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Palestrina as Historicist: The Two L'homme armé Masses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James Haar
James Haar*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Extract

Two traits distinguishing the music of the Renaissance may be singled out as relevant to this study: a spirit of emulation leading to appropriation by composers of various aspects of the music of their peers and the development, to a degree not previously seen, of a historical sense. Both in my opinion play a role in the choices made by Palestrina in approaching the L'homme armé theme.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 121 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 191 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1996

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References

1 For general treatments of this subject see Lockwood, Lewis, ‘Aspects of the L'homme armé Tradition’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 100 (1973–4), 97–122, and Walter Haass, Studien zu den ‘L'homme armé-Messen’ des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1984). New suggestions on the origins and meanings of the L'homme armé vogue have been presented by William Prizer, Richard Taruskin and Flynn Warmington; see the references to their work in Barbara Haggh, ‘The Archives of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Music’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 120 (1995), 1–43. On the concept of imitation in Renaissance musical culture see Brown, Howard Mayer, ‘Emulation, Competition, and Homage: Imitation and Theories of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 1–48. A partly revisionist view of the subject is found in Honey Meconi, ‘Does Imitatio Exist?’, Journal of Musicology, 12 (1994), 152–78.Google Scholar

2 A celebrated instance of this is Obrecht's Missa L'homme armé, which deploys the cantus firmus in the idiosyncratic way used by Busnois in his Mass on L'homme armé.Google Scholar

3 Use of major prolation calling for augmentation in the tenor is found in L'homme armé Masses by Busnois, Ockeghem, the composcr(s) of the Naples Masses, Tinctoris, Vaqueras, De Orto and Josquin; Dufay, Basiron, Caron, Faugues, Regis and La Rue use as the basic signature.Google Scholar

4 More composers set the tune on G than anywhere else, but some used a flat signature and a few did not. The L'homme armé melody also appears on D, E and F.Google Scholar

5 On this see Vela, Maria Caraci, 'Un capitolo di arte allusiva nella prima tradizione di Messe L'homme armé, Studi musicali, 22 (1993), 3–21.Google Scholar

6 There was at least one Mass, now lost, by a contemporary of Palestrina, Diego Ortiz. This is cited in an unpublished treatise by Vicente Lusitano; see Collet, Henri, Un tratado de cantu de organo (siglo XVI) (Madrid, 1913), 48. For a L'homme armé Mass by Francisco Guerrero see below, note 13.Google Scholar

7 On this chanson see Vela, Caraci, ‘Un capitolo di arte allusiva’, 4–5, and the references there cited, especially Richard Taruskin, ‘Antoine Busnois and the L'homme armé Tradition’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), 255–93.Google Scholar

8 The use of perfect prolation in the last quarter of the fifteenth century must certainly have been a deliberate bow to the past, perhaps even a slightly precious gesture.Google Scholar

9 See especially Owens, Jessie Ann, ‘Music Historiography and the Definition of “Renaissance”’, Notes, 47 (1990), 305–30.Google Scholar

10 One Missa L'homme armé, published by Petrucci, is securely attributed to La Rue. A second, found in sources amidst other works by the composer, is likely to be his work as well. See Robyns, Josef, Pierre de la Rue: Een bio-bibliographische Studie (Brussels, 1954), 63–4.Google Scholar

11 This view is so ingrained in the Palestrina literature that it seems useless to cite single references; it begins with the work of Ambros, if not before (see below, note 29).Google Scholar

12 Morales's five-voice Missa L'homme armé was first published in 1540 in Scotto's Quinque missae Morales Hispani ac Jacheti … liber primus (RISM 15405).Google Scholar

13 For Charles V's motto see Giovio, Paolo, Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose (Rome, 1555; 2nd edn, Lyons, 1574), 24. There were several occasions on which Charles V could have heard a Mass by Morales; see Stevenson, Robert, Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age (Berkeley, 1961), 57ff. One of special prominence was a visit by the emperor to Rome in April 1536, during which it is documented that he heard the singers of the Cappella Sistina; see Casimiri, Raffaele, ‘I diarii sistini’, Note d'archivio per la storia musicale, 1 (1924), 149–62 (p. 157). Stevenson's discussion of Morales Masses is superior to that of Gustav Trumpff, ‘Die Messen des Cristobal de Morales’, Anuario musical, 8 (1953), 93–151. A L'homme armé Mass by Morales's pupil Francisco Guerrero contains a reference to Gombert's Veni electa mea, a motel that may have been written for the wedding of Charles V. See Rees, Owen, ‘Guerrero's L'homme armé Masses and their Models’, Early Music History, 12 (1993), 19–54 (pp. 48ff.).Google Scholar

