Valorizing Clemens non Papa:
Towards a Polycentric Model for Renaissance Music
An International Conference at Boston University,6-7 November 2015
Abstracts
Friday, 6 November, 9:30-12
Joshua Rifkin (Boston University): “Why (not) Clemens?”
Jacobus Clemens non Papa has not had very good luck—whether in his lifetime or since. Whether or not he suffered under the burden of his probably jesting sobriquet, he seems to have had trouble keeping a job, spending most of his short documented career bouncing around from position to position. His one apparently steady patron, Philippe II de Croy, died at most four years after Clemens entered his service; and Philippe’s son, Philippe III, not only dissolved his father’s chapel but appears to have blackballed Clemens from further employment, describing the composer to one interested party as a “great drunkard and a bad liver.” To all indications, he died quite young, possibly in violent circumstances.
Nor has he fared much better since. True, the diligent Karel Philipp BernetKempers edited his complete works in no fewer than 21 volumes published between 1951 and 1976. But not that many musicians and scholars, I dare to say, have looked into them in more than cursory fashion. “Cursory” could also describe most of the attention he has received in the musicological literature. Even the important conference report Beyond Contemporary Fame: Reassessing the Art of Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crecquillon, published in 2005, turns out to say considerably less about Clemens than about his fellow marquee subject.
My talk will try to consider some of the reasons for this curious reception—and, even more, to ask why Clemens should merit increased consideration, and what the answers to that question can tell us about our study not only of sixteenth-century music, but of any past repertory.
John Kmetz (NY):Clemens, Susato, and their Souterliedekens: Cashing in on the Reformation?
Published by TylmanSusato in 1556 and 1557, the 150 settings of the psalms written by “Jacobus Clement non papa” stand out among the composer’s collected works. Unlike the
fifteen masses, 233 motets, and two Magnificat cycles that make up no less than eighty percent of his output, the Souterliedekens (little psalter songs) are in Dutch, not in Latin; they are for three voices, not four, five, six or eight; they are short in length, many checking in at a dozen measures, not hundreds; and finally, they rely on cantus firmus technique, and are written in a style that clearly favors homophonic textures punctuated with imitation over complex polyphonic ones built on pervading imitation. Yes, the Souterliedekens are exceptional. They are the first complete polyphonic settings of the psalms in Dutch, and would appear to be the last compositions that Clemens composed before his untimely death in 1555/56.
But why did Clemens--or at least his Antwerp publisher--wait so long to begin releasing polyphonic protestant part-music in the vernacular? The psalm translations that Clemens set were actually published 16 years earlier in Antwerp by Symon Cock, who was the first to issue a complete set of metrical psalms with monophonic melodies anywhere in Europe. Indeed, at least 30 different editions of Cock’s monophonic versions appeared in print between 1540 and 1613, yet not one reprint of Clemens’s polyphonic versions of the Souterliedekens are known today. Were Clemens settings of the psalms a hit or a flop? This paper will investigate the religious, and socio-economic issues surrounding the publication of this monument of Renaissance music.
Matthew Hall (Cornell University): “‘The Age of Josquin’: No Longer a Useful Fiction?”
In raising the issue of valorization, the conference theme inculpates the bête noire of any “grossly undervalued” fifteenth- or sixteenth-century composer: is the “problem” Josquin—or Josquin research? Is the fact that Josquin receives the lion's share of attention symptomatic of a deep historiographical bias that should be unseated, or could Josquin's historical significance be reimagined as an asset in a revisionist approach? Does valorizing Clemens non Papa and other composers of his generation devalue Josquin? Conversely, does valorizing Josquin entail marginalizing others? That Clemens is “later” than Josquin is chronologically indisputable; but what is the historical significance, if any, of this fact?
The answers to these and other questions depend on deeper assumptions about the accepted periodization of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (1300–1600). This study considers the various models by which these three centuries (or portions of them) have been parsed in the writings of Machaut, de Vitry, Tinctoris, Glarean, Zarlino Burney, Hawkins, Forkel, Kiesewetter, Fétis, Grout, Ostoff, Bukofzer, Reese, Dahlhaus, Lowinsky, Brown, and Taruskin. I will show that the works of Clemens non Papa, Gombert, Crecquillon, and Willaert can be understood in the same contexts — technical, artistic, and cultural — as the works of composers active in the “Age of Josquin”; indeed, study of the music of the “middle generation” is crucial to our understanding of the significance of the earlier generation in and for the sixteenth century.
Friday, 6 November, 2-5
Alejandro Planchart (University of California, Santa Barbara): “Beyond Pervasive Imitation: Compositional Rhetoric and Musical Structure in Clemens’s O magnum mysterium”
Clemens non Papa’s six voice O magnum mysterium, first published in 1555, is a setting of the fifth responsory for matins of Christmas. It is not, however, a liturgical work in the sense that it was surely not intended to be sung at matins, which was then celebrated only in plainsong, or as “the responsory” during vespers, since it is not provided with a doxology, which would be required (e.g. Du Fay added a doxology to his setting of Si quaerismiracula so that it would be appropriate for the vespers of St. Anthony of Padua). Clemens’s piece is a para-liturgical motet and its goal is to convey the text’s message, so that it could be used at a number of places in the services during the Christmas season to render the celebration more splendid or more solemn.
