Die Messen Heinrich Isaacsby Martin Staehelin

Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs by Martin StaehelinReview by: Richard SherrJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 144-149Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831039 .

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144 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Martin Staehelin. Die Messen Hein- rich Isaacs. (Publikationen der Schweizerischen musikforschen- den Gesellschaft, Serie ii, Vol. 28.) 3 vols. Bern: Verlag Paul

Haupt, 1977. lxxx, ioi, 63 pp.; 135 PP., io plates; xl, 218 pp.

THIS ABSORBING, carefully presented, and well reasoned book consists of three volumes representing Staehelin's dissertation of 1967 (Vol- umes I and iu) and his Habilitations- scbrift of 1971 (Volume III). Together, they form a comprehen- sive survey, not only of Isaac's settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, but also of the sources of his music and of his biography. They are a major addition to the literature con- cerned with one of the most important Renaissance composers.

Volume I begins with a list of the manuscript and printed sources of Isaac's Masses. For each source, information is given about its physical properties and date, and about schol- arly literature in which it is dis- cussed. Such lists are always useful, although it is unfortunate that we have not yet found (nor ever will find, it seems) a set of universally ac- ceptable sigla. I might also add that I found many discrepancies when comparing Staehelin's precise measurements (given to the nearest milli- meter) to those for the same manuscripts given in Volume I of the Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-155o.' It may indeed be that all we want to know is approximately how big a manuscript is, but if we are going to

present precise measurements, greater accuracy is clearly called for.

After the list of sources Staehelin provides a bibliography carried up to 1973 (more recent items are added in the Appendix to Volume III). Then come two summaries, one of Isaac research from the eighteenth century to the present, the other of Isaac's biography (greater detail is not needed because of the documents in Volume II). The bulk of Volume I is taken up by a carefully prepared catalogue rai- sonn6 of Isaac's settings of the Ordi- nary, followed by an overview of the source situation from a chronological and geographical perspective. Final- ly, as an added bonus, a separate catalogue of incipits is tucked into a pocket at the back of the volume. All in all, this section of Staehelin's study shows him in firm control of an enormous amount of information, which he presents in a clear and or- derly way.

Volume II, the only complete documentary biography of a major Renaissance composer, is fascinat- ing. Staehelin admits that he has not undertaken new archival research, but he has painstakingly collected all the documents previously published in journals and books. The documents are presented chronologically and in the original languages, followed by bibliographical references. But Staehelin is not content simply to give the raw data; he appends to each document a detailed, sometimes illuminating commentary. The volume ends with quotations of contem- porary theoretical references to Isaac and a discussion of possible portraits of the composer. Thus, one is able through this volume alone to construct Isaac's biography; those of us who would rather read the documents than anybody's synthesis of them should be grateful to Staehelin

1 Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 400oo-z55o, Renaissance Man- uscript Studies, I (Stuttgart, i979).



REVIEWS 145

for having provided the opportunity to do so.

Volumes I and ii combine to offer an intriguing view of Isaac as man and composer, one that sets him apart from the majority of his con- temporaries. Born in Flanders around 1450, Isaac made the custom- ary move to Italy in the 148os, stop- ping prophetically in Innsbruck along the way, and can be shown to have arrived in Florence by I July 1485. From the early days of his resi- dence there his relations with Flor- ence and with the Medici were intimate and deep. Isaac entered the circle of Lorenzo the Magnificent and associated with his sons, particu- larly Giovanni (the future Leo X). He married a Florentine woman with Lorenzo's help, and became for all intents and purposes a Florentine citizen. When the Medici were ex- pelled from Florence in 1494, Isaac did not follow them, nor did he choose to serve another Italian prince (although, as is well known, he later visited Ferrara, and once considered taking a position there). Instead, he turned his eyes in a direction unusu- al for a musician of his background: to Austria and the Emperor Maxi- milian. He entered the emperor's employ in 1496 and composed much music for the use of the Imperial chapel and other German institu- tions. But he never relinquished his ties to Florence; he returned there even while in Maximilian's service, finally settled there in old age, and died there on 26 March 5 17. In the course of his career he established himself as an important composer in all genres. He ranked second only to Josquin in the opinion of some, and certainly can be credited with having given impetus to the establishment of a German school of polyphony in the sixteenth century.