14 The Dorico print of Morales's Masses was dedicated by the composer to Cosimo I of Florence, as was Moderne's reprint of 1545–6. See Pogue, Samuel, Jacques Moderne, Lyons Music Printer of the Sixteenth Century (Geneva, 1969), 192ff. This rather lessens the connection of the music with Charles V, not on very friendly terms with Cosimo.Google Scholar

15 See José M. Llorens, Capellae Sixtinae codices musices notis instructi sive manu scripti sive praelo excussi (Vatican City, 1960), nos. 179–80, for the Vatican copies (their date of acquisition by the Cappella Sistina is not given) of the Morales prints. The many L'homme armé Masses in the Cappella Sistina collection are listed in the index of this work.Google Scholar

16 Guerrero appears to have turned to Josquin as well as to Morales in the composition of his L'homme armé Mass. See Rees, ‘Guerrero's L'homme armé Masses’, 38–9.Google Scholar

17 The motive, found also in the Et in spiritum of Compère's Mass, occurs in Kyrie I, Christe, F.t in spiritum and Qui cum patre in Morales's work.Google Scholar

18 Palestrina added si placet voices to Magnificats by Morales, found in a manuscript (VIII, 39) in the Cappella Giulia fondo. See José M. Llorens, Le opere musicali della Cappella Giulia (Vatican City, 1971), no. 29.Google Scholar

19 Lockwood, Lewis, ‘Palestrina’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), xiv, 118–37 (p. 120), wryly notes that the music in the illustration, that of Morales, is unchanged in the Palestrina print. The prototype for this illustration is Antico's Quindecim missarum of 1516, where the pope is Leo X. Dorico has been said to have acquired Antico's illustrative woodcuts when the latter left Rome, but there is no evidence to support this; see Suzanne G. Cusick, ‘Dorico’, The New Grove Dictionary, v, 576–7 (p. 577). In any event Dorico used Antico's work as model; see Fenlon, Iain, Music, Print and Culture in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy, The Panizzi Lectures, 1994 (London, 1995), 30–3, 55–6.Google Scholar

20 Palestrina's volume is dedicated to Philip II of Spain, who thus became the ‘son of l'homme armé‘.Google Scholar

21 The 1599 reprint of Palestrina's third book (on which see below) retained the title of the Mass. Franz Xaver Haberl in editing the four-voice Mass (Werke, xiii) did not recognize the L'homme armé melody, which is strikingly evident in the Mass's opening, even though he had edited the five-voice Mass in the previous volume of Palestrina's Werke. In the sort of unhappy moment from which all of us pray for deliverance he said (p. vii): ‘its thematic content borrows from Gregorian chant, the Dorian melodic formulas of which are set forth in the first Kyrie by the cantus, in the Christe by the tenor, in the final Kyrie by the altus’ (‘ihre Themate den gregorianischen Choral entlehnt, dessen dorische Melodieformeln beim I. Kyrie in Cantus, beim Christe in Tenor, beim letzten Kyrie in Altus niedergelegt sind‘).Google Scholar

22 See Casimiri, Raffaele, La polifonia vocale del see. xvi e la sua trascrizione in figurazione musicale moderna (Rome, 1942); idem, ‘Il “Kyrie” della Messa “L'homme armé” di Giov. Pierluigi di Palestrina e una trascrizione errata’, Note d'archivio per la storia musicale, 10 (1933), 103–8; idem, ‘Un dibattito musicologico a proposito della Missa L'homme armé del Palestrina’, Note d'archivio, 20 (1943), 18–42; Auda, Antoine, ‘La mesure dans la Messe “L'homme armé” de Palestrina’, Acta musicologica, 13 (1941), 39–59; idem, ‘Le “tactus” dans la Messe “L'homme armé” de Palestrina’, Acta musicologica, 14 (1942), 27–43; Anna Maria Monterosso Vacchelli, La Messa L'homme armé di Palestrina: Studio paleografico ed edizione critica (Cremona, 1979).Google Scholar

23 ‘Racchiude questa messa il sommo di quanto aveva saputo inventare di più difficile ed astruso, massimo nella combinazione simultanea di varii tempi, e prolazioni, o vogliam dire misure di battuta, la scuola fiamminga: vi si scorge però unita una chiarezza, una facilità, ed un brio tutto propio della penna di Giovanni, che la distingue, e la rende di gran lungo superiore a tutte le altre da me vedute con siffatto titolo.’ Giuseppe Baini, Memorie storie-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina … detto il principe della musica, 2 vols. (Rome, 1828), i, 359.Google Scholar

