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Song masses in the Trent Codices: the Austrian connection*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Adelyn Peck Leverett
Affiliation:
Fairfax, Virginia

Extract

The seven Trent Codices preserve much of the sacred vocal polyphony that has survived from the middle decades of the fifteenth century. With some 1500 individual pieces, the collection is a rich compendium of liturgical and paraliturgical genres, large and small. The codices are perhaps most valuable, however, as sources for the cyclic mass Ordinary, the most ambitious of fifteenth-century polyphonic forms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Thematic indexes for Trent 87–92 and 93 appear in Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich 14–15 and 61. Their overall total of 1864 items incorporates individually numbered movements of cyclic masses as well as several hundred concordances among the seven manuscripts.

2 The most detailed chronology for the Trent Codices to date has been developed by Suparmi Elizabeth Saunders, through study of watermarks in the manuscripts (The Dating of the Trent Codices from their Watermarks, with a Study of the Local Liturgy of Trento in the Fifteenth Century, Outstanding Dissertations from British Universities, ed. Caldwell, J. (New York, 1989)Google Scholar). Saunders dates the watermarks in Trent 87 and Trent 92 between 1435 and 1445 (pp. 55–62). Similar conclusions are reached by Peter Wright (The Related Parts of Trento, Museo Provinciate d'Arte, MSS 87 [1374] and 92 [1379]: A Paleographical and Text-Critical Study, Outstanding Dissertations from British Universities, ed. Caldwell, J. (New York, 1989)Google Scholar).

3 For an insightful discussion of the Trent Codices' centrality to this earliest mass repertory, see Strohm, R., ‘Zur Rezeption der frühen Cantus-firmus-Messe im deutschsprächigen Bereich’, Deutsch-englische Musikbeziehungen: Referate des wissenschaftlichen Symposions in Rahmen der Internationalen Orgelwoche 1980, ‘Musica Britannica’, ed. Konold, W. (Munich and Salzburg, 1985), pp. 938Google Scholar.

4 For instance, the earliest exemplar of one historically crucial cycle, Dufay's Missa Se la face ay pale, is preserved anonymously in Trent 88 (fols. 97v–105r); only a later concordance (in CS 14) provides the attribution.

5 In a series of articles published over the last fifteen years, Strohm has brilliantly and decisively redefined modern understanding of the Trent sources. In addition to the article cited above (n. 3), see the following: Die Missa super Nos amis von Johannes Tinctoris’, Die Musikforschung, 32 (1979), pp. 3451Google Scholar; ‘Quellenkritische Untersuchungen an der Missa Caput’, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance ii: Datierung und Filiation von Musikhandschriften der Josquinzeit, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 26, ed. Finscher, L. (Wiesbaden, 1984), pp. 153–76Google Scholar; Die vierstimmige Bearbeitung (um 1465) eines unbekannten Liedes von Oswald von Wolkenstein’, Jahrbuch der Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft, 4 (1987), pp. 163–72Google Scholar; Native and Foreign Polyphony in Late Medieval Austria’, Musica Disciplina, 38 (1984), pp. 205–30Google Scholar; ‘Messzyklen über deutsche Lieder in den Trienter Codices’, Liedstudien: Wolfgang Ostkoff zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Just, M. and Wiesend, R. (Tutzing, 1989), pp. 77106Google Scholar. Key insights from these articles are synthesised in Strohm's comprehensive view of fifteenth-century history. The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar, which appeared after this article had been submitted for publication.

6 The manuscripts are listed under the group signature ‘BL’ in the earliest catalogue (1748) of the Cathedral Chapter Library; no records concerning their donation to the library appear to have survived.

7 Johannes Lupi was tentatively identified as the principal scribe of Trent 87 and 92 by Lunelli, Renato (‘La patria dei codici Trentini’), Note d'Archivio, 4 (1927), pp. 116–28Google Scholar. Wright, (The Related Parts, pp. 93113 and passim)Google Scholar confirmed Lunelli's intuition, and provided extensive new information on Lupi's career; in particular, he demonstrated that Lupi also copied a large-format polyphonic manuscript probably used by the imperial court chapel, and so may have had formal duties in connection with music there. Once at Trent, Lupi was also active as an organist at the cathedral.