His large-scale formal strategy is one that had become common in setting responsory texts, a two-part setting where the first part sets the respond and the second part set the verse and the return of the final phrase of the respond (set to the same music it has in the first part). Within each part Clemens carefully set the text so that the theological exposition at the beginning gets considerable more weight than the “narrative” at the end of first set of statements. He also uses a sharp change of texture just as he sets to address the Virgin at the end of each part, a change of texture that serves as a large-scale punctuation within each part and is echoed in an intensified manner in the final refrain of each part, the refrain “noé, noé,” which is not part of the responsory text. The entire planning of the work, including the order of entries and motivic work appear to be aimed at creating an “affective” message of just how “strange” (ad-mirabile) it is to see the Redeemer “lying on a manger” and why such “strangeness” is a source of joy.
Keith Polk (University of New Hampshire) and Victor Coelho (Boston University / CEMS): “Clemens the ‘Instrumentalist’”
Nothing reveals more clearly the immense appeal of Clemens to the sixteenth-century musical public than the range of instrumental adaptations of his music.Extraordinarilywide geographically (with pieces found in Sweden, England, Denmark, Poland, Spain, and Portugal, as well of course as in the traditional centers of Italy, Germany, France, and the Low Countries) and in terms of medium (with examples for string and wind ensembles, keyboard, and for plucked instruments), this range extends to style, as seen in the varieties of adaptation techniques. Some ensemble performers stayed close to the original texts in their arrangements, but solo players such as lutenists and organists produced elegantly decorated transformations of the Clemens originals.In this paper we show the extent of Clemens’s appeal to sixteenth-century instrumentalists across the wide body of instrumental music of the sixteenth century, particularly late in the century. In many ways, these instrumental arrangements, appearing consistently from the 1540s to 1599 and beyond paint an alternate picture of “Clemens valorized.”
Kerry McCarthy: “Clemens in England”
When the first English book of motets (the Tallis/Byrd Cantiones) was published in 1575, Clemens was named prominently in the preface, “harmonizing his placid measures” and “bringing music to the highest peak of renown”. His motets had already crossed the Channel in substantial quantities. The debt of English composers to this strain of northern European musical language goes far beyond the cliché of strict “pervasive imitation” (a basic technique which they could manage perfectly well on their own, and which they normally rejected in favor of greater variety as soon as they had mastered it). What Tallis, Byrd, and their colleagues absorbed from Clemens was something much more important: a whole set of ideas about the structure and rhetoric of the motet. There is a family resemblance in many stylistic practices: deliberate overlap and blurring among imitative subjects, the closely related practice of evaded or “deceptive” cadences, the proliferation of colorful cadential dissonances, the use of sequence as a climactic device, the taste for emotionally intense first-person texts, and the cultivation of the bipartite motet as a rhetorical device in its own right. Clemens was hardly the only foreign composer of his generation who left a mark in England, but the evidence in his case is unusually ample. This brief study is an attempt to take a closer look at it.
Saturday, 7 November, 10-12
Peter Urquhart (University of New Hampshire): “Clemens and the Cadence”
A database of the characteristics of final cadences in the five- and six-voice motet literature by composers directly following Josquin was the result of a study of over one thousand motets, by thirteen composers. Clemens non papa was the largest contributor with 208 motets, closely followed by Willaert, Crecquillon, Gombert, and Manchicourt. The data was assembled in order to study the use of the subsemitone, particularly in those cases where one or more voices interfere with the assumption of performers’ inflections; in a word, it was aimed at questions generally described as musicaficta. The results of the study are in line with what is found in Johannes Rühling'sTabulaturbuch of 1583, which includes intabulations of Clemens, Crecquillon and others in pitch-specific organ notation. Besides providing confirmation of Clemens’ engagement with the counterpoint of clash at cadences, the study provides the context of other composers’ approach to the cadence. Those with ties to Italy – Willaert, Phinot, and Arcadelt for instance – tended to avoid clash at cadences, while those who stayed in the North, such as Manchicourt and Johannes Lupi, engaged in clash in nearly half of their final cadences. The frequency of cross-relation cadences among composers points to cultural and chronological differences in the practice that have slowed its recognition among musicologists.
