[Letter from Leeman L. Perkins]Author(s): Leeman L. PerkinsSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 130-134Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831589 .

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To the Editor of the JOURNAL

IN A LENGTHY STUDY OF THE MASSES of Johannes Martini published in a recent issue of this JOURNAL (38 [1985]: 470-523), Peter Burkholder has presented a good deal of useful information about the works themselves and, at the same time, offered readers his own valuable analytic insights into the structure and style of the compositions in question. Unfortunately, in my view, he has also introduced a serious distortion into the historical picture and, in his attempt to distinguish among the stylistic types of the genre that were cultivated during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, made some unfortunate choices of terminology.

The distortion consists, I believe, in exaggerating unduly Martini's importance for the development of the kind of cyclic Mass that came to predominate in the course of the sixteenth century, the so-called parody Mass based on a polyphonic model in a contrapuntal style from which the composer borrows points of imitation and an occasional homophonic phrase rather than a melodic cantus firmus. Burkholder sees Martini's contribution in the systematic cultivation, primarily through the i470s, of a type of cycle that he sees--correctly, I believe-as having provided a foundation for later developments: an elaboration of the basic cantus-firmus Mass based on a polyphonic piece in which the composer has not only made use of a given voice (and in some instances more than one) extracted from the model as a structural armature for the successive sections of his own work but has also quoted, sometimes at length, from other parts. (The stylistic links between the two compositional types are most evident, of course, where the borrow- ing includes melodic materials in their original contrapuntal combinations, especially when the fabric of the preexistent work consists to some significant degree of points of imitation.) However, he has largely ignored the role of other seminal figures, most notably those from whom Martini is most likely to have derived both his compositional models and his inspiration.

Burkholder's historical bias derives, at least in part, it would seem, from the teleological orientation of his method. If he fails to give adequate consideration to Martini's antecedents, it is apparently because he is so eager to establish the composer's historical preeminence in the composition of Masses with multiple borrowings and to portray him as an innovator, preparing the way for the kind of polyphonic Mass cycle that has come to be regarded as characteristic for the sixteenth century. Mass composition of the fifteenth century is viewed primarily in terms of what the genre will become in the sixteenth rather than in terms of the earlier development of that compositional tradition. Consequently, the article offers no serious consid- eration of the formative influences in Martini's training as a composer and no

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discussion of the mentors or models that might have led him to the style of Mass composition that he seemed to favor. Rather one finds a rather one-sided argument concerning Martini's presumed leadership in this respect among composers who worked on the Italian peninsula and his hypothetical influence on his younger contemporaries, especially important figures such as Josquin, Obrecht, and, in particular, Isaac.

He fails to stress, however, that cantus firmus Masses with multiple borrowings like those attributed to Martini were written not only by other composers of his generation but also by a number who came to the tradition in question before Martini himself. As I have attempted to show in considerable detail, multiple borrowings from a preexistent polyphonic work, both successive and simultaneous-together with the assimilation, reworking, and emulation of a model that provided the foundations of the fifteenth-century rhetorical practice upon which the pertinent compositional procedures are apparently based-are already clearly discernible, if modest in extent, in the series of prototypical Mass cycles based on the L'homme arme tune that was initiated by composers such as Busnoys, Okeghem, and Dufay in the early I460s.' It is increasingly clear, moreover, that northern composers continued to use multiple borrowings within the general context of the cantus firmus Mass in an increasing number of works from that time on through the end of the century and beyond.

One of the best known examples is Okeghem's Missa Fors seulement for five voices, which shows those compositional techniques at a highly sophisticated level. In view of Josquin's evident admiration for Okeghem-as demon- strated by the lament, Nymphes des bois, that he wrote to mark the older man's death-and his use of Okeghem's works as models for his own composition, one must wonder if he could possibly have learned anything new from Martini about the use of multiple borrowings in the cyclic Mass. Similarly, if Obrecht's Missa Fors seulement was one of his earliest compositions, as it would appear, then his emulation of Okeghem, which is already evident in his Missa Caput, presumably carried him into the realm of multiple borrow- ings as well.2 It is surely worth noting, moreover, that the one Mass by Martini based on a French chanson in which the techniques of multiple borrowing are most extensive and sophisticated (according to Burkholder, p. 487) is his Missa Ma bouche rit, which is based on a chanson by Okeghem.3 As for Isaac, until more is known of his training and experience before his arrival in Italy, it seems risky at best to speculate on his earliest exposure to and interest in the Mass cycle with multiple borrowings.