Unlike Lupi, Johannes Wiser signed his work in two of the codices (on Trent 93. fol. 125v, and Trent 90, fol. 465v), and so has been known to Trent scholarship from the outset. Wiser may also have been an organist (Wright adduces a document identifying him as pulsator) and, as rector scolarum at the cathedral school (a post he held between the late 1450s and June 1465), may have had responsibility for musical instruction there. His musical literacy, however, was limited (as shown by Bent, M.. ‘Trent 93 and Trent 90: Johannes Wiser at Work’, I codici musicali trentini … Atti del convegno Laurence Feininger, ed. Pirrotta, N. and Curti, D. (Trent, 1986), pp. 84111Google Scholar). There is in general no solid evidence that musical practice at the cathedral or its school, during the period in which the Trent collection was assembled, exceeded bare liturgical necessity.

8 Published archival research on both Frederick's and Sigismund's chapels is limited and outdated. On the imperial court, see Moser, H. J., Paul Hofhaimer: Ein Lied- und Orgelmeister des deutschen Humanismus, 2nd edn (Stuttgart, 1929: repr. 1966). pp. 1011 and 170, n. 16Google Scholar; Federhofer, H., ‘Die Niederländer an den Habsburgerhöfen in Österreich’, Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akadetnie der Wissenschaften, 7 (1956), pp. 102–20Google Scholar; Pietzsch, G., Fürsten und fürstliche Musiker im mittelalterlichen Köln, Beiträge zur Rheinischen Musikgeschichte 66 (Cologne, 1966Google Scholar); and Rumbold, I., ‘The Compilation and Ownership of the “St Emmeram” Codex (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14274)’, Early Music History, 2 (1982), pp. 161235CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Innsbruck, see Senn, W., Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck (Innsbruck, 1954), chs. 1 and 2Google Scholar. These studies are summarised (and supplemented, to some extent, with fresh information) in Gruber, G., ‘Beginn der Neuzeit’, Die Musikgeschichte Österreichs, ed. Flotzinger, R. and Gruber, G. (Graz, Vienna and Cologne, 1977), i, pp. 173227Google Scholar.

9 For a summary of archival information about polyphonic practice in fifteenth-century south Germany, see Gruber, ‘Beginn der Neuzeit’. Keith Polk's recent work concerning instrumental practice in the same region has revealed a high and generally unrecognised degree of development (Instrumental Music in the Urban Centres of Renaissance Germany’, Early Music History, 7 (1989), pp. 159–86Google Scholar). More research into the state of vocal polyphony may well yield results at least partially parallel to his.

10 See especially ‘Native and Foreign Polyphony’. Strohm draws upon recent manuscript discoveries (e.g. Pass, W., ‘Eine Handschrift aus dem Schottenstift zu Wien zu Erklärung der Trienter Codices?’, Österrekhische Musikieitung, 35 (1980), pp. 143–53Google Scholar; Smith, W. L., ‘An Inventory of Pre-1600 Manuscripts Pertaining to Music in the Bundesstaatliche Studienbibliothek of Linz, Austria’, Fontes Artis Musicae, 27 (1980), pp. 162–9)Google Scholar, as well as on older studies by Hans Joachim Moser, Gerhard Pietzch and others.

11 Strohm has focused on mass cycles ‘labelled’ in the sources with Germanic tenor incipits, such as the Missa Grüne Linden (Trent 88) or the Missa Gross Sehnen (Trent 89) and on others identified as Germanic by modern scholars, such as the Missa Deutsches Lied (Trent 89), first paired with its song model in Gottlieb, L. R., ‘The Cyclic Masses of Trent 89’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1958)Google Scholar. He has added to the group the cycle Christus surrexit (attributed years ago to Dufay), by showing that it uses a melody ubiquitous in chant sources from east of the Rhine with the German text ‘Christ ist erstanden’ and all but unknown in the west (‘Messzyklen’, pp. 81–2). Strohm (‘Zur Rezeption’) also traces specifically Germanic variants in more widely distributed cantus firmi (for example, those of the Gloria-Credo pairs Dixerunt discipuli and Patris sapientia in Trent 93). Chant-orientated studies have not as yet revealed the exact locations of polyphonic practice in Austria or south Germany, since little precise information is available about chant dialects in use at either of the Habsburg chapels or at other likely centres. Possibly, though, the imperial court relied on chants from the diocese of Passau: Frederick III's principal residences (Wiener Neustadt, Graz and Linz) fell under the jurisdiction of the diocese of Salzburg, but he staffed the newly built Residenzkirche at Wiener Neustadt with Augustinian clerics from the Vienna Dorotheenkloster, who might have brought Passau-dialect chant manuscripts with them. See Wodka, J., Die Kirche in Österreich: Wegweiser durch ihre Geschichte (Vienna, 1959), pp. 170ffGoogle Scholar., and Gerhartl, G., ‘Wiener Neustadt als Residenz’. Ausstellung Friedrich III (Deutscher Kaiser): Kaiserresidenz Wiener Neustadt, Katalog des Nord-Österreichischen Landesmuseums, Neue Folge 29, ed. Weininger, P. (n.p., 1966)Google Scholar. On the relationship between the Passau chant sources and chant arrangements in the later Trent Codices, see Leverett, A. P., ‘Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 91 (1378)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1990). ch. 2Google Scholar.