Jennifer Thomas (University of Miami): “Clemens Hones His Craft: Close Readings of Maria Magdalena and VenitVox de Coelo”
Jacobus Clemens’s two most widely circulated motets share a sophisticated and efficient set of practices that may shed light on the composer’s compositional processes, habits, and preferences. Maria Magdalena, with at least 44 known sources, sets a text describing Mary’s visit to Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning. Venitvox de coelo, preserved in at least 30 known sources, sets a text from Acts 9 that describes Saul’s dramatic vision of Christ. Though the texts convey different types of messages and require different affects, close readings reveal that Clemens uses similar, sometimes hidden, procedures in both. Individual lines as well as composite textures employ metric organization, sometimes against the notated meter, at increasingly small note values, creating a sense of urgency and drive. The relationship of the second soggetto to the first, and even the presentation and nature of the second soggetto, is similar in both motets. Both motets follow the widely used ABCB form; in each motet, the B material carries similar stylistic features that contrast with the A and C material, which also share similar properties. In both motets, Clemens makes liberal use of what I have called “static contrapuntal modules,” a technique shared by composers from Brumel and Josquin to Lassus. Clemens creates large-scale formal structures through his control of text accent, harmonic rhythm, texture, and rhythmic style. The consistency of the methods shared by these motets may manifest one sort of template for his compositional process and perhaps account for his astonishing productivity. Despite this apparently formulaic process, Clemens’s skillful handling of these similar techniques results in appropriately expressive interpretations of each text.
Saturday, 7 November, 2-5
Marcos PupoNogueira& FernandoLuiz Cardoso Pereira (State University of São Paulo [UNESP], Brazil): “‘Why do you persecute me?’: Cadential plan and Imitation in Clemens non Papa’s Venitvox de coelo.”
Clemens’ Venit vox de coelo, a setting of the Biblical passage referring to Saul’s conversion, features a complex imitative polyphonic fabric. In order to examine the close relationships between text and imitative polyphony, two analytical tools were used: first, the devising of a cadence plan leading to correlations between cadence ranks and text articulations; and secondly, the identification of the motivic materials used in each segment of the text, differentiating between strict imitative processes and those with digressive tendencies. In These two approaches revealed dynamics of textual modulation mediated by sections with or without overlapping, defined by different types of cadences (perfect, semi-perfect, complete, incomplete). One example is particularly eloquent: that which announces the dramatic section, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” (Acts 9:4), by means of a semi-perfect cadence with a double cantizans-tenorizans parallel-third movement, in a contrasting remodeling of the imitative structure.
To differentiate between recta and ficta inflections, early editions of the motet, found in choirbooks (Motetten, eine Passion, 1555; Leiden Choirbooks, Codex B, 1559; CodexLerma, 1615), partbooks (Motetti del labirinto, 1554; Liber primus cantionumsacrarum, 1555; Secunda pars magnioperismusici, 1559; Quartus liber modulorum, quatuor et quinquevocum, 1559), and Ammerbach’s tablature Ein new künstlichTabulaturbuch, 1575, were referred to, the latter revealing an opposite tendency on the Lydian mode for fictadeductio where only B-flat is found all over the piece. We draw on concepts of “Modular Analysis” (Schubert, 2007), “fuga cell” (Milson, 2006) and “motivicity” (Rifkin, 1997) in our analysis. The cadential and modal plans, on the other hand, are based on work by Meier (1988), Castilho (2010), and Smith (2011).
Peter de Groot: “ITA EST CLEMENS NON PAPA”
With 41 out of a total of 255 attributed compositions in the six Leiden Choirbooks, Clemens non Papa is the second-best represented composer in that collection—the first being the local composer and scribe Johannes Flamingus. In 14 cases there is discrepancy in the attribution of the works in concordant sources. In practically all of these cases one could, after some observation and competence with concordant prints and manuscripts, establish quite easily whether the Leiden attribution is correct or not.
There are also two cases in which the conflicting attributions appear within the Leiden Choirbooks themselves. One of these, the Ave Maria in MS 1442/Codex E, fol. 65v-66r, is especially interesting, because the relevant folios bear witness to what appears to have been continued disagreement as to the authorship of the piece—with different names being repeatedly entered and crossed out. In succession the names are Crecquillon, Clemens, Gheerkin, and finally Clemens again, now written with an emphatic “itaest” as if to close the discussion for good. Evidently it mattered a great deal to the Leiden singers that they knew for certain who had written this piece, which is in fact quite atypical in terms of its architecture and form. Unfortunately, the Ave Maria is a unicum, so we are unable to resolve the matter on the basis of concordant sources. Oddly enough,the Ave Maria is preceded by another setting of the same text, found also in MS 1440/Codex D fol. 64v-65r. This motet is strikingly similar in form and architecture to the one whose authorship was so hotly contested. But paradoxically, no one appears to have been especially concerned about the correct attribution of this piece. Although it was considered worth copying twice in two different Leiden Choirbooks, both copies lack an ascription.
One would assume that the singers who performed this repertoire on an almost daily basis were intimately familiar with the style of each composer, and were unlikely to be quickly confused about matters of attribution. This raises the question of what the style of the Crecquillon/Clemens/Gheerkin/Clemens “Ave Maria” is like, and whether there is anything about the music that could account for the conflicting attributions within the Leiden Choirbook. The great puzzle about the Clemens/Crecquillon/Gheerkin/Clemens “Ave Maria” is that it is so obviously unlike Clemens’s style as exhibited in his other works in the Leiden Choirbooks. Is the contribution still credible, as the emphatic “itaest” would have us assume? Or is the contemporary perception of Clemens’s style different from ours in ways that we are still to understand fully?