboys at Tournai Cathedral in 1545 and maître de chapelle there later that year. By 1556 he was a canon of Arras Cathedral. He succeeded Nicolas Payen as master of Philip II’s Flemish chapel in 1560, shortly after Payen’s death. It is possible that he was also master of Philip’s Spanish chapel, holding both positions for the rest of his life, all of which suggests that Philip protected and promoted him.

The style that found favour is clearly on display in all three Manchicourt pieces recorded here. Even when setting a voluptuous text from the Song of Songs, like Osculetur me, Manchicourt was faithful to the idiom he had learnt as a youth, not least in Tournai, where Gombert was a canon throughout his tenure there. Again the sober, through-composed, imitative method of Gombert underlies every phrase of this substantial setting, suggesting passion under the surface, but superficially withdrawn. This may not sound like a music which is interesting to us today, obsessed as we may be with down-to-earth tragedy and its expression; nor are we quick to be like Philip II, a religious maniac who hid himself away in the endless liturgies of his court chapel; but I find a particular beauty in the slow, seductive way the polyphony unwinds. It just takes a little time to let it make its effect.

This is equally true of Manchicourt’s Emendemus in melius. Another substantial and slow-moving motet, it has a text whose message, centered on a desperate plea of mercy (‘et miserere’), one may understand better as a sinner (‘Peccavimus cum patribus nostris’). The listener may imagine agonizing dissonances and chromaticisms for such a text. But Manchicourt leaves the surface untroubled, inviting us to go beneath it to find the real meaning. The phrase at ‘et miserere’ is particularly haunting. Manchicourt rather reinforces this solemn method in his six-voice Regina caeli where, despite the obvious brightness of the text, he deploys one of the severest mathematical devices from the early Flemish Renaissance rule-book: a canon. This can be heard between the two soprano parts throughout—in the first half the first soprano leads and the second follows, beginning four semibreve beats later at the lower fourth; in the second half this is reversed and the second soprano begins, leading the first soprano by five semibreve beats, and now repeating the melody at the upper fourth. It is striking that Rogier, setting the same text some time later, is much more proto-Baroque, conceiving his music for double choir with little real part-writing and a lot of hectic rhythmic life.

However, if this sounds academic, Manchicourt can be playful, in a serious way. Like Josquin before him, he enjoyed giving the singers little teases. By adding the direction ‘sans souspirer ne chantez poinctz’ (lit. ‘without breathing, and don’t sing dots’) at the top of the manuscript, he required the second voice to omit minim rests and remove the dot from any dotted notes that may occur in the leading voice, so that although the second soprano starts the motet four semibreves later than the first, it ends the prima pars five semibreves earlier (and in the secunda pars, seven semibreves later, the parts now reversed.) In the process, a vocal line that is already highly melismatic becomes unusually syncopated. Manchicourt replicates these features in the other voices, creating a scintillating exemplar of how complex polyphonic style can be, from someone who was undoubtedly old-fashioned. While all this is going on in the upper voices, in the lower ones Manchicourt has been careful to base much of the material on the original Regina caeli chant, by paraphrase. Through the imitative technique at which he was so expert, this chant melody influences all the parts, wrapping the composition into a convincingly organic whole.

The stand-out masterpiece on this album is the Missa Praeter rerum seriem by George de La Hèle. It is remarkable that this setting is not known today, and that this is indeed the first complete recording of it. It is based on Josquin’s six-voice motet Praeter rerum seriem, which must rank as just about the most influential single composition of the entire period. It is astonishingly powerful music, leaving little wonder that so many later composers parodied it, and that these re-inventions are themselves powerful. Included in this list of re-makes are Masses by Ludwig Daser, Matthaeus Le Maistre and Cipriano de Rore, a Magnificat by Lassus (one of his greatest works), and motets by Vicente Lusitano, Adrian Willaert and Sethus Calvisius. This is an impressive pedigree for La Hèle’s own version, whether he was aware of it or not.

La Hèle scored his setting for seven voices in all the movements except the last one—the second Agnus Dei—where he added an eighth part, a second tenor. The general scoring is for SSAATBB, which is one more voice than Josquin had, as a result of having more boy sopranos at his disposal than Josquin had had. This doubling of the highest voices might suggest that the texture would be lighter and brighter than in the Josquin original, but the genius in that original lies partly in the darkness of its sonorities, especially at the beginning. La Hèle was obviously keen not to lose the impressive effect of that opening, and uses it at the very beginning of his first Kyrie to set the scene. It comes back in the middle of sections (‘Qui tollis’, for example) but not again at the beginning of a movement before the Sanctus, and then both Agnus Deis. Another opportunity Josquin gave him was the triple-time writing, which comes towards the end of his motet. La Hèle made frequent use of this (for instance, in the second Kyrie, at ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ and ‘cuius regni’, in the Osanna, and at the end of the second Agnus). Overall, La Hèle made the most of everything Josquin had to offer, turning it into his own music with consummate mastery.

La Hèle was appointed maestro de capilla to the Spanish court in 1581. In 1584 Philippe Rogier, the last composer in our survey, was appointed vice-maestro de capilla, going on to become maestro in 1586 on the death of La Hèle. Rogier had been one of those choirboys sent to Spain at a young age, arriving in 1572. The last boys to be sent—twelve of them—arrived in 1594, just before Rogier died in 1596, after which the Flemish tradition in Madrid began to fade. Stylistically it was changing too, as can be heard in the two Rogier motets we sing here. Now there is an overt attempt to explore the incoming techniques associated with the Baroque, more Venetian than Flemish. History does not relate what Philip II thought of this. In Cantantibus organis the emphasis is on brilliant scales, high and bright textures, frequent cadences with joyful triple-time interjections at regular intervals, the part-writing kept uncluttered—no canons, or even much through-composed imitation. In Regina caeli Rogier goes even further towards the Venetian style with grand cori spezzati writing for double choir, and some very snappy chordal rhythms. The use of a basso continuo instrument is just around the corner; and the time-warp that the music in the royal chapel had represented for so long was soon to come to an end. But the tardy view which these Flemings throw on what was still possible in the polyphonic idiom on the cusp of the Baroque, away from the centres in Italy, is uniquely fascinating.

—Peter Phillips