12 Strohm has made this point eloquently (‘Zur Rezeption’, pp. 24–5): ‘Man konnte sich offenbar nicht vorstellen, da es im österreichischen Raum schon im früheren 15. Jahrhundert eigene Messkompositionen gegeben hatte, die sich nicht von den importierten unterscheiden liessen.’

13 Several composers prominent in the St Emmeram Codex may be representatives of this group, notably Hermann Edlerawer, identified by Rumbold as a cantor at St Stephen in Vienna. In general, the image of Germanic composers as self-taught provincials has done little to promote their artistic reputation. For some writers on the anonymous Trent repertory, contrapuntal solecisms actually constitute reason to suggest Germanic authorship. Robert Mitchell, for instance, observes of the Missa Wünschlichen schön and another anonymous mass in Trent 89. that ‘The style of the music … suggests German provenance, since the writing of both cycles is clumsy in places’ (‘The Paleography and Repertory of Trent Codices 89 and 91, Together with Analyses and Editions of Six Mass Cycles from Trent Codex 89’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Exeter, 1989), pp. 85–6)Google Scholar. Such pronouncements are particularly common in English-language histories. See, for instance, Cuyler, L., The Emperor Maximilian I and Music (London, 1973)Google Scholar, who characterises Germanic polyphony before Maximilian's era as ‘crude’ and ‘archaic’. In general, smaller centres in Austria and south Germany where polyphony was practised seem to have hired (so far as the archival data now available can show) only singers with Germanic surnames; these, if they dealt with polyphony, might well have learnt their trade locally. For an account of one such centre, the cathedral of St Stephen in Vienna, see Mantuani, J., Die Musik in Wien: Von der Römerzeit bis zur Zeit des Kaisers Max. I (Vienna, 1907; repr. 1979), pp. 278377Google Scholar.

14 Frederick's patronage often went to artists from the westernmost portion of his empire, in architectural and decorative projects as well as in music. (See Fillitz, H., ‘Friedrich III und die bildende Kunst’, Ausstellung Friedrich III, pp. 186–91Google Scholar.) During the 1460s and early 1470s, imperial court documents identify the following men specifically as singers and as westerners (that is, as clerics from western dioceses): Adam Hustini de Ora, diocese of Liège Nicholas Mayoul, native of Hesdin, diocese of Namur (see n. 15) Andreas Mayoul (presumably related to Nicholas) Arnold Fleron, diocese of Liège Arnold Pickhart, diocese of Liège Edigius Garin, diocese of Liège Johannes Bubay, diocese of Liège Johannes Du Sart, diocese of Noyons. (This list is drawn from Pietzch, Fürsten und fürstliche Musiker, with additions supplied from Vatican documents by Pamela Starr in a letter of 11 October 1990; I am grateful to her for allowing me to cite her discoveries.) Perhaps the strongest indication of a special status for western singers at the imperial court is the consistent documentation of a second group of singers (first discovered by Moser) as ‘German’ (‘dewtsche kantoresen’). These singers, all with apparently Germanic surnames, were assigned to Frederick's newly constructed castle church at Wiener Neustadt (‘der newn cappellen auf dem tor in der burg zu der Newnstadt’); they may be identical with Frederick's Viennese Augustinians, mentioned above in n. 11. These singers could have been responsible for plainchant services, leaving polyphonic performance to Frederick's western-dominated personal chapel. The Innsbruck chapel seems not to have hired westerners on any long-term basis. Instead, it would apparently contract for limited service from composers such as Isaac, who stopped there on what was evidently a journey between his homeland and Italy in 1484. (See Staehelin, M., Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs, Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschernden Gesellschaft, ser. 2, 8 (Berne, 1977), ii, Biographie, p. 19Google Scholar, and Senn, , Musik und Theater, p. 10Google Scholar.)

