Tonus Peregrinus

Tonus Peregrinus: The hisTory of a Psalm-Tone and iTs use in

PolyPhonic music

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Tonus Peregrinus: The history of a Psalm-tone and its use in

Polyphonic music

maTTias lundberguniversity of uppsala, sweden and

swedish national Collections of Music

II

© mattias lundberg 2011

all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

mattias lundberg has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Datalundberg, mattias. Tonus peregrinus : the history of a psalm-tone and its use in polyphonic music. 1. Tonus peregrinus–history. i. Title 781.2'6-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Datalundberg, mattias, 1976- Tonus peregrinus : the history of a psalm-tone and its use in polyphonic music / mattias lundberg. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-0786-7 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4094-3039-1 (ebook) 1. Tonus peregrinus. 2. counterpoint. i. Title.

ml174.l86 2011 781.2'63–dc22 2011000403

ISBN 9781409407867 (hbk)ISBN 9781409430391 (ebk)

Contents

Preface viiList of Music Examples ix

1 Theory, Method and Conventions 1

2 Historical Background of the Tonus Peregrinus in Monophonic Practice 7

3 Singled Out as a Model: The Tonus Peregrinus in Polyphony before 1500 19

4 The Role of the Tonus Peregrinus in the Extended Modal Systems of Glareanus and Zarlino 39

5 The Rise of an Idiom: The Tonus Peregrinus in French Court Liturgies of the Sixteenth Century 59

6 Ambitious Obbligo or Lack of Invention: The Tonus Peregrinus in Italian-speaking Areas in the Sixteenth Century 81

7 Liberty with Rigour: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century Iberian Music 101

8 Total Thematicism and Multi-texted Motets: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Liturgies of Northern and Central Europe 119

9 Mit Szonderlicher Ziemlicher Weisz: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century Lutheranism 143

10 In Faburden and Upon Faburden: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century English Liturgies 163

11 One Applied and One Discreet Method: The Tonus Peregrinus in Roman Catholicism 1600–1750 185

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tonevi

12 A Handmaiden of Many Different Voices: The Tonus Peregrinus in Lutheranism 1600–1750 227

13 The Continuing Tradition: The Tonus Peregrinus in Music after 1750 275

14 Conclusions 289

Bibliography 293Index 315

Preface

About a decade ago I began to devote special attention to the deviant psalm-tone that is the topic of this book. This investigation has subsequently taken me through a vast body of repertoire and literature, as I made a number of attempts to trace how, when and why this psalm-tone had been used in Western Church music; how it has been affected by the musical theory and practice of different periods; and how, in turn, it may have come even to affect polyphonic practices that themselves were only indirectly related to it. This book covers the polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus, beginning with its appearance in one of the first known examples of notated polyphony and progressing to recent times through a large number of works from different periods and contexts (in a number of which the presence of the psalm-tone has not previously been examined or even noted). The chronological ambit thus exceeds 1,000 years, taking in around 100 works but only a single melody (or, better, family of melodies). I realize, of course, that a typical music monograph would have exactly the reverse proportions: if not a single year, then at least a single shorter historical period, around 100 works and over 1,000 melodic items. Although the scope of this book is consequently very narrowly focused in a musical sense, I venture to suggest that giving it a melodic (rather than, say, a historical, biographical, cultural or geographical) focus fits in rather well with the concept of a cantus prius factus from a historical and analytical perspective.

Countless scholars have, through their interaction with one aspect or another of the tonus peregrinus, significantly helped to improve the outcomes of my research by exchanging ideas and reading and commenting on my results. Lack of space prevents me from mentioning each individual colleague separately here (specific acknowledgements appear in the notes), but there are three scholars to whom I am particularly indebted for their scrutiny of my work and their valuable candour, which ultimately enabled this book to come to fruition: Michael Talbot (Professor Emeritus, University of Liverpool); Robin Leaver (Professor Emeritus, Westminster Choir College, Rider University) and John Harper (Professor, Royal School of Church Music and International Centre for Sacred Music Studies, University of Bangor).

During the course of my work I have of course also benefited from the kind assistance of a large number of members of staff in archives and libraries the world over. The importance of such scholars working on a daily basis in the midst of their respective collections – not merely for projects like the present one but for the future of musical scholarship as a whole – cannot be overstated. I also wish to thank the staff at Ashgate and especially my publisher, Heidi Bishop, for their

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-toneviii

professional assistance, patience and encouragement at all stages of the production of this book. Finally, I must express my infinite gratitude to my family and friends for their love, encouragement and continuous inspiration.

