Conference Agenda

This paper establishes a picture of the complex of music based on Benedicta es, starting with the generation of composers from around 1500, and looking forward to the middle of the seventeenth century, arguing that it represents a particular response to ‘Imitatio’ and the music of Josquin in the sixteenth century. The complex demands a careful examination of composition and compositional procedure, of chronology, and of function. It includes original compositions cast as motets and magnificats, reworkings of motets adding a single voice or multiple voices to an existing composition, polyphonic borrowing, especially in imitation masses, instrumental arrangements of existing works, and instrumental works cast as elaborations of existing works. To say the complex is numerous would be an understatement, but what really makes it special is the diversity of genre, composition type and compositional procedure, and the longevity of that tradition.

In his important 1951 study, Die Motette Benedicta es von Josquin de Prez, und die Messe super Benedicta, Myroslaw Antonowytsch examined four masses based on Josquin's motet. There can be no question of the importance of this study in the literature on borrowing in the sixteenth century, however, for one piece, the Missa Benedicta es attributed to Hesdin and Willaert, it had the consequence of implicitly arguing for a primary relationship between the motet of Josquin and the mass of ‘Willlaert,’ and one that fits the received ‘historical narrative.’

In the second half of this paper, I explore aspects of borrowing that may help to clarify this matter; the Missa Benedicta es, and in particular consider polyphonic borrowing in a qualitative sense. I contextualize the conflicting attribution of the Missa Benedicta es, with two related questions. First, are there other examples of a conflicting attribution in contemporary related repertories that may help us to untangle this puzzle? Second, do the patterns of borrowing imply in terms of arguing for a particular attribution?

The topos of courtly love is ever present within the some four hundred French chansons that have come down to us from the fourteenth century. Among them, a very distinct group of only eight so-called realistic virelais integrates bird calls within a morally elevated depiction of the lover’s regard for his lady. As Elizabeth Eva Leach has aptly demonstrated, lending the voice of birds––in particular that of the nightingale as the most talented songbird––to the dignifying voices of rational human beings was the hallmark of the most accomplished poet-singers at court.

The Latin-texted virelai Laus detur multipharia, uniquely preserved in the Chantilly Codex (F-CH 564 no. 10, fol. 16v), presents a curious case. Anne Stone surmised that birdsong might be musically present here––though neither explicitly mentioned nor imitated––noting that certain musical features of the piece are ‘reminiscent of the so-called “realistic” virelai, suggesting that the Latin text may be a contrafactum’. The virelai’s text, already unusual in its latinity, honours St Catherine of Alexandria, straying beyond the narrow boundaries of courtly love poetry and instead suggesting a sacred––devotional––context.

This paper not only substantiates Stone’s contrafact hypothesis but also explores the broader significance of a composition that blurs the edges of seemingly incompatible French and Latin, secular and sacred repertories. I propose a chronology of the virelai’s reception and reworking, offering explanations as to why and under what circumstances the music of a birdsong piece was considered an appropriate and desirable vehicle for the Latin text Laus detur. I argue that the depiction of Catherine of Alexandria as saintly nightingale could advance the marriage policy of the fourteenth-century French nobility and propose a new identification for Laus detur’s hitherto unidentified composer, Petrus Fabri. This single song opens up wider political, moral, and musical questions about the creation and possible functions, many hitherto unsuspected, of fourteenth-century chansons.

The English reformer John Bale, who began his career as a Carmelite monk, was known for his acerbic writings and strong criticism of the Catholic church. Bale’s comments on music, moreover, are often used as evidence of early English reformers’ distain for contemporary liturgical practices: in his 1545 The image of both Churches, for example, Bale famously called pricksong (polyphony) and faburden “the very sinagog of Sathan.” Yet Bale’s criticism of Catholic ritual was not absolute, and couched within his critique is some evidence he personally found the Sarum rite compelling. In addition, Bale employed Latin-texted chant as an organizing framework in his evangelical play God’s Promises (c. 1538), which not only toured the countryside under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell, but was printed during the reign of Edward VI. Comparing Bale’s critiques of Catholic liturgy with his use of music in God’s Promises, this paper suggests that Bale’s choice to use an existing, Catholic musico-liturgical framework as a vehicle for religious reform reveals a sympathy with contemporary liturgical practices that can also be found in some of his most pointed critiques of the Catholic church. By inserting references to explicitly Protestant doctrines, Bale ensured that his audience would see a reformist reading of the Old Testament stories in God’s Promises. Yet by linking his scenes through a group of liturgically connected antiphons, Bale also engaged his audience’s concurrent experience with and memory of contemporary religious ceremony. This un-ironic yet instrumental use of Latin-texted antiphons in a play designed to convert his audience to a reformist viewpoint thus coopted the sound of the Sarum liturgy to serve a reformist agenda, bringing the sacred experience of traditional worship onto the evangelical stage. By employing Latin-texted plainchant in this manner, Bale also relied on a practice shared among reformers and conservatives in the mid-Tudor period: using the music of the English past to construct its religious future.