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A model, a mass, and a motet

David Burn

Like all of his contemporaries, Isaac often based pieces on pre-existent music. The pre-existent material could be sacred or secular, high-class or low, one’s own, by a colleague, or distinguished predecessor. Its use could show off a composer’s talent, pay homage, and add extra layers of meaning. All of these are evident in two works – a motet and a mass cycle setting the five standard mass ordinary texts – that Isaac composed on Comme femme desconfortée, a song probably by the distinguished Burgundian court musician Gilles de Binche dit Binchois (c. 1400–1460; » Hörbsp. ♫ Comme femme).[11] Isaac probably composed both works in Florence in the early 1490s.

Isaac was one of a number of composers, including Josquin, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century to incorporate Comme femme into a sacred context.[12] Binchois’s song speaks, unusually, from a female viewpoint, and expresses the singer’s desire to die. In sacred contexts, the originally secular woman was transformed into the Virgin Mary. Isaac used the song’s tenor voice as the backbone for an imposing motet for six voices, Angeli archangeli. Against Binchois’s tenor, the other five voices draw on texts from the liturgy of All Saints. The whole was probably intended to symbolize the Assumption, when Mary was joined by the saints and crowned Queen of Heaven. Isaac used Comme femme again, in a mass cycle of the same title. Here the presence of Binchois’s song (usually paraphrased in the tenor) in each of the movements marks the otherwise neutral ordinary texts as appropriate for Marian feasts.[13]

[11] The authenticity of Comme femme has been disputed by some, but is accepted in Fallows 2001.

[12] Rothenberg 2004.

[13] See also Staehelin 1977, vol. 3, 81–86.

[2] Staehelin 1977, vol. 2, 19; Picker 1991, 4; Senn 1954, 10.

[3] More recent research confirms the date of c. 1476 originally proposed by Thomas Noblitt for the three motets, see » K. 7 The Codex of Nicolaus Leopold. » D-Mbs Mus. ms. 3154 is viewable online at: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0005/bsb00059604/images/; Isaac’s motets are on fol. 72v, fol. 73v, and fol. 74v. Modern edition: Noblitt 1987–1996. On dating, see Rifkin 2003, 294–307. On possible identities of the scribes, see Strohm 1993, 519 ff. (though doubted in Rifkin 2003, 285 n. 103). See also » F. Regionalität und Transfer.

[4] See, further, Strohm 1993, 526; Kempson 1998, esp. vol. 1, 29–35, 92–106; Strohm/Kempson 2001.

[5] Cumming 2011, with reconstructed score at 268–274.

[6] Relevant documents in Staehelin 1977, vol. 2, after D’Accone 1961 and D’Accone 1963.

[7] Complete text given in McGee 1983.

[11] The authenticity of Comme femme has been disputed by some, but is accepted in Fallows 2001.

[13] See also Staehelin 1977, vol. 3, 81–86.

[15] Wegman 1996, esp. 461–469; Wegman 2011.

[16] Full document quoted in Staehelin 1977, vol. 2, 46 f.

[20] Especially the Trent Codices and the St. Emmeram Codex (» D-Mbs Clm 14274); Strohm 2011, 42 ff. and the literature cited there.

[21] It is difficult to specify how many feasts Isaac’s surviving mass propers could cover, given the multiple use of the common of saints, and the uncertaintly around the details of the liturgies for which Isaac composed. An estimate of around 150 days in the year seems reasonable.

[22] For an analysis of an introit, see Burn 2010.

[23] Discussed extensively in Burn 2002.

[24] Glarean 1547, 460; trans. in Picker 1991, 17 f.

[25] It is generally agreed that the first and third volumes contain imperial music, and the second music for Konstanz; see Burn 2003. Rothenberg 2011a presents an alternative hypothesis.

[26] Among others, the monastery of St. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, and the monasteries of Neresheim and Ottobeuren; see especially Eichner 2011 and Rimek 2011.

[28] Digitised images of the manuscript, including the two autographs, are available at: http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00012DA900000000. The “de manu sua” pieces are at fols. 8 ff., fol. 255v–256v, and fol. 294.

[29] Owens 1997, 258–290.

[30] The earliest mass “contra Turcos” is traceable to 1453/54; Jensen 2007, 117.

[31] The letter in which Du Fay mentions his laments is reproduced in Fallows 1982; Kirkman 2010, 121 f.

[32] Concordances to » D-B Mus. ms. 40021 (c. 1498–1500): D-Mu, 8°Cod. ms. 328-331 (Lalla hoe hoe; 1520s); » A-Wn Mus.Hs.18810  (La la hö hö; 1524–1533). D-B preserves the work in a longer form than the concordances, with a central section absent elsewhere. The longer form is most likely the original; transcriptions of the longer version in Staehelin/Neubauer 1991, and Just 1990/1991, vol. 3. For digitised images of D-Mu, 8°Cod. ms. 328-331 see: http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/view/cim/cim.html; for D-B Mus. ms. 40021 (the piece is at fol. 224v; piece No. 110): http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00012DA900000000.

[33] Somewhat similar is Isaac’s “motet on a fantasia called La mi la sol”, which he composed for a job-interview in Ferrara in 1502, though the basic material of La la hö hö is even more striking in its limitations, and not connected to the piece’s title through solmisation-syllables.

[36] Wiesflecker 1971–1986, vol. 2, 156; also Staehelin/Neubauer 1991, 38 n. 24.

[37] Lindmayr-Brandl 1997, 255; Staehelin 1989 proposes that the original first word was not “Innsbruck” but “Zurück”.

[38] Strohm argues that he did in Strohm/Kempson 2001.

[40] RISM 1539/27. This source is also now viewable online, at: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0007/bsb00074418/images/?viewmode=1.

[41] Salmen 1997, 250.

[42] First in Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig 1812–1814); see Lindmayr-Brandl 1997, 258.

[43] Drexel 1997, 285.

[45] Staehelin 1977, vol. 2, 89–130; Burn 2006.

[46] Strohm, in Strohm/Kempson 2001. On Isaac’s pupils, see Picker 1991, 15 f. On Senfl, see » G. Ludwig Senfl.

[50] Glarean 1547, 261; cited in Picker 1991, 15.