To all those mentioned above belongs much of what may be found good in this book – any obscurities or lacunae remain, of course, entirely my own responsibility.

Mattias Lundberg Uppsala May 2010

2.1 The sections of psalm-tone V. Commemoratio brevis de tonis et psalmis modulandis [c.900], in M. Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, vol. 1 (St Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 213–229. 7

2.2 The sections of the tonus peregrinus. Jacobus of Liège, Speculum musicae (sextus liber et septimus) [c.1330], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 2 (Paris, 1867; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 193–433. 9

2.3 The tonus peregrinus in Germanic chant dialect. Georg Rhau, Enchiridion utriusque musicae practicae [1538] (Kassel, 1951). 11

2.4 The tonus peregrinus in Germanic chant dialect. Jacobus of Liège, Speculum musicae (sextus liber et septimus) [c.1330], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 2 (Paris, 1867; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 193–433. 11

2.5 The tonus peregrinus in Germanic chant dialect. Tractatus de musica plana et mensurabili [fifteenth century], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 3 (Paris, 1867; reprint Milan, 1931), pp. 416–475. 11

2.6 The tonus peregrinus in Roman chant dialect. Guillaume Guerson, Utilissime musicales regule (Paris, c.1500). 12

2.7 The tonus peregrinus in Roman chant dialect. Claudin de Sermisy, in Tomus tertius psalmorum selectorum 4 et plurimum vocum (Nuremberg, 1553). 12

2.8 The tonus peregrinus in Roman chant dialect. Commemoratio brevis de tonis et psalmis modulandis [c.900], in M. Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, vol. 1 (St Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 213–229. 12

2.9 Variant of the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus. Hieronymus of Moravia, Tractatus de musica and Discantus positio vulgaris [c.1275], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii ævi (nova series), vol. 1 (Paris, 1864; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 1–97. 12

2.10 Tonus peregrinus variant with deviant second semi-verse. Ladislaus of Zalka [Musica], in D. Bartha (ed.), Das Musiklehrbuch einer ungarischen Klosterschule (Budapest: Musicologica Hungarica, 1934), pp. 63–128; Johannes of Olomon, Palma choralis [c.1430], ed. A. Seay, Critical Texts 6 (Colorado Springs, 1977). 13

List of Music Examples

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tonex

2.11 Tonus peregrinus variant with deviant mediatio figure. Tractatus de musica plana et mensurabili [fifteenth century], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 3 (Paris, 1867; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 416–475. 13

2.12 Tonus peregrinus variant with f in terminatio figure. Antiphonale Sarisburiense [thirteenth century] (London, 1901–24; repr. Farnborough, 1966). 13

2.13 The tonus peregrinus in Iberian chant dialect. Diego del Puerto, Portus musice (Salamanca, 1504); Intonarium Toletanum (Alcalá de Henares, 1515). 13

3.1 Organum. Scolica enchiriadis [ninth century], ed. H. Schmid (Munich, 1981). 21

3.2 Organum. Scolica enchiriadis [ninth century], ed. H. Schmid (Munich, 1981). 23

3.3 In exitu Israel, Gilles Binchois. The Sacred Music of Gilles Binchois, ed. Philip Kaye (Oxford, 1992); my sectionalization. 27

3.4 In exitu Israel. Codex Tridentinus, Castello de Buonconsiglio (I-TRbc), Trent.Tr.Cod. 90. 31

3.5 In exitu Israel chant variant. Codex Tridentinus, Castello de Buonconsiglio (I-TRbc), Trent.Tr.Cod. 90. 32

3.6 In exitu Israel chant variant. Codex Tridentinus, Castello de Buonconsiglio (I-TRbc), Trent.Tr.Cod. 90. 32

3.7 In exitu Israel recitation formula. British Library (GB-Lbl), Harley MS 2945. 33

3.8 Combination of recitation formula and second part. British Library (GB-Lbl) Harley MSS 2945 and 5249. 34

3.9 In exitu Israel, Pedro Orihuela. The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871, ed. Isabel Pope and Masakata Kanazawa (Oxford, 1978). 35

4.1 Vexilla regis prodeunt. Cantica Sacra … in usum ecclesiae et iuventutis scholasticae Hamburgensis collecta, ed. Franciscus Elerus (Hamburg, 1588). 47

