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Another ‘Imitation’ of Busnoys's Missa L'Homme armé—and Some Observations on Imitatio in Renaissance Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rob C. Wegman
Rob C. Wegman*
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Extract

Antoine Busnoys's Missa L'Homme armé must have been one of the most highly esteemed polyphonic Mass cycles of its time. It survives in no fewer than seven sources, an exceptionally large number not equalled by any other cycle from the 1460s or 1470s – even those by Dufay and Ockeghem. In this respect Busnoys's Mass stands alongside a work such as the anonymous English Missa Caput, whose widespread popularity in the fifteenth century is also well established. It is a measure of their extraordinary esteem that both Masses served as models for ‘imitations’ by later composers. The entire cantus firmus layout of the Caput Mass was copied in Ockeghem's and Obrecht's cycles on the same tune, and possibly in a fourth Caput cycle of which only the Agnus dei survives. Busnoys's Missa L'Homme armé likewise served as the model for a later work, Obrecht's L'Homme armé Mass. There exists however a second ‘imitation’ of Busnoys's cycle, an anonymous Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista, which probably dates from the 1480s or 1490s. This Mass has a less conspicuous relationship with its model than the other ‘imitations’ mentioned here, but it raises as many important questions concerning Renaissance practices of borrowing and structural modelling.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 114 , Issue 2 , 1989 , pp. 189 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Edition by Laurence Feininger, Antonius Busnois Missa super L'Homme armé, Monumenta polyphoniae liturgicae Sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae, series 1, i/2 (Rome, 1948). On this Mass, see Perkins, Leeman L., ‘The L'Homme armé Masses of Busnoys and Ockeghem. A Comparison’, Journal of Musicology, 3 (1984), 363–96; Taruskin, Richard, ‘Antoine Busnoys and the L'Homme armé Tradition’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), 255–93, and the correspondence following the latter article (Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), 139–53 and 576–80) Taruskin in particular stresses the historical importance of Busnoys's Missa L'Homme armé, but the main contentions of his article are unfortunately weakened by several inaccuracies and inconsistencies, in particular concerning mensural usage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This was noted by Richard Taruskin, ‘Antoine Busnoys’, 265. Masses preserved in six, seven or more sources are exceedingly rare before c 1480 After that date they are found more often since the number of surviving Mass sources increases dramatically The only pre-1480 Masses which challenge Caput and Busnoys's L'Homme armé cycle in this respect are Dufay's Missa Resvelliés vous (seven sources) and the Sine nomine Mass by Benet (or Dunstable or Power; six sources) However, several sources for the latter Masses do not contain the full cycle, a circumstance which makes the complete transmission of Busnoys's Mass in six sources (the seventh, ModAS s.s., is fragmentary) even more impressive. The manuscript sigla used in this article are as follows. LonBL 54324. London, British Library, Add. MS 54324, LucAS 238: Lucca, Archivio di Stato, MS 238; ModAS s.s., Modena, Archivio di Stato, MS without shelfmark; MunBS 3154: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus MS 3154, TrentC 88. Trent, Castello del Buon Consiglio, MS 88, VatS 160: Vatican, Sistine Chapel Archives, MS 160.Google Scholar

3 This Mass is attributed to Dufay in TrentC 88 but is now generally acknowledged to be an anonymous English cycle dating probably from the 1440s (see Walker, Thomas, ‘A Severed Head: Notes on a Lost English Caput Mass’, Abstracts of Papers Read at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Saint Louis, 1969), 14–15; Alejandro Enrique Planchait, ‘Guillaume Dufay's Masses. Notes and Revisions’, The Musical Quarterly, 58 (1972), 1–23; Strohm, Reinhard, ‘Quellenkritische Untersuchungen an der Missa “Caput” ’, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance, ii: Datierung und Filiation von Musikhandschriften der Josquin-Zeit, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 26 (Wiesbaden, 1983), 153–76) Of its seven sources, two have been discovered within the last 20 years (LonBL 54324 and LucAS 238); there is thus some reason to expect that more sources may turn up in the future. Modern performances of the cycle confirm that it is an outstanding composition. Its transmission, and the existence of several ‘imitations’ (see below note 4), suggest that it enjoyed considerable popularity in England, France, the Low Countries and Italy.Google Scholar