The difference between Isaac's career and those of other Flemish mu- sicians of the time appears to reside in Isaac's close attachment to Italy and the Imperial court. As has been demonstrated in numerous studies, the normal career of a Netherlander, while it generally included a sojourn in Italy, began and ended in the North. This last step was possible because singers and composers, being clerics, were able to supply themselves with ecclesiastical benefices in places like Cambrai and Tournai, to which they could return in later life. Such "retirement in- comes" could be obtained by form- ing a relationship with a cathedral or collegiate church before leaving Flanders, by working for some prince (such as the King of France or Duke of Burgundy) who might reasonably be expected to provide a benefice, or by serving the Pope, the one ruler in Italy who could grant benefices in the North. Many musi- cians (Dufay and Josquin, to name just two) followed this North-South- North path, and we even have a letter from the papal singer Johannes Baltazar alias Petit stating that he joined the papal choir specifically in order to acquire a benefice in his native land on which to retire.2 Why did Isaac not choose this well travel- ed route? The answer, I believe, lies in the decision he must have made early in life not to take Holy Orders; none of the documents published by Staehelin suggests that Isaac was ever a cleric (indeed, the composer's le- gal marriage proves that he was not). Thus, Isaac could not provide for himself in the normal beneficial manner, and was forced to explore other

2 Quoted in Frank D'Accone, "The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the I5th Century," this JOURNAL, XIV (1961), 345.




possibilities. This led him to break with his native Flanders completely, becoming a Florentine resident and electing to serve a prince who could, and did, give him a feudal benefice.

The effect of these decisions on Isaac's music cannot be denied. By moving to the Imperial court, he found himself in a musical milieu quite different from the one in Italy. He was required, for instance, not only to write new types of pieces (settings of the Proper of the Mass and alternatim settings of the Ordi- nary), but also to consider traditional ways of setting a cantus firmus (the German cantusfractus technique). By adapting his style to new circum- stances, he became a prime example of a composer whose music is shaped by the taste of his patron and his audience. We might wonder if similar (though less detectable) changes of style occurred as other composers moved from center to center in Italy and other parts of Europe.

Volume iii of Staehelin's book is devoted to studies of Isaac's settings of the Ordinary. Staehelin follows the order of Masses established in the catalogue of Volume I: (i) Masses based on Gregorian chants; (2) Masses based on secular cantus firmi; (3) Masses based on polyphonic models; (4) alternatim settings of Ordinary chants. The remarks on individual works in groups 1-3 all follow the same general pattern: first details concerning the transmission of the work are given, sometimes with the help of stemmatic diagrams; then the cantus-firmus treatment is outlined; then selected aspects of the composition are dis- cussed, sometimes in relation to Masses on the same model by other composers; finally, a tentative date is assigned. The problem Staehelin faces in this section is one that con-

fronts all writers who deal with a large body of Renaissance music. Once the source situation has been dealt with and the cantus-firmus treatment described, there often is not much space left to offer more than random comments about the piece itself. Within these limitations Staehelin's descriptions are generally accurate, sometimes extensive, and often filled with interesting observa- tions. For example, he argues per- suasively that the Missa Tmeiskin is by Isaac (although no source of the complete Mass ascribes it to him), that the Missa Salva nos was written before the motet Quis dabit capiti,3 and that the Missa La sol la was written after the famous "fantasia" of the same name. In these matters, Staehelin is guided by such plain common sense that it is hard to fault his arguments.

Some of the points he raises, however, require further comment. In a footnote on page 3 of Volume iii Staehelin complains that editors of music of the Josquin period have not generally employed the techniques of stemmatic filiation used in classical scholarship, and he attempts to rectify this by including many stemmatic diagrams in the discussions in this study (and in his edition of Isaac's Masses). In doing so, he follows the lead of other German musicologists (Bente, Hoffmann-Erbrecht, Just), and places himself in the midst of an ever-growing group of scholars and editors who have begun to apply stemmatic theory to Renaissance music. Certainly, any attempt to

3 Allan Atlas, however, disagrees. See his book, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier (New York, 1975), and his article, "A Note on Isaac's Quis dabit capiti meo aquam," this JOUR- NAL, XXVII (1974), Io3-io9, and the exchange between Atlas and Staehelin in this JOURNAL, xxvIii (975), I6o and 565-66.