15 Brassart came to imperial service after a considerable career in the West, including a stint in the papel chapel; he was the head of a chapel inherited by Frederick from his predecessor Sigismund, and came – like several others in that group – from the diocese of Liège. (See Federhofer, ‘Die Niederländer’, and Mixter, K., ‘Johannes Brassart: A Biographical and Bibliographical Study’, Musica Disciplina, 18 (1964), pp. 3762, and 19 (1965), pp. 99128Google Scholar.) Nicholas Mayoul replaced him as chapelmaster sometime before 1467, and remained in that post until about 1480; in 1485, he became head of the Burgundian chapel under Maximilian. (See Pietzch, , Fürsten und fürstliche Musiker, p. 69Google Scholar.) Unfortunately, only Brassart and Du Sart, among all Frederick's western musicians, are securely credited with compositions in the Trent Codices or elsewhere. (Strohm has proposed that Arnold Fleron may be the ‘Ar. Fer.’ responsible for a work in Munich 3154; see ‘Messzyklen’, n. 39.) Equally vexatious is the lack of documents for two important composers known almost entirely through their work in the Trent Codices, Roullet and Touront, at the imperial court or any other centre.

16 German instrumentalists were in their turn able to command choice positions at Italian courts. Records at Ferrara, for instance, appear to identify a number of musicians both as Germanic (through designations such as ‘tedesco’, ‘todescho’ or the less definite ‘d'alemagna’) and as instrumentalists (‘trombeta’ or ‘piffaro’). See Lockwood, L., Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400–1505 (Cambridge, MA, 1985), app. 4Google Scholar. Organ-playing, of course, had reached an extraordinary level of development in Germanic lands early in the 1400s, represented by internationally known figures such as Konrad Paumann and Paul Hofhaimer. Polk (‘Instrumental Music’) details early German ascendancy in string playing as well.

17 On the relative merits of these terms, see Steib, M., ‘Imitation and Elaboration: The Use of Borrowed Material in Masses from the Late Fifteenth Century’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1992), ch. 1Google Scholar. Three of the masses (all but the Missa Zersundert ist) are discussed and transcribed in Schmalz, R. F., ‘Selected Fifteenth-Century Polyphonic Mass Ordinaries Based on Pre-existent German Material’ (Ph.D.dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1971)Google Scholar. The connection between the Missa Zersundert ist and its polyphonic model is made in Leverett. ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, ch. 5. Mitchell (‘The Paleography and Repertory’) identified the mass as an elaboration of the Zersundert ist tenor melody only, rather than of the polyphonic setting preserved in Glogau.

18 The German song repertory in the Schedel songbook was probably set down in or after 1467 (the year in which the manuscript's compiler, Hartmut Schedel, returned to Nuremberg from Italy). The Glogau partbooks are perhaps a decade later, but maintain a strongly retrospective orientation. See Das Glogauer Liederbuch, ed. Väterlein, C., Das Erbe Deutscher Musik 85–6 (Kassel, 1981)Google Scholar, and Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Glogauer Liederbuch, ed. Owens, J. A., Renaissance Music in Facsimile 6 (New York and London, 1986)Google Scholar.

19 The four masses are impossible to date precisely. Stylistically they are uniform and answer well to a date of composition in the mid- or later 1460s. Physically each presents a different pattern of evidence. The Missa Wünschlichen schön Kyrie and Gloria appear in Trent 89 at the end of a fascicle dated by Saunders to c. 1460–2 (The Dating of the Trent Codices, pp. 91–2 and 199) and by Peter Wright to c. 1463 (‘The Compilation of the Wiser Manuscripts: Notes and Queries’, forthcoming in the proceedings of the Convegno Internazionale sui Codici Musicali Trentini del Quattrocento (Trent, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 24 September 1994). However, the two movements, like so many items in the codices, are later additions to their fascicle, differentiated by ink colour and by details of script style from the main contents there. The near-complete exemplar of the cycle in Strahov is even later, probably from the 1470s. Dates for both composition and copying into Trent 89 probably fall around or after 1465. The Missa Deutsches Lied is also a later addition to its Trent 89 fascicle, dated by Saunders to c. 1466 (The Dating of the Trent Codices, pp. 91–2 and 200) and by Wright to 1468 (‘The Compilation of the Wiser Manuscripts’). The entry immediately preceding it there (a Credo I setting attributed elsewhere to Nicasius da Clibano) is in fact a direct copy from Munich 3154, where the piece is on paper dated by Noblitt considerably later, to 1475–6. (See Noblitt, T., ‘Die Datierung der Hs. Mus. Ms. 3154 der Staatsbibliothek München’, Die Musikforschung, 27 (1974), pp. 3656, esp. p. 39Google Scholar; the copying relationship is demonstrated in Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 119–22.) Even if Noblitt's dating were a little too late, then, the mass was probably copied early in the 1470s. The Missa Sig säid und heil is the main entry in a still-undated fascicle of Trent 91. Other entries in the fascicle, however, as well as the general type of its watermark, suggest the later 1460s as a reasonable dating for the copy. (See Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 52–6, and P. Wright, ‘Paper Evidence and the Dating of Trent 91’, forthcoming in Music and Letters; I am grateful to Dr Wright for allowing me to see a typescript of this article in advance of its publication.) The Missa Zersundert ist is the main entry in a Trent 91 fascicle dated by Saunders to 1468 (The Dating of the Trent Codices, pp. 103–5 and 201) but by Wright considerably later, to 1474 (‘Paper Evidence’; see also Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, p. 58).