4 See Bukofzer, Manfred F, ‘Caput A Liturgico-Musical Study’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 217–310. The anonymous Agnus del setting is edited in New Obrecht Edition, li, ed. Thomas Noblitt (Utrecht, 1984), 76–85. A setting of the Caput melody which is unrelated to the anonymous Caput Mass is Richard Hygon's Salve regina (Frank Ll Harrison, ‘An English “Caput” ’, Music and Letters, 33 (1952), 203).Google Scholar

5 This was noted by Oliver Strunk in 1937; see ‘Origins of the “L'Homme armé” Mass’, Bulletin of the American Musicological Society, 2 (1937), 25–6; repr in Essays on Music in the Western World (New York, 1974), 68–9.Google Scholar

6 See the entry in Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400–1550, ed Herbert Kellman, iv (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1988), 61, and the literature cited there. The Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista appears on ff. 49r–63r of VatS 160. It was edited in Early Sixteenth-Century Music from the Papal Chapel, ed. Nors S. Josephson, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 95 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1982), i, 1–39. See also Sherry E. Hains, ‘Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista’ (M.A. dissertation, Smith College, 1974) The latter edition was not available to me.Google Scholar

7 Both are edited in New Obrecht Edition, iii, ed Barton Hudson (Utrecht, 1984)Google Scholar

8 See, for instance, his Missa pascale, which employs seven chants from the Easter period in a manner similar to that in the two Obrecht Masses and the Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista. On the face of it, that would seem to make Pierre de la Rue a likely candidate for the latter Mass, particularly since VatS 160 comes from Mechlin. However, the Missa pascale uses Mass Proper chants as well as Office Proper chants, and hence does not share the second characteristic. Moreover, Pierre de la Rue's style in the Missa pascale is much more advanced than that of the three other cycles. As will be seen below, Jacob Obrecht is by far the most likely candidate for authorship of the St John Mass. It may be of interest that MunBS 3154 contains an anonymous Sanctus Iste puer magnus (ff. 137v–141r) in which the St John antiphon is stated in long note-values and is to be sung to its original words. According to Thomas Noblitt, this Sanctus was copied in MunBS 3154 in 1476 (‘Die Datierung der Handschrift Mus ms. 3154 der Staatsbibliothek München’, Die Musikforschung, 27 (1974), 36–56). Since the Munich source seems to have drawn much of its repertory directly from the Low Countries, there is a strong probability that the anonymous Sanctus was a forerunner of the type of Mass exemplified by the cycles for St Donatian, St Martin and St John. The movement could possibly have been written for the rich Florentine merchant Tommaso Portinari, a man who is known to have been involved in the recruitment of musicians in Bruges, and who erected a chapel of St John the Baptist in St James's Church, Bruges, in 1474; see Strohm, Reinhard, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford, 1985), 36Google Scholar

9 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 40–1 and 145–7 Obrecht's Mass for St Martin was probably endowed by the Bruges singer Pierre Basin in 1486. The Mass for St Donatian was endowed on behalf of the Bruges furrier Donaes de Moor in 1487Google Scholar

10 This seems to be the only extant antiphon for St John which fits both the music of the Kyrie and the rhythmic layout of the tenor of this movement at the same time. However, since one of the antiphons in the Mass for St John has not been identified (Puer qui natus est, in the Sanctus). there remains the slight possibility that the Kyrie was based on an antiphon unknown to us In his edition of the Mass (see above, note 6), Nors Josephson – who was not aware of the relationship with Busnoys's Missa L'Homme armé – used Johannes vocabitur to complete the Kyrie, and rhythmicized it in a form which closely resembles the reconstruction I was able to make on the basis of the rhythmic layout of Busnoys's Mass tenor (see Example 1)Google Scholar

11 This was kindly pointed out to me by Prof Chris Maas.Google Scholar

12 See Hudson, Barton, ‘Obrecht's Tribute to Ockeghem’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 37 (1987), 6–7Google Scholar

