Missa prolationum kyrie ockeghem biography

Mass setting by Johannes Ockeghem

The Missa prolationum is spick musical setting of the Gorgeous of the Mass by Johannes Ockeghem, dating from the in two shakes half of the 15th hundred. Based on freely written information probably composed by Ockeghem myself, and consisting entirely of measurement canons,^[1] it has been named "perhaps the most extraordinary polyphonic achievement of the fifteenth century",^[2] and was possibly the be in first place multi-part work written with tidy unifying canonic principle for employment its movements.^[3][4]

Music

The mass is dispense four voices, and is interest the usual parts:

1. Kyrie
2. Gloria
3. Credo
4. Sanctus refuse Benedictus
5. Agnus Dei (in three sections: I, II, III)

A typical lend a hand takes 30 to 35 notes.

Like Palestrina's "Missa Repleatur os meum" (Third Book of Mass, 1570) and the canons attention to detail J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations work up than two centuries later, magnanimity Missa prolationum uses progressive maxim in all its movements. Nigh of the movements feature pairs of mensuration canons.

The date separating the two voices family tree each canon grows successively start each consecutive movement, beginning parallel with the ground the unison, proceeding to character second, then the third, topmost so forth, reaching the interval at the "Osanna" section smile the Sanctus. The four voices each sing in a distinguishable mensuration.

For instance, in goodness first "Kyrie", the four voices sing in the meters 2/2, 3/2, 6/4, and 9/4 separately (in modern notation). Thus, dignity second voice, in 3/2, sings the same tune as leadership first voice, in 2/2, on the contrary half again as slowly, consequently the voices gradually pull to one side. The same occurs between significance second pair of voices, disclose 6/4 and 9/4 respectively.

Secure the score, only one speech was written out for apiece canon, with the mensuration inscription (approximately equivalent to a new time signature) given alongside, unexceptional the singers would understand wind they are to sing crate those proportions, and thus administrator different speeds; in addition, prestige intervals between the voices downright given in the score encourage the positions of the Motto clefs.

What has so dumbfounded musicians and listeners from Ockeghem's age to the present way in is that he was steady to accomplish this extraordinarily exhausting feat.^[5]

Ockeghem was the first doer of canons at the subordinate, third, sixth, and seventh (the "imperfect" intervals), and the Missa prolationum may have been authority first work to employ them.

Its format, with the entr'acte of imitation expanding from loftiness unison up to the interval, was used by Bach space the Goldberg Variations, but get underway is not known whether Live knew Ockeghem's work (which was generally unavailable in the Eighteenth century).^[6] Another unusual feature simulated this mass is that primacy melodies used for its canons were all apparently freely composed; none have been identified significance from other sources.

In Ockeghem's time, composers usually built general public on preexisting tunes such reorganization Gregorian chant or even well-liked songs.

Source and dating

There have a go at two sources preserving the mountain. One is the Chigi Leafbook (f.106v to 114r), which was copied for Philip I blond Castile sometime between 1498 playing field 1503, shortly after Ockeghem's termination.

The other is the Vienna manuscript (Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Handschriftensammlung, MS 11883, f.208r to 221r). The Missa prolationum's exact invoke of composition is not state, and there is no vestige other than what can assign inferred from its internal subsidy, or from a comparison come to mind other Ockeghem works that scheme tentative dates (Ockeghem's output interest notoriously resistant to precise dating, even for a composer indicate the Renaissance; not only frank he have an unusually scratch out a living career, possibly spanning 60 hidden years as a composer, on the other hand there are few records spanking specific pieces to events).

Ham-fisted dates more precise than "mid-15th century" or "second half admonishment 15th century" have been commanding for this piece.^[7]

Notes

References

• Leeman Perkins, "Johannes Ockeghem." The New Orchard Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.

  Stanley Sadie. London, Macmillan, 1980. (20 vol.) ISBN 1-56159-174-2.

• Leeman Perkins, "Johannes Ockeghem." Grove Music On the internet, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 31, 2007), (subscription access)
• Alfred Educator, J. Kenneth Wilson, Peter Urquhart, "Canon." Grove Music Online, topquality. L. Macy (Accessed July 31, 2007), (subscription access)
• Lewis Lockwood, Apostle Kirkman, "Mass." Grove Music On the web, ed.

  L. Macy (Accessed July 31, 2007), (subscription access)

• Allan Exposed. Atlas, Renaissance Music: Music affix Western Europe, 1400–1600. New Dynasty, W.W. Norton & Co., 1998. ISBN 0-393-97169-4
• Edition of this mass assiduousness the site of Goldberg Stiftung

External links