Music

Austro-German music occu­pied only a periph­er­al posi­tion in the his­to­ry of music until the second half of the 15^th cen­tu­ry. With the appear­ance of the great song­book col­lec­tions, espe­cial­ly the mon­u­men­tal Glo­gauer Lieder­buch (1470), and the estab­lish­ment of Emper­or Maximilian’s Hofkapelle (1496), German music moved from the shad­ows. At the Emperor’s impe­r­i­al courts in Vienna and Inns­bruck, native German com­posers came into close con­tact with the ideals and tech­niques of the Flem­ish tra­di­tion. The smoother, sophis­ti­cat­ed style which emerged from this con­tact relied more heav­i­ly on imi­ta­tion and florid lines than had the angu­lar and dis­so­nant writ­ing of the ear­li­er 15^th cen­tu­ry. Maximilian’s Hofkapelle, con­sid­ered one of the finest musi­cal estab­lish­ments of its time, was asso­ci­at­ed with at least three impor­tant com­posers. Hein­rich Isaac, the most influ­en­tial of the three, was appoint­ed offi­cial com­pos­er to the court of Loren­zo the Mag­nif­i­cent in Flo­rence. He was well trained in the tech­niques of Flem­ish com­po­si­tion, with its char­ac­ter­is­tic use of com­plex poly­phon­ic lines woven around a cantus firmus, canon, and other imi­ta­tive devices. Work­ing with these mate­ri­als, he was able to assim­i­late dif­fer­ent styles with great ease, emerg­ing as the first “inter­na­tion­al” com­pos­er — writ­ing Ital­ian frot­tole, French chan­sons and German lieder, all with the same appar­ent flu­id­i­ty. His instru­men­tal mas­ter­piece, La la hö hö, seems on first hear­ing to be only a simple and lively work, but it has a subtly exe­cut­ed struc­ture which, as in all great music, enhances the com­po­si­tion with­out being obvi­ous­ly heard. A simple eight note motive is taken through three dis­tinct stages, each slight­ly more com­plex. Isaac strong­ly influ­enced his col­leagues and stu­dents Paul Hofhaimer and Ludwig Senfl, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the use of imi­ta­tion. Hofhaimer, who was pri­mar­i­ly attached to the court at Inns­bruck, was known as the great­est organ­ist of the time. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, since the organ was almost entire­ly an impro­visato­ry instru­ment during this period, little of the music sur­vives. He was also, how­ev­er, a fine com­pos­er of poly­phon­ic lieder, and a good sam­pling of this music is extant. Mein Trauens is set in the phry­gian mode, is one of the most plain­tive and beau­ti­ful of the love-laments, a pop­u­lar form in the Renais­sance. Ludwig Senfl prob­a­bly entered the Hofkapelle at its incep­tion, as a choir boy. He became a stu­dent of Isaac and inher­it­ed Isaac’s posi­tion as court com­pos­er upon the master’s res­ig­na­tion. Although Senfl’s style bears the unmis­tak­able marks of Isaac’s influ­ence, his writ­ing retains a much more stark and dra­mat­ic Ger­man­ic flavor. He had a gift for warm, flow­ing melody and rhyth­mic vital­i­ty which, when com­bined with his mas­tery of coun­ter­point and con­tra­pun­tal devices, rarely failed to pro­duce a work of sur­pass­ing beauty.

Most of Senfl’s lieder employ the usual tenor cantus firmus, but his Jove of coun­ter­point fre­quent­ly led him to put this cantus firmus into canon, as is the case with three of the selec­tions on this record: the two ver­sions of Es taget vor dem Walde, and Wann ich des Mor­gens frueh auf­steh’. Ach Else­lein, liebes Else­lein mein is one of the few instances in which Senfl used a homorhyth­mic set­ting, putting the cantus firmus in the top voice. His quodli­bet, com­bin­ing these three cantus firmi, dis­plays a great con­tra­pun­tal skill with­out dis­tract­ing atten­tion from the piece as a whole.

Eras­mus Lapi­ci­da is one of many shad­owy fig­ures found in Renais­sance musi­cal his­to­ry. He can be traced to Aus­tria as late as 1544, but was cer­tain­ly known out­side the Ger­man­ic realm, as some of his com­po­si­tions were pub­lished by Petruc­ci in Venice as early as 1503. His set­ting of the Tander naken melody (one of the most pop­u­lar cantus firmi for the Flem­ish com­posers) is cer­tain­ly one of the loveli­est com­po­si­tions from the early 16^th century.

In the later 16^th cen­tu­ry, there is almost no empha­sis on the use of a cantus firmus. Instead, com­posers relied upon equal voices, in imi­ta­tion, or a homorhyth­mic style of writ­ing which placed the melod­ic empha­sis in the top voice. These styles were often used alter­nate­ly within the same piece, as is the case with all three of the madri­gals found on this record­ing: Ihr Musici, frisch auf!,  Ich weiss ein Maedlein hueb­sch und fein, and Bernard Schmidt’s florid key­board intab­u­la­tion of the Ital­ian Domeni­co Ferrabosco’s Io mi son gio­vanet­ta. Hassler’s Ihr Musici also reflects the influ­ence of his Venet­ian instruc­tor Gio­van­ni Gabrieli. The fre­quent poly­chor­ic effects give the impres­sion of a double choir,but strict­ly speaking,the piece is only a six-voice madri­gal. It was quite a common prac­tice in this period to play madri­gals on instruments,and this lib­er­ty has been taken here.

Dance, as one of the pri­ma­ry means of exer­cise and court­ly enter­tain­ment, played an impor­tant role in the social life of the Renais­sance courts. A cul­mi­na­tion of the mul­ti­tude of 16^th cen­tu­ry dance pub­li­ca­tions is found in Michael Prae­to­rius’ Terp­si­chore, pub­lished in 1612. This huge col­lec­tion con­tains well over 400 dances,many of them, espe­cial­ly the bransles, arranged into long suites These bransles, deriv­ing from peas­ant dances,were danced in a circle or a line, not unlike folk dances (the hora, for exam­ple) still pop­u­lar today. Fre­quent­ly a number of dif­fer­ent types of bransles were includ­ed in one suite,to be used to open the danc­ing at a fes­ti­val. The Bransle de la Royne, played in its entire­ty on the record,is unusu­al in that it retains the struc­ture of the bransle double through­out all ten dances.

The volta was a vig­or­ous form of gal­liard in which the woman was thrown high into the air. The par­tic­u­lar volta per­formed on this record is a type of musi­cal pun,for the music is com­plete­ly dance­able in triple time (usual for a volta), but the phrase struc­ture of the music is in quadru­ple and quin­tu­ple time. In this performance,the triple meter is played by the drum. — Lyle Nordstrom