13 The same tentative conclusion was reached independently by Mary Jennifer Bloxam on the basis of the provenance and selection of the chants for St John. See her dissertation, ‘A Survey of Late Medieval Service Books from the Low Countries: Implications for Sacred Polyphony, 1460–1520’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1987), 438–51. Bloxam writes. ‘Among the available usages known to Obrecht, only that of Antwerp employed all eight antiphons in the Missa De Sancto Johanne Baptista on the natale of the saint This fact, although it does not establish an incontrovertible link to this locale, does at least allow the possibility that the composer of the Mass drew upon this rite’ (ibid., 444–6). Unfortunately, no liturgical sources from Antwerp preserve the antiphon melodies for the feast of St John the Baptist. (I am indebted to Prof. Bloxam for generously sharing her material with me.)Google Scholar

14 This paper was originally written for the round table session ‘Imitatio and Compositional Process’ at the Edinburgh Conference in 1988 In that context it seemed appropriate to include an extended critical discussion of imitatio Since the issues are obviously of considerable importance to the interpretation of the Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista, I have retained the discussion here in its original form.Google Scholar

15 Brown, Howard M, ‘Emulation, Competition, and Homage: Imitation and Theories of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 1–48.Google Scholar

16 See, for instance, Perkins, ‘The L'Homme armé Masses’; J. Peter Burkholder, ‘Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 470–523, Mary Natvig, ‘The Motets of Busnois and Josquin Influence and Imitatto‘, paper read at the AMS National Convention, New Orleans, 16 October 1987CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Bowers, Roger, ‘Obligation, Agency, and Laissez-Faire: The Promotion of Polyphonic Composition for the Church in Fifteenth-Century England’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed Iain Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), 1–19 (p 1).Google Scholar

18 Brown, ‘Emulation, Competition, and Homage’, 35–41Google Scholar

19 Burkholder, ‘Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass’.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 474, n 5, and 475Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 474–5.Google Scholar

22 Leeman L Perkins, Letter to the Editor, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), 133.Google Scholar

23 Utrechtse bijdragen tot de muziekwetenschap, 4 (Utrecht, 1968)Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 40Google Scholar

25 Reese, Gustave, Music in the Renaissance (New York, 1954), 227. See also Edgar H. Sparks, Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet 1420–1520 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), 208, and Elders, Studien zur Symbolik, 53–4.Google Scholar

26 See Calin, William, ‘Medieval Intertextuality: Lyrical Inserts and Narrative in Guillaume de Machaut’, The French Review, 62 (1988), 1–10, and the literature cited there The concept of intertextuality was suggested to me by David Fallows.Google Scholar

27 Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 56Google Scholar

28 Richard Taruskin in particular argues that it was Busnoys's Mass which started the L'Homme armé tradition (‘Antoine Busnoys’, passim)Google Scholar

29 Taruskin, ‘Antoine Busnoys‘Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 269–73Google Scholar

31 One credible candidate might perhaps be Antoine Busnoys himself Endowments by musicians were not rare in the fifteenth century (see, for instance, note 9 above) On the other hand, there is no evidence of any special devotion to St John the Baptist on the part of Busnoys One would sooner expect him to have made a donation to St Anthony, who seems to have had a personal significance for the composer (see Rob C. Wegman, ‘Busnoys’ “Anthoni usque limina” and the Order of St. Antoineen-Barbefosse in Hainaut', Studi musicali, 16 (1988), 15–31) Moreover, a fifteenth-century composer making a personal endowment would naturally have wanted to provide the polyphony himself. The Antwerp connection proposed by Mary Jennifer Bloxam (see note 13 above) seems promising. Three of the many private donations involving polyphony that were made in Antwerp Cathedral are mentioned in J. van den Nieuwenhuizen, ‘De koralen, de zangers en de zangmeesters van de Antwerpse O.L - Vrouwekerk tijdens de 15e eeuw’, Antwerps kathedraalkoor Zes eeuwen koormuztek in de kathedraal te Antwerpen, Gouden Jubileum Gedenkboek 1927/28–1977/78 (Antwerp, 1978), 50.Google Scholar