Peter Phillips & the Tallis Scholars, Part 3

I. John Taverner: Missa Corona spinea (Gimell CD CDGIM 046).

This characteristic sweetness of tone is attributed to the fact that Mouton had more of a French background than a Flemish one, which resulted in shorter-spanned, clearer melodic lines than were typical of the Flemish, and that he worked in more transparent textures. However his ability to write music of the utmost mathe­matical complexity was almost unparalleled – only more obviously Flemish composers like Ockeghem were as proficient – which rather neatly begs the question which side of this racial mix was more responsible for the complexity of canonic writing, so beloved of the Franco-Flemish school in general. One was inclined to think it was the Flemish, until Mouton came along. Either way, canon was still in his time a desired means of expression; and in the eight-voice Nesciens mater he created one of the most durable, as well as one of the most incredible, masterpieces of the period. Yet even in this piece one can hear everything clearly. The counter­point is crystal clear, the lines short and precisely chiselled: with the right access code it is possible to follow exactly how the mathematics are working out.

For those interested in having a go the code is this: there are two four-part choirs answering each other. The four lines of the choir which enters first are exactly replicated a fifth higher and eight beats later by the choir which enters second. The magic of this comes when the two choirs over­lap, which they do constantly, leading to some very clever things – if Mouton had simply made them answer each other in block sections the whole thing would have been much more straightforward. This is an extreme example of Mouton’s use of canon, but it occurs regularly elsewhere in his music, and in what is recorded here. The short, four-voice motet Ave Maria … benedicta tu is a canon by inversion between the second part down and the fourth; while Salve nos, Domine is based on a plainchant melody deployed in a canon at the fifth between the second part down and the third.

But such was Mouton’s range of expression that he didn’t need to rely on mathematics to build an atmosphere. The motet Quis dabit oculis? stands out for its simplicity – very few pieces of this period go straight to the heart of the matter with so little fuss. Written as a funeral motet for his patron, Queen Anne of Brittany, Mouton mourns her in slow, utterly dignified and compelling lines that reduce to simple chords where her name (‘Anna’) is mentioned. This ability to move from undemonstrative imitative writing to chords is also on display in the last section of his substantial setting of Ave Maria … virgo serena, the chords coming this time where the name ‘Maria’ is invoked. Mouton underlines the gentleness of this idea by using a slow triple-time for Mary, immediately returning to duple for the remainder of the text.

The Missa Dictes moy toutes voz pensées attracted my attention not because I had ever heard it, or even of it, but because in the Complete Edition it stood out from the other fourteen Masses included there in having an Agnus II which was scored for three basses alone. Being an admirer of gimells (or twinned parts) in the English repertoire I was quick to appreciate a man who wanted to divide a low bass part into three. This scoring was startlingly original, hinting at a mind which preferred sonority above other aspects of composition, and therefore in my book to be trusted. The rest of the Mass repaid my faith, yielding exactly the kind of hidden masterpiece which I was looking for. It is an attractive detail that Mouton chose to base this Mass on a chanson by Loyset Compère, whom he probably replaced as a canon of St Quentin in 1518, where they were both eventually buried.

The three voice parts of Compère’s chanson are treated by Mouton as being three indepen­dent lines of melody, to be realigned and worked against each other at will. An example of this comes immediately, in the opening bars of the first Kyrie, where the melody which one hears first in the chanson – in the alto – now is heard third in the baritone part; and the melody which came in third in the chanson – the tenor – enters before the others in the top voice. Almost all the remaining movements begin with some variation of this technique, culminating in the Agnus III where a second tenor joins the ATBarB of the hitherto basic choir giving a whole new range of polyphonic possibilities (and creating some unfor­get­table dissonances). Interestingly the Crucifixus – a trio created by twinning the alto part and adding a baritone as accompaniment, another gimell in everything but name – seems to be free of Compère’s ideas, though with a polyphonist as resourceful as Mouton one can never be sure of what he has remade.

For most of his life Mouton was employed at the French court, having arrived there via the chapel of Queen Anne. As the wife of Louis XII of France she and her chapel would have helped to celebrate many of the grand political events of their married lives, in turn encouraging her composers to write suitable ceremonial motets for them. Quis dabit oculis? is one of these. After her death in 1514 Mouton was employed exclusively at the chapelle royale in Paris, which raises the strong likelihood that he took part in the festivities associated with the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, when Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France held a summit. If he did, he would surely have met William Cornysh, who was leading the English Chapel Royal. Unfortunately it is not known whether either composer wrote anything specifically for this occasion, but either way rarely can there have been a more telling comparison between two differing styles of composition, which would have wonderfully fuelled the hot-house atmos­phere of rivalry and competition so famously engendered by this meeting. Cornysh’s music is all boisterous ornament concealing flashes of fire; Mouton’s suave and gentle. No doubt they had their contemporary supporters and detrac­tors, arrayed on patriotic lines. It is our privilege that we can take the broader view: both offer differing visions of perfection. — Peter Phillips

He may have been. Milan under the Sforzas in the late fifteenth century was well known to have been a hot-house of gambling, with the ducal family taking a leading role. Since there is good evidence that Josquin worked there throughout the 1480s, it seems very possible that he joined in with the fashion, at court and in private. This would certainly explain the (not entirely necessary) presence of the dice in the notational scheme of this Mass, as a friendly nod to his singers, and to please the duke. Did he even throw dice to establish his composition plan?