It is surely no coincidence, in any case, that one of the earliest-and clearest-examples of the new type of cyclic Mass based primarily on points of imitation borrowed from a polyphonic model was the Missa Ave Maria by

1 See my study of "The L'homme arm6 Masses of Busnoys and Okeghem: A Comparison," Journal of Musicology 3 (i984): 363-96.

2 See Edgar H. Sparks, "Obrecht," New Grove Dictionary, 13:478. 3 It is perhaps also of interest that the other chanson with an attribution used by Martini for

Mass composition is the Cela sans plus credited to Colinet de Lannoy. Although nothing is apparently known about Colinet directly, two other de Lannoys-Jehan and David-served with Okeghem in the royal French chapel, the former from 1447 to 1468, the latter from 1461 until at least 1475; see my "Musical Patronage at the Royal Court of France under Charles VII and Louis XI (1422-83)," this JOURNAL 37 (1984): 553-54-

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132 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Antoine de F6vin (d. 1511- 2), a composer at the royal court of France where Okeghem had served for some forty years. By contrast, Masses with multiple borrowings are not particularly important overall in the repertories attrib- uted to Josquin, to Obrecht, or to Isaac, whether in quantitative terms by comparison with their Masses in other structural formats and works in other genres, or historically with regard to what is presently perceived as their major individual contributions to the musical developments of the sixteenth century. None of them, moreover, turned to serious cultivation of the imitation (or "parody") Mass in the final years of his career even though all three-with the possible exception of Obrecht--could well have known F6vin's Missa Ave Maria.

Burkholder has suggested that the emergence of the imitative cyclic Mass of the sixteenth century was not the result of "a gradual evolution" but that it came instead at a "point of discrete change associated with a change of model." This "moment" he defines as "the emergence in the second half of the fifteenth century of Masses based on cantus firmi drawn from polyphonic models, alongside cyclic Masses based on monophonic melodies in the older tradition dating back to Power and Dunstable" (all quotations from p. 472). But he seems to have forgoten that the cyclic Mass with a recurring tenor cantus firmus appears to have had its beginnings on the Continent with the Caput Masses, which were in fact based upon polyphonic models rather than monophonic melodies, and that chant-based cycles of the same kind appar- ently came later.

He also stresses the point, earlier made by Howard M. Brown, that "Masses based on a cantus firmus taken from a polyphonic model and cantus-firmus Masses on monophonic tunes ... are distinct in conception: the latter are works of addition, analogous to the glossing of a text from scripture, while the former emulate and paraphrase their models rather than adding a gloss" (p. 474-75). The conceptual distinction is clear enough even though it is possible to argue that the English composers Dunstable and Power, to whom we owe the early development of the tenor cantus-firmus Mass, thought of the words associated with the borrowed melody as a kind of gloss on the texts of the Mass itself, one intended-like the tropes still being used in their isorhythmic motets-to relate the celebration of the Eucharist to a specific feast.

It is undeniably true, as Burkholder reaffirms, that the nature of the borrowed material in Mass composition "determines ... much about how it may be treated" (p. 472). Nonetheless, in stylistic terms the extent to which the model has inspired crucial features of the work based upon it may be accurately assessed only after a careful comparison of the two. It is rarely possible to discover from musical criteria alone whether the preexistent work was monophonic or polyphonic, and when the Mass composer drew from a piece of the latter type only a cantus firmus, it may be impossible to reconstruct with precision or to any appreciable degree the original contra- puntal context.

The one fundamental difference between cantus firmi derived from chants and those taken from polyphonic pieces is that those of the latter category comprise not only a sequence of pitches but also a series of rhythmic patterns

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conceived in terms of a specific mensuration. And it has been observed that when a part from a polyphonic work is taken as a cantus firmus, the rhythms are usually adapted together with the pitches, a procedure that cannot be duplicated with chant melodies. But in other respects the two types of cantus firmi can be treated in very much the same manner. They may be either quoted literally or with interpolations into and/or additions to the original melodic line. They may be presented in rhythmic values of extended duration with respect to the surrounding parts or assimilated to their general rate of activiey. And they may be confined to one part or moved from voice to voice, or extended-in full or in part-to additional voices of the Mass by means of canon and/or imitative counterpoint. In other words, conceptual similarities may or may not result in significant stylistic distinctions, and it seems to me therefore useful to keep the two issues separate.