24 Palestrina, Werke, xii, p. vii. The Leipzig edition of Palestrina was published by Breitkopf & Härtel between 1862 and 1903. Haberl's work on it was done chiefly in the decade after 1885.Google Scholar

25 L'homme armé Masses later than Palestrina's include an anonymous four-voice work in the Biblioteca Musicale Laurence Feininger at Trent. I do not find this in the catalogue of manuscripts in the Feininger collection (I manoscritti della Biblioteca Musicale L. Feininger presso il Castello del Buonconsiglio di Trento, ed. Clemente Lunelli (Trent, 1994)). Not everything in this collection is included in the catalogue; see the editor's remarks on p. xi. There is also a 12-voice polychoral setting by Carissimi (this attribution has been questioned) and two copies of this work with an added fourth choir, one attributed to Nicolò Stamegna and the other to Francesco Beretta; see Feininger, Laurence, ‘Zu einigen Handschriften der Biblioteca Vaticana (Fondo Cappella Giulia)’, Analecta musicologica, 9 (1970), 295–8. I am grateful to Stephen Miller for information on this subject.Google Scholar

26 Zacconi, Lodovico, Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592; facsimile edn, Bologna, 1967), Book II, ch. xxxviii, f. 115v.Google Scholar

27 Cerone, Pedro, El Melopeo: Tractado de musica theorica y pratica (Naples, 1613; facsimile edn, Bologna, 1969), Book XX, p. 1028. Cerone does not compare Palestrina's Mass with Josquin; but elsewhere (p. 998) he speaks of proportional mensurations in Josquin's super voces musicales Mass as not ‘generalmente aceptas’ so not worth discussing.Google Scholar

28 Samson, Joseph, Palestrina ou la poésie de l'exactitude (Geneva, 1939), 167, 175–7. Samson says that he first presented this hypothesis in the Bulletin de la Société Palestrina in 1931 and that some writers had accepted the claim as proved; he adds: ‘Prouvé est excessif. Tout au plus pensonsnous qu'on peut, avec de fortes présomptions, le croire.‘Google Scholar

29 This performance, the date of which is unknown to me, is mentioned in Michel Brenet, Palestrina (Paris, 1906; 2nd edn, 1921), and in a footnote in August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, iv, ed. Hugo Leichtentritt (Leipzig, 1909), 30.Google Scholar

30 See Caraci, Maria, ‘Note sull'impiego del cantus firmus nelle messe di Palestrina’, Atti del Congresso di studi Palestriniani 28 settembre–2 ottobre 1975, ed. Francesco Luisi (Palestrina, 1977), 327–38, especially the discussion between Caraci and Oscar Mischiati on p. 338.Google Scholar

31 ‘Vieles in der ersten Messen sieht so völlig altniederländisch aus, dass man mit Rücksicht auf den Stil der Zeitgenossen sagen kann: “Palestrina archaisire”’; ‘eine durch und durch niederländische Komposition aber sicher auch eine seiner grossartigsten, ein wahres Monumentalwerk’. Geschichte der Musik, iv, 30.Google Scholar

32 Feilerer, Karl, Palestrina: Leben und Werk (2nd edn, Düsseldorf, 1960), 90, says that Palestrina may have imitated Josquin's L'homme armé Masses but does not specify in what ways he did so.Google Scholar

33 Aaron, Pietro, Toscanello in musica … nuovamente stampato con laggiunta da lui fatta et con diligentia corrette (Venice, 1529), Book I, ch. xxxviii. On Aaron's relationship with Spataro see A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians, ed. Bonnie Blackburn, Edward Lowinsky and Clement Miller (Oxford, 1991), 94–5 and passim.Google Scholar

34 Haass, Studien zu den ‘L'homme armé-Messen‘, gives the cantus firmus as used by all composers up to and including Palestrina, but does so in incomplete form (the repeat of the first part of the melody is not included) and in inconsistently resolved and reduced values. The diplomatic editions of Laurence Feininger, Monumenta polyphoniae liturgicae Sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae, ser. 1, i (Rome, 1948), gives the works with original signatures and note values.Google Scholar

35 The work was printed by Petrucci in a volume of De Orto's Masses (Misse, 1505). It is also found in Cappella Sistina MS 64. A modern edition is in Feininger, Monumenta polyphoniae, ser. 1, i, fasc. vii.Google Scholar