At first sight these dice are nothing more than indicators to the tenors as to how to distribute the notes of the chanson, on which the Mass is based, into their part—Josquin having chosen as his cantus firmus the tenor part of Robert Morton’s chanson N’aray je jamais mieulx. For example the Kyrie is preceded by a pair of dice showing two and one, which tells the singers that the note-lengths of the chanson need to be doubled in order to fit with the other three voice-parts. In the Gloria the dice read four and one, requiring the notes of the chanson to be quadrupled in length. In the Credo the dice indicate six to one. In the Sanctus it is five to one. So far, so good. But there are problems. In the Credo the proportion has to be twelve to one, not six, or the notes don’t fit. In the Sanctus the five to one stipulation doesn’t work across all the notes of the original, only the longer ones. And there are suddenly no dice featured at all after the ‘pleni’. Fortunately the printer, Petrucci, anticipating trouble, wrote out a resolution of the tenor parts. Nonetheless, even though the dice are thus rendered redundant, Petrucci still thought it important to include them in the final print. This only further underlines the question, why are they there?

There have been many theories. André Pirro (in 1940) judged the conceit of the dice to be ‘a useless complication, invented only to amuse or confuse singers devoted to gaming’. More tolerant explanations have turned to the first line of the chanson, ‘Shall I never have better than I have?’, in the hope of finding a clue, though whether this title implies a religious meaning, or is purely secular, is a moot point. Is it no more than the conventional lover’s complaint? Is it the greedy gambler’s gripe? Or is it the languishing soul’s plea for redemption? This last possibility has been taken up by several writers who suggest that the lack of dice after the ‘pleni’ supports the evidence that in the medieval church there was a change in mood at that point, with the following Hosanna and Benedictus serving as a frame for the elevation of the host (the ritual display of the consecrated bread and wine). Since this was the most dramatic and significant moment of the Mass it comes as no surprise to find that composers might give it special musical treatment.

There is one further detail. In the sections where the dice are present Josquin only quotes the first six bars of Morton’s tenor. When we get to the Hosanna (and also in the Agnus Dei) he quotes the whole of Morton’s chanson tenor—a total of twenty-three bars—which explains why these movements are suddenly more substantial than the preceding ones. And in the very last statement of the Morton tenor, in the third Agnus, Josquin finally gives the melody to the basses and starts it on a D, as Morton had done, not G, which is the first note of every other statement in Josquin’s Mass. So not only is there a special reference to gaming in this music, alongside a special way of marking the elevation of the host, but there is also the more common compositional practice of building interest towards the final moments of the setting.

The authorship of both the Missa Di dadi and the Missa Une mousse de Biscaye has been questioned. If one is voting for Josquin—the evidence from the sources is inconclusive—the standard explanation is that they are both early works, by a composer who was trying out differing styles and methods. Knowing how experimental Josquin could be in his mature writing, and finding both these Masses very powerful to perform, I am inclined to support this theory. The Missa Di dadi is especially interesting, since it seems to be a dry run for the much more famous, and probably much later, Missa Pange lingua. If so, this could have been Josquin revisiting and reworking a student composition, or if the Missa Di dadi is actually the later work, then perhaps it could be another composer rehashing an established masterpiece. The dice, however, remind us of the prevailing scene in Milan, and Josquin’s presence there.

The Missa Une mousse de Biscaye is based on a secular tune with a French and Basque text. The French word ‘mousse’ in the title is derived from the Castilian word ‘moza’ meaning a lass; Biscay is a province in the north of Spain, part of the Basque Country, with Bilbao as its capital. The original is a dialogue between a young man, speaking in French, and a Basque girl, who replies to all his amorous proposals with the mystifying refrain ‘Soaz, soaz, ordonarequin’. The confusion in the lovers’ communications is held to explain the way the music wanders about tonally—beginning in F, quickly cadencing in G, returning to F but ending eventually in B flat.

The Mass is said to be Josquin’s earliest Mass-setting, dating from 1473-75. Inevitably for such an early work it is full of untypical details. For example the Agnus Dei is an exact repeat of the Kyrie—unique in Josquin. And the Credo is unusually long by comparison with the other movements. In addition there are some ungrammatical (by later standards) dissonances and resolutions, though nothing as extraordinary as those heard in the ‘Domine Deus, Rex caelestis’ section of the Missa Di dadi. The chanson melody in this Mass is treated quite loosely—appearing in all the voice-parts at different times and with a variety of extensions to the original. It is these extensions which give the writing its fantasia-like charm, especially in the Credo.

Both these Masses based on secular melodies seem to show Josquin as a young man exploring what he could do with the form. He would experiment further, and equally randomly, in other settings of the Mass. But here are two major variations on the timeless theme of how to set the Mass text, one with a particularly engaging history, and both yielding some superlative a cappella writing.—Peter Phillips