This brings us to the question of terminology. Whatever the differences conceptually for the composition of a cyclic Mass on a cantus firmus between the use of a monophonic melody, on the one hand, and the adoption of a voice from a polyphonic work, on the other, the end result stylistically could be very much the same. Consequently, it seems to me that our stylistic vocabulary for the genre ought to enable us to establish basic similarities and differences and to illuminate as many of the nuances as possible without confusing stylistic matters with questions of intellectual conception. To identify one work as a "cantus-firmus Mass" because it is based on a chant or a monophonic song, however, and to designate another-in which the compositional procedures and the general stylistic features are very much the same-as an "imitation Mass" because its cantus firmus was borrowed from a polyphonic piece can only result in semantic confusion and stylistic obfuscation.

A similar situation obtains for Masses in which more has been quoted than just the single part or parts taken as cantus firmi. As long as the basic structure of such works is built around a borrowed melody and the compositional procedures are those associated with the tradition of the cyclic cantus-firmus Mass, what is to be gained by designating it with a term so general stylistically as to be uninformative at best and perhaps even misleading? Is it not preferable to use the traditional descriptive locution- "cantus-firmus Mass"-and to embellish or add to it, if need be, in order to suggest the composer's modifications and elaborations of the basic structure? For my part I find descriptions of a cyclic Mass such as "with a tenor cantus firmus," "with multiple cantus firmi," "with a migrating cantus firmus," or "with a recurring cantus firmus and ancillary borrowings" much more helpful than the expression "imitation Mass," which suggests something quite different from a stylistic point of view.

If it is true-as I believe-that Mass composition of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was inspired, on the Continent at least, by the rhetorical concept of imitatio or emulatio, then Burkholder is undoubtedly correct in his assertion that "there is no difference in conceptual terms, among Masses based on polyphonic models, between those that preserve cantus-firmus structure and those that do not; while they differ in method, both categories exemplify musical imitatio, considering an existing polyphonic work as a fit subject for elaboration in a Mass" (p. 475). I have made a similar observation

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134 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

myself.4 I remarked at the same time, however, that the stylistic distinction between the two Mass types is important and useful. While both musical structures may reflect the notion of rhetorical emulation as applied to the compositional process, one remains essentially a cantus-firmus Mass with modifications while the other is based instead on the entire polyphonic complex of its model. And, as Lewis Lockwood pointed out long ago,5 the differences in the use made of the borrowed material reflect historically significant changes in musical facture. The cantus-firmus Mass of the fifteenth century was the result of a musical style in which the individual voices had distinct hierarchical roles, whereas the sixteenth-century variety is generally based on a polyphonic work consisting principally of successive points of imitation.

Lockwood's study of the problem revealed that Masses of the latter type were often designated in printed sources by expressions such as "ad imitationem moduli," followed by the incipit or title of the composition taken as a model. This led him to the conclusion that such works could appropri- ately be called "imitation Masses" since: (i) the terminological usage can be historically justified; (2) the term has stylistic connotations that coincide with the compositional procedures most frequently adopted for Mass cycles of that type; and (3) the troublesome semantic baggage carried by the word "parody" could be eliminated in the process from discussions of musical style. That suggestion has been largely ignored, but the reasons behind it are no less sound and even more compelling today than they were when it was made.

If we are to avoid the impoverishment of our stylistic vocabulary that is entailed by Burkholder's use of terms, it is perhaps time that we now take Lockwood's suggestion seriously. I, for one, find the expression "imitation Mass"-with its reference to both the rhetorical concept on which the use of preexistent models is founded and the predominant compositional proce- dure-much more useful for the principal cyclic type of the sixteenth century than as a general term for any kind of Mass based on a preexistent polyphonic piece. That is why I find Burkholder's use of terms ill-advised, and why I dare to hope that it will fail to gain currency in the critical literature dealing the music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

LEEMAN L. PERKINS Columbia University

4 p. cit., 388. 5 "On 'Parody' as Term and Concept in i6th-Century Music," in Aspects of Medieval and

Renaissance Music (New York, 1966), 560-75; see also his earlier essay, "A View of the Sixteenth-Century Parody Mass," in Twenty-fifth Anniversary Festschrift (1937-1962) (Queens College, 1964), 53-77.

To the Editor of the JOURNAL

PROFESSOR PERKINS RAISES TWO FUNDAMENTAL CONCERNS: the role of Martini versus that of other composers, and my choice of terms.

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