20 The voice-parts of the three-voice masses follow the normal pattern of a syntactically coherent discantus–tenor pair fleshed out by a contra, which here functions largely as a bass part. The four-voice masses, however, display at times a thickness of texture and an ambiguity of voice-part roles that has led Mitchell to view them as three-voice constructions later equipped with a fourth voice, perhaps by the same (and in Mitchell's view somewhat clumsy) redactor (‘The Paleography and Repertory’, pp. 111–12 and 115).

21 The anonymous Missa Grüne Linden (Trent 88, fols. 375v-384r) also displays this quick syllabic declamation within small overall dimensions. This mass is not considered here because its model is monophonic, and because its construction is quite different from that of the four masses chosen. None the less, it may be an earlier prototype for these (Saunders, The Dating of the Trent Codices, places the paper of its copy c. 1461), if not actually a member of the same repertorial group. The several links it has with them will be pointed out in subsequent footnotes.

22 O2 is not frequent as a signature in the later fifteenth century; it plays a special role in the works of Busnoys. See Taruskin, R., The Latin-Texted Works of Antoine Busnoys (New York, 1990), pt 3, pp. 31ffGoogle Scholar.

23 ‘Die Missa super Nos amis’, p. 43.

24 This Sanctus chant, in the first mode, is catalogued in Thannabaur, P. J., Das einstimmige Sanctus der römischen Messe in der handschriftlichen Überlieferung des 11. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1962)Google Scholar. Most of its manuscript appearances bear rubrics similar to that given to the chant in the printed Graduale Pataviense of 1511: ‘Aliud sole[m]ne communiter in omnibus festis’.

25 Mitchell also has noted the appearance of Thannabaur no. 182 in the Deutsches Lied Sanctus, although he does not mention the Wünschlichen schön citations (‘The Paleography and Repertory’, p. 104). The same chant provides the prefatory intonation to the Sanctus of the Grüne Linden cycle.

26 ‘Messzyklen’, pp. 95–6. The lost Agnus Dei movement for the Missa Deutsches Lied would presumably have re-used the chant yet again, by analogy with the Wünschlichen schön movement. The chant is catalogued as no. 216 in Schildbach, M., ‘Das einstimmige Agnus Dei und seine handschriftliche Überlieferung vom 10. bis 16. Jahrhundert’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 1967)Google Scholar.

27 Mitchell (‘The Paleography and Repertory’, pp. 111–12) identifies this quotation with Schedel no. 56, Er het mein Lib, but the correspondence he cites is tenuous at best. (He does not note the parallel quotation in the Deutsches Lied cycle.) His identification of a further song quotation in the Zersundert ist Credo (Schedel no. 116, Ich frew mich Zu der Wedefahrt, at ‘secundum scripturas’ in the Credo) is surely correct; however, that song makes no further appearance in the other masses considered here.

28 All four masses almost certainly cite numerous other songs as well, alongside their main models, in addition to the few cited jointly. This profusion of song quotations draws the works towards a special category of masses usually assigned to the end of the century, the so-called Missa Carminum, composed by Obrecht, Pipelare, Isaac and Rener, among others. These later works differ from our 1460s group in that none is dominated by a single song tenor: continuity arises from a flow of song-quotations set imitatively in all the voice-parts. Still, both groups of masses are close in spirit to the quodlibet, a form especially strong in the Germanic tradition. Isaac especially may have taken precedents for his Missa Carminum from the Austrian circle in which he worked, rather than, as is usually assumed, from Obrecht. Schmalz (‘Selected Fifteenth-Century Polyphonic Mass Ordinaries’, pp. 120–38) was the first to identify the Sig säld quotation in the Deutsches Lied Credo. Realising its significance, he proposed to call the mass Deutscher Lieder, to stress the plurality of songs involved. (The label Missa Deutsches Lied had been assigned by Gottlieb, who identified the mass's textless principal model.) In light of the discoveries detailed above, however, all of the cycles in this group would require similar adjustments to their titles, so I have retained the singular form (Deutsches Lied) here.