REVIEWS 147

bring more sophistication into the field of source studies and editing is laudable, but Staehelin seems to assume that there is general agreement on how this is to be done. No- where in his study does he state the criteria by which he constructs his stemmata (details are no doubt better left to editions), nor does he discuss their meaning or possible ap- plication. Such a discussion is needed because, in fact, a consensus has not yet been reached on the technique of constructing a stemma, or even on the usefulness of stemmatics. For instance, it has always been my understanding that stemmatics was a tool designed to render all ex- tant sources superfluous by allowing scholars to reconstruct lost originals. I was therefore surprised to see Staehelin using the technique, in his edition of Isaac's Masses, not to establish a lost source, but to reinforce the choice of the "best" source, a choice often suggested on historical grounds.4 This would appear to be an incorrect use of stemmatics, and some remarks on this point in Staehelin's book would certainly have been welcome.

Also questionable are the criteria used to establish relationships among musical sources, the main subject on which Staehelin seems to assume general agreement. But is there? When two sources fill in leaps of a third, are they related or not? Do we really know which musical variants are insignificant and which are significant? What exactly is the role of scribal idiosyncrasy in the copying of a piece? What exactly is a sepa- rable error? And, since stemmatic

theory was developed in connection with the editing of classical texts, what about the simple fact that sources of Renaissance music (most of them copied within the lifetimes of the composers of the music) are not comparable with the sources of classical texts (most of them the remains of as many as a thousand years of faithful -sometimes blind- copying)? Obviously, Staehelin has thought long and hard about these questions, but the lack of any general answers in his book means that diagrams such as the one appearing on page 89 of Volume iii will remain a hopeless mystery.5

On a more general level Staehelin probably makes too much of Isaac's place in the development of so-called parody technique. Impressed by the number of Masses that quote from more than one voice of their model, and by their early date, Staehelin is led to conclude that:

Auch Isaacs Beitrag zur Parodiemesse ist vielfiltig: so ist hier der Satz, der vorwiegende einstimmiger Material

4 See the edition of the Missa Virgo pruden- stissima, in Heinrich Isaac, Messen, ed. Martin Staehelin, In, Musikalische Denkmiler, vIII (Mainz, '973), p. 162.

5 Since Staehelin finished his book, a number of scholars have tackled the question of stemmatics. Allan Atlas, in The Capella Giulia Chansonnier, specifies significant and insignificant variants. He also categorically refuses to construct stemmatic diagrams. Stanley Boorman, "Limitations and Extensions of Fi- liation Technique," Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. lain Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 319-46, includes a bibliography that shows how far behind the times were those musicologists (like myself) who thought that Paul Maas had the last word on the subject. And Margaret Bent, in her thoughtful article, "Some Criteria for Establishing Relationships between Sources of Late- Medieval Polyphony," Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, pp. 295-317, suggests ways we might proceed in weighing evidence provided by different sources of the same piece. I am grateful to Professor Bent for allowing me to see a pre-publication version of her article.




aus der Vorlage bezieht, vertreten, aber auch derjenige, der Teile der Vorlage in allen Stimmen uibernimmt und in ihrer vertikalen Anordnung bewahrt. Dass einzelne dieser Paro- diemessen zeitlich offenbar verhilt- nismissig friih liegen, erh6ht ihren allgemeinen Wert (III, 197)-

The evolutionary implications of this statement are disturbing. Un- doubtedly, Isaac did write Masses in which there are quotations from other voices of his model, but these do not seem closely related to the type of motet-derived Mass found in the sixteenth century (the type we mean when we say "parody Mass"). As Staehelin's own descriptions show, Isaac's "parody Masses" are basically controlled by the old cantus firmus idea, with one voice of the model serving as the main constructive force. These Masses are still being written in the old manner, then, even though the urge to quote from other voices of the model may have sometimes been irresistible (and Isaac certainly was not the first composer to give in to this temptation). But Lewis Lockwood's view-that the sixteenth-century parody Mass is to be defined, not by the use of more than one voice of the model, but by its principle of construction-- remains persuasive.6 These Masses, generally based on motets, are forced by the new ideas of motet composition to deal in motives and points of imitation; this is because the models no longer offered single voice parts that formed a continuous whole. The Mass is dependent on the model, and since Isaac did not use the

new type of model, he cannot be re- garded as an early exponent of the new technique.