36 Llorens, Capellae Sixtinae codices musices, no. 211, p. 234. Llorens's remark is repeated in the same language for Morales's Mass prints in the Cappella Sistina. Both prints might of course have been acquired long after their date of publication.Google Scholar

37 A facsimile of the 1599 edition (and that of 1570) is given in Vacchelli, La Messa L'homme armé. The author shows convincingly that the 1599 volume was the only sixteenth-century reprint of Palestrina's third Mass book.Google Scholar

38 Prattica di musica, Book I, ch. xxxviii, ff. 115–22. Agostino Pisa, Breve dichiaratione della battuta musicale (Rome, 1611), 87, mentions Palestrina's Mass, evidently using the ‘resolved’ second edition. A late seventeenth-century citation of the work is in Pompeo Natali, Solfeggiamenti per cantare, suonare, libro secondo (Rome, 1681), appendix.Google Scholar

39 Burney transcribed the Kyrie, Gloria, Osanna and Agnus dei of the Mass; his transcription may be found in London, British Library, Add. MS 11581, f. 14v. See Augustus Hughes-Hughes, Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum, i: Sacred Vocal Music (London, 1906), 221.Google Scholar

40 See above, notes 22, 37.Google Scholar

41 El Melopeo, Book XX, pp. 1028–36.Google Scholar

42 Haberl follows this resolution in his edition of the Mass, to the dismay of Casimiri, ‘Il “Kyrie” della Messa “L'homme arm锑.Google Scholar

43 Heyden, Sebald, De arte canendi, oc vero signorum in cantantibus usu, libri duo (Nuremberg, 1540), Book II, ch. vii. There is an English translation of this work by Clement Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents, 26 (n.p., 1972).Google Scholar

44 See RISM 15391, 15392.Google Scholar

45 See Haar, James, ‘Josquin as Interpreted by a Mid-16th-Century Musician’, Festschrift Horst Leuchtmann, ed. Bernhold Schmid and Stephan Hörner (Tutzing, 1993), 179–205, Nos. 1–8 of Buechmaier's manuscript are omitted in the table of the manuscript's contents in this article; they include Josquin's Missa La sol fa re mi (no. 7), Isaac's Missa O praeclara (no. 8), Moulu's Missa duarum facierum (no. 1), Vogelhucher's Missa Sancii spiritus (no. 2), Clemens's Missa Caro mea (no. 6), Buechmaier's Missa Bewar mich herr (no. 5) and two Introits by Isaac (nos. 3–4). The manuscript is in Regensburg, Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek, MS C 100, Vacchelli, La Messa L'homme armé, 17, notes some Petrucci resolutions into.Google Scholar

46 See Zarlino, Gioseffo, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558; facsimile of 1573 edn, Ridgewood, NJ, 1966), Book III, ch. 2, where the various signs employed by the antichi are dismissed as of no use for the ‘sound’ of music, and Book III, ch. 49, where perfect prolation is described only as a sign for ‘battuta inequale’.Google Scholar

47 The treatise is in Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS B 57. See Haar, James, ‘Lessons in Theory from a Sixteenth-Century Composer’, Altro Polo: Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, ed. Richard Charteris (Sydney, 1990), 51–81.Google Scholar

48 Palestrina was appointed to the Cappella Sistina by Julius III on 13 January 1555. He was dismissed (being married) by the severe Pope Paul IV in September of the same year. See Lockwood, ‘Palestrina’, 120.Google Scholar

49 All but the Mass by Obrecht and a now lost one by Gafori are included in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cappella Sistina manuscripts. See the index to Llorens, Capellae Sixtinae codices musices. Petrucci prints such as the Liber primus missarum Josquin (the edition of 1516) may also have been available in the Sistina collection; see ibid., 279–80.Google Scholar

50 On this see Haar, James, ‘Josquin in Rome: Some Evidence from the Masses’, Music, Musicians and Musical Life in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Library of Congress, 1–3 April 1993 (forthcoming).Google Scholar

51 Comparison of music in Cappella Sistina sources with prints by Petrucci and others, and even with concordant manuscript sources, shows many more and longer ligatures, little attention to text placement, and rare resolutions of canons and mensural intricacies; the singers were evidently expected to be able to solve all these difficulties themselves. Recently Richard Sherr has produced evidence that during the sixteenth century there was a good deal of criticism of individual singers in the chapel; but among those whose voices were judged weak or spent were some whose retention in the chapel was recommended on the grounds that they were expert readers of musical notation. See Sherr, Richard, ‘Competence and Incompetence in the Papal Choir in the Age of Palestrina’, Early Music, 22 (1994), 607–29.Google Scholar