29 The Proper cycles appear on fols. 113v-200r of Trent 88.

30 Most of the cross-quotations within the group of Proper cycles are brought about by parallels among the underlying chants, but exercise, none the less, a powerful unifying effect. They are listed in Auctorum anonymorum missarum propria XVI quorum XI Guilelmo Dufay auctori adscribenda sunt, ed. Feininger, L., Monumenta Polyphoniae Liturgicae, ser. II, 1 (Rome, 19471948), pp. iviiiGoogle Scholar. See also Planchart, A. E., ‘Guillaume Du Fay's Benefices and his Relationship to the Court of Burgundy’, Early Music History, 8 (1988), pp. 117–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fallows, D., ‘Dufay and the Mass Proper Cycles of Trent 88’, I codici musicati trentini pp. 4659Google Scholar.

31 The version of this introit setting in Trent 91 (fols. 215v-216r) is identical in clefs, signatures and finals, as well as in general contrapuntal style, to the Sig säld cycle following. Its three concordances (two in Strahov and one in Trent 89) all present somewhat altered versions of the work, and none of these is associated with the mass.

32 Richard Taruskin emphasises the polarity of these approaches in contrasting Dufay's embellishment of the L'homme armé cantus firmus with the strict presentation common to Busnoys and Ockeghem. The prevalence of strict presentation in later L'homme armé masses, he argues, is one reason for tracing the tradition back to these composers rather than to Dufay. See Antoine Busnoys and the L'homme armé Tradition’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), pp. 255–93, esp. p. 260CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Only a few passages in the Wünschlichen schön and Deutsches Lied cycles elongate values of the song tenor.

34 Not all the tenor presentations discussed above and listed in Table 4 are strictly complete. All, however, set out at least three tempora drawn without change from the start of the song tenor segment in question.

35 See the discussion of ‘block quotation’ in Sparks, E. F., Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 1420–1520 (Berkeley, 1963), pp. 152–4Google Scholar. Sparks uses another anonymous mass from Trent 89, the Missa Quand ce viendra, as his primary example.

36 Strohm, too, uses the term ‘contrafact’ in connection with parts of these masses (‘Messzyklen’, pp. 96 and 101). See also Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 239ff.

37 For a comprehensive account of contrafacts in the Trent sources, see Fallows, D., ‘Songs in the Trent Codices: An Optimistic Handlist’, I codici musicali trentini, pp. 170–9Google Scholar.

38 The Missa Deutsches Lied presents an obvious exception here, since it lacks an Agnus Dei of any kind. But quite possibly that movement, which would have run into an adjacent gathering in Trent 89, the work's unique source, was lost: a second Osanna statement, needed to complete the model tenor exposition in the Sanctus, seems also to be missing. Here again, the Missa Grüne Linden offers a close parallel to the cycles on polyphonic Tenorlieder by sounding its cantus firmus as a tenor line, in uniform short values and without ornamentation – in the most easily audible configuration, that is, of the entire cycle – to end the second of its Agnus Dei invocations.

39 The final Gloria segment (‘Tu solus altissimus’) of Busnoys's mass follows closely the four-voice Il sera pour vous/L'homme armé (in Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 2856) usually attributed to Robert Morton, but possibly by Busnoys himself. See Taruskin, , The Latin-Texted Works of Antoine Busnoys, pt 3, pp. 35–7Google Scholar.

40 One case in point would be the Missa Le serviteur of Guillaume Faugues (Trent 88, fols. 411v-420v). Faugues incorporates clear block quotations of his model into several movements, but arguably not at all into the Agnus Dei.

41 For instance, Obrecht's Missa Rosa playsans places strong multi-voice quotations in both the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei. This work, however, appears in no source earlier than ModE (Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, MS α.M.1.2), which was probably copied c. 1505. (See Lockwood, , Music in Renaissance Ferrara, pp. 216–17 and 226–7Google Scholar.) Strohm has argued that Obrecht had contacts with the Tyrolean court at Innsbruck, and composed his Missa Maria zart (on a cantus firmus found in several Austrian sources) to fulfil a commission there (see The Rise of European Music, pp. 521–2). An even stronger possibility of Austrian ties exists for Johannes Martini, another composer whose masses (probably from the 1470s) contain block quotations. Strohm has argued forcefully for Austrian influence on Martini (see especially his Communication to the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), pp. 576–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar) in opposition to J. Peter Burckholder, who sees Martini primarily as a disciple of Ockeghem (see Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), pp. 470523CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Leverett (‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, chs. 4 and 5) similarly posits Martini's indebtedness to Austrian practice.