Regarding the German tradition, readers will be grateful for Staehe- lin's summary of the liturgical problems surrounding Isaac's alternatim Masses, and of the musical proce- dures the composer encountered and employed when he moved to the Im- perial chapel. Although not devoting much space to individual works, Staehelin does show how Isaac adapted the Netherlandish style to fit the German tradition. Although influential in Germany, this part of his Mass output was of absolutely no interest in France, the Netherlands, and Italy, as attested by the complete lack of this music in manuscripts originating in those areas.

Among the concluding chapters of Volume Iii is one on "selected com- positional problems." Here, Staehe- lin discusses ambitus, cadence formation, Satzbau, and dissonance treatment in connection with Isaac's settings of the Ordinary-all of which reveals essentially that Isaac composed very much like everybody else. It is unfortunate that we have not yet developed the analytical tools or the language needed to discern and define individual characteristics of composers within the general Renaissance polyphonic style. But a number of traits do stand out as a re- sult of Staehelin's work: certainly no composer of the period made as much use of contrafacta in his Masses as did Isaac (although we do not seem to know why he did this), and Isaac did have a distinctly "constructive" way of using the cantus firmus that may set him apart from others. Isaac's most important achievement resides in the way he mixed Nether- landish polyphony with German Mass traditions, thus paving the way

6 Lewis Lockwood, "A View of the Early Sixteenth-Century Parody Mass," Twenty-

fifth Anniversary Festschrift (1937-1962) (Queens College of the City University of New York, 1964), pp. 53-77.



REVIEWS 149

for Senfl and other German composers. All in all, however, I am still inclined to agree with the Ferrarese agent Gian when he admitted that, although Isaac was a nicer person, Josquin was the better composer.7

RICHARD SHERR

Smith College

7 In a letter published most recently in Lewis Lockwood, "Josquin at Ferrara: New Documents and Letters,"Josquin des Prez: Pro- ceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Con- ference, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky, (London, 1976), pp. 132-33-

Denis Arnold. Giovanni Gabrieli and the Music of the Venetian High Renaissance. London: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1979. xii, 322 pp., 6 plates.

STUDENTS OF THE VENETIAN REN-

AISSANCE have long awaited the publication of Denis Arnold's study of the life and works of Giovanni Gabrieli. During the past two-and- a-half decades Arnold's numerous articles have contributed enormous- ly to our understanding of this great Venetian composer and his contem- poraries, and have quite reasonably led us to expect that the monograph resulting from this long record of scholarship would be of lasting val- ue. Regrettably, however, the present book does not entirely fulfill these expectations.

In 1967, while Arnold was active- ly engaged in the research leading to the volume at hand, Egon Kenton published his own full-length monograph on Gabrieli.' The appearance

now of Arnold's study only a dozen years later invites comparison of the two works, and the results are re- vealing, for these two books have different aims, methods, and organi- zations, uncover different aspects of Gabrieli's music, and suffer from different weaknesses. Kenton initially planned his book as a translation and updating of Carl von Winterfeld's pioneering study of I834,2 but soon realized that "neither Winterfeld's viewpoint nor his method would be in harmony with present-day criteria" (Kenton, p. i). In addition, Winterfeld's monograph had dealt almost exclusively with Gabrieli's sa- cred music, ignoring, for the most part, his madrigals and his music for organ and for instrumental en- semble. Kenton decided to study all of the music anew and to write a biography of Gabrieli (not attempted by Winterfeld), thus producing a new and fuller picture of the composer. On the surface, Arnold's aims, as stated in his Introduction, are similar, but his methods are quite different:

Winterfeld's picture of the composer, though a classic and irreplaceable, today needs supplementation. The present study aims to do this in several ways. Firstly it brings together newly discovered documents: most notably those in the account books of St. Mark's . . . and those in the minute books and receipts of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. ... Secondly, [it compares] Gabrieli's music with that of his teachers, colleagues, and pupils (p. vii).

The structure of the two books clearly reflects the contrasting atti-

I Egon Kenton, Life and Works of Giovanni Gabrieli, Musicological Studies and Docu- ments, xvi (Rome, 1967).

2 Carl Georg August Vivigens von Winter- feld, Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (Berlin, 1834).