42 The only work of Touront's to appear in a French source is the widely distributed song-motet O gloriosa regina rnundi, found in the Pixérécourt chansonnier (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français, MS 15123). A handful of Neapolitan song collections (including Montecassino, Biblioteca dell'Abbazia, MS 871 and Perugia, Biblioteca Communale Augusta, MS 431, as well as Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS Q16) preserve short, mostly secular works attributed to him. Possibly Touront's Neapolitan connections owed something to Vincenet, who served the Neapolitan court after 1469 but may have been in Austria earlier; one of Vincenet's masses is based on O gloriosa regina mundi. See Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 254–5 and Table 5.10.

43 Touront may have been the ‘Tirion’ mentioned in a 1439 funeral motet for the emperor Albrecht II (a suggestion first made by de Van, Guillaume, ‘A Newly Discovered Source of Early Fifteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony’, Musica Disciplina, 2 (1948), pp. 574, esp. pp. 1415)Google Scholar. He may also have had something to do with the text of Chorus iste pie Christe, a contrafacted rondeau attributed to him in the Strahov Codex, which includes a passage imploring divine mercy for Bohemia (see Gulke, P., ‘Touront’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Blume, F. (Kassel and Basle, 19491986), xiii, cols. 592–3)Google Scholar. The Speciálník Codex also credits him with a polyphonic arrangement of the offertory Recordare virgo mater that includes the trope ‘Ab hoc familia’, common in Austria and Bohemian chant rites. (This piece is published from its appearance in Glogau as EDM 85, no. 20; it also appears in Trent 89 without attribution.)

44 Gottlieb (‘The Cyclic Masses of Trent Codex 89’, ch. 6) first noticed the parallelisms in the Missa Monÿel, although his failure to locate a corresponding model song led him to qualify his conclusions. See also Mitchell's detailed analysis of the cycle in ‘The Paleography and Repertory’, ch. 4.

45 I am deeply grateful to Dr Fallows for proposing this identification (in a letter of 1 October 1988) for my reconstruction of the song. The poem is the sixth given in the Rohan poetry manuscript (Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliches Museum, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.B.17); it also occurs in the Jardin de plaisance (Paris: Antoine Verard, 1501) on fol. 80rGoogle Scholar: Molinet's Debat cites a song title in the first line of each of its 41 stanzas; ‘Mon œil est de tendre temprure’ was one of only six such lines which had not, until Fallows's discovery, been identified with a surviving polyphonic song.

46 The mass tenor, cleffed and labelled normally, carries mostly free material in this movement. The low transposition of the song tenor in the second contra brings about a relocation of the whole discantus–tenor framework, which constitutes a further special likeness between this work and the Missa Monÿel. (The other masses transpose the model tenors only.) Further, a similar blurring of voice-part functions occurs in the Gloria of the Missa Monÿel (first section), where the song tenor suddenly appears in the contratenor secundus, without a rubric, and following a lengthy section of free composition in that part; the mass tenor, entering the movement for the first time at this point, has unrelated material.

47 Strohm (‘Messzyklen’) views the Missa Christ ist erstanden as a direct copy of the Missa Caput, and sees the influence of the English cycle in other Germanic chant-based cycles as well.

48 The Missa Monÿel appears in a fascicle dated by Saunders to the period 1462–4 (The Dating of the Trent Codices, pp. 91–2 and 199) and by Wright (‘The Compilation of the Wiser Manuscripts’) to about the same period. Since it forms the principal layer within the two fascicles it occupies, its copy date may be closer to the age of the paper than is the case with other cycles discussed here.

49 Fallows identified the textless fragment of this work in Trent 91 (‘Songs in the Trent Codices’, p. 179). The mass is followed in Trent 91 by an anonymous setting of the hymn Urbs beala Ierusalem, which has a concordance in Strahov (fol. 281r) close to Touront's Pange lingua (fols. 275v-276r). Both belong to a large temporale cycle copied by a single scribe.

50 The Sig säid Sanctus in Strahov is on fols. 81v-82r, and the Touront cycle on fols. 68bisv-79v: the piece separating them is the Sanctus of Vincenet's Missa sine nomine. Interestingly, the Sig säid Sanctus is ‘reduced’, in this reading, to the three-voice texture (discantus, tenor and low contra) shared by all the sine nomine movements –and by two of the 1 Tenorlieder cycles.

51 The Magnificat appears in Perugia 431 (divided between fols. 129v-130r and 133v–134r). with the attribution ‘Cecus’ – one also used, in the same manuscript, for Touront's best-known work, O gloriosa regina mundi. The Magnificat also appears anonymously in the Strahov Codex as no. 322. The identification of the fragment was initially made in Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 244–5.

52 On Isaac's adoption of Germanic techniques in his Ordinary arrangements, see Staehelin, , Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs, iii, Studien zu Werk- und Satztechnik, pp. 1121 and 124–32Google Scholar. Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 247–8, discusses melodic and rhythmic idiosyncrasies that tie the Missa Sig säid und heil to Touront directly.

53 The song appears in Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Prcussischer Kulturbesitz. Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.C.28; the Cordiforme chansonnier (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection Rothschild, MS 2973); El Escorial. Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo, Biblioteca y Archivo de Música. MS IV.a.24; Montccassino 871: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouvelles acquisitions françhises, MS 4379; Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS Aldini 362; and the Pixérécourt chansonnier, in addition to its appearance on fols. 48v-49r of Schedel. A keyboard intabulation is in Buxheim, and is quoted in turn by an otherwise free composition in Strahov. The Germanic readings, along with Montecassino and Berlin, carry fragments of what may have been an English text beginning with the word ‘Fortune’. Glogau also includes an unrelated piece with the incipit Gentil madonna mia. See The Mellon Chansonnier, ed. Perkins, L. L. and Garey, H. (New Haven, CT, 1979), pp. 375–84Google Scholar.

54 Peter Wright (‘Paper Evidence and the Dating of Trent 91’) dates the paper on which the cycle appears to 1475–8, thereby placing it in the latest layer of Trent 91. Leverett (‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 55–6), lacking a firm watermark date, places the copy considerably earlier on other grounds, such as script style.

55 Mitchell (‘The Paleography and Repertory’, pp. 118–20) solved this rubric, citing the final Agnus Dei in Busnoys's L'homme armé cycle as a parallel. My own earlier discussion of the tenor line as incomplete (‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 236–7) is entirely mistaken. Wiser's direction for the tenor is not clearly written: ‘econtra’, rather than ‘eronet’, may be intended. Both, oddly, would tend to signal retrograde rather than the inversion clearly called for by the counterpoint. (I thank Bonnie Blackburn for this observation.)

56 Motto openings of movements that quote both discantus and tenor of the source song become increasingly popular in masses copied later in the 1470s. Particularly, double applications of this technique are still unusual in pieces composed early in the decade, as the Missa Gentil madonna mia probably was.

57 The Kyrie pattern prevails in the group of sine nomine cycles preserved in the Apel Codex (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 1494), all of which are probably Germanic. See Leverett, ‘A Paleographical and Repertorial Study’, pp. 189–91.

58 The Missa Gentil madonna mia is preceded by the Missa Quatuor ex una and by another anonymous cycle (a three-voice Missa sine nomine) in a highly continuous grouping that implies all three were present, even adjacent, in a single exemplar used by the Trent scribe (here, Johannes Wiser). The association between the Gross Sehnen mass and the Quatuor ex una Kyrie is made by a second scribe, one of the minor contributors to Trent 89.

59 Strohm discusses the Bruges composer Cornelius Heyns and the Pour quelque paine cycle in Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford, 1985), p. 131Google Scholar. The Trent 89 fascicle containing the Missa Gross Sehnen (another cycle with a highly structured tenor) begins with the often-copied song Amours, amours, carrying an attribution to ‘Heyne’. The song probably belongs to Hayne van Ghizeghem of the Burgundian court. The Trent scribe, however, could have been thinking of the Bruges Heyns, and have placed the song there to signal some connection of his with the composer of the Gross Sehnen cycle.

60 As Strohm has pointed out, this western-orientated view of the codices was reinforced by the work of Laurence Feininger, who published a long series of pieces preserved anonymously there under the names of several masters resident in France and the Low Countries. The same inclination took a slightly different form for Charles Hamm, who focused instead on English influence. Only recently, Richard Taruskin has claimed the anonymous Missa Quand ce viendra as a hitherto lost work of Busnoys (The Lalin-Texted Works of Antoine Busnoys, pt 3, pp. 94–100). Taruskin makes a careful case, pointing out significant parallels between the anonymous mass and Busnoys's known cycles, but never raises the possibility of a Busnoys imitator based in Austria.