5.1 In exitu Israel, Jean Mouton. Tomus secundus psalmorum selectorum 4 et 5 vocum (Nuremberg, 1539). 62

5.2 In exitu Israel, Josquin des Prez. Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, Catedral de Toledo (E-Tc), MS 22. 66

5.3 In exitu Israel, Claudin de Sermisy. Tomus tertius psalmorum selectorum 4 et plurimum vocum (Nuremberg, 1553). 68

5.4 Lauda anima mea Dominum, Pierre de la Rue. Tomus tertius psalmorum selectorum 4 et plurimum vocum (Nuremberg, 1553). 77

List of Music Examples xi

6.1 Recitation formula for Psalm 113. Gafurius, Practica musicae [1496] (New York, 1979). 85

6.2 In exitu Israel, Jachet of Mantua and Adrian Willaert. I salmi appertinenti alli vesperi … a uno et a duoi chori (Venice, 1550). 90

6.3 In exitu Israel, Bonifacio Pasquale. Giovanni Battista (‘Padre’) Martini, Esemplare o sia saggio fondamentale pratico di contrappunto sopra il canto fermo, vol. 1 [1774] (Ridgewood, 1965). 91

6.4 In exitu Israel, Vincenzo Galilei. Fronimo: Dialogo (Venice, 1584). 93

6.5 In exitu Israel, Elzéar Genet Carpentras. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome (I-Rvat), Cappella Sistina MS 46. 95

7.1 In exitu Israel. Cancionera de Gandia, Biblioteca de Catalunya (E-Bbc) MS 1967. 104

7.2 In exitu Israel, Francisco Guerrero. Liber Vesperarum (Rome, 1584). 107

7.3 In exitu Israel, Pedro de Cristo. Universidade de Coimbra, Biblioteca Geral, Impressos e Manuscritos Musicais (P-Cug), MM 36. 112

7.4 In exitu Israel, Pedro de Cristo. Universidade de Coimbra, Biblioteca Geral, Impressos e Manuscritos Musicais (P-Cug), MM 33. 113

7.5 In exitu Israel, Andrés Torrentes. Excerpted from transcription by Michael Noone, used with permission. 114

8.1 In exitu Israel, Georg Rhau. Enchiridion utriusque musicae practicae [1538] (Kassel, 1951). 120

8.2 In exitu Israel. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (D-Mbs), Mus. pract. 23, transcribed from Rhabanus Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus: Aus der Geschichte eines Psalmtons, vol. 2 (Münsterschwarzach, 1971). 121

8.3 In exitu Israel. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (D-Mbs), Mus. pract. 23 (Handschriftliche Beilage, Dominica II). 122

8.4 In exitu Israel. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (D-Mbs), Mus. pract. 23 (Handschriftliche Beilage, Dominica II). 123

8.5 In exitu Israel, Martin Agricola. Ein kurz deutsche musica (Wittenberg, 1528). 125

8.6 In exitu Israel, Georgius Libanus. De musicae laudibus oratio (Kraków, 1540). 126

8.7 In exitu Israel, Johann Kugelmann. Concentus novi trium vocum (Augsburg, 1540). 130

8.8 In exitu Israel, Ludwig Senfl. Officia paschalia: de resurrectione et ascensione Domini (Wittenberg, 1539). 132

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tonexii

8.9 Summe opifex rerum, Caspar Othmayr. Symbola illustrissimorum … præstantium virorum Musicis numeris explicata, tomus primus (Nuremberg, 1547). 136

8.10 In exitu Israel, Martin Agricola. Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig (D-LEu), MS 49/50. 138

9.1 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren. Geistliche Lieder auffs new gebessert (Wittenberg, 1533). 152

9.2 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Giovanni Battista Pinellus. Deutsche Magnificat auff die acht Tonos Musicales, deren ein jeglicher zwey mal und Peregrini toni drey mal gesetzt (Dresden, 1583). 155



9.5 Ich danke dem Herrn, Balthasar Resinarius. Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge (Wittenberg, 1544). 158

10.1 Benedicite. John Merbecke, The Booke of Common Praier Noted [1550] (Cambridge, 1979). 167

10.2 Benedictus, Thomas Caustun. John Day, Certaine Notes / Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer and Communion (London, 1565) 170

10.3 Nunc dimittis. Wanley partbooks, Bodleian Library, Oxford (GB-Ob), MS Mus.Sch.E 420–422. 172

10.4 In exitu Israel, bass part of Sheppard, Byrd and Mundy. Gyffard partbooks, British Library (GB-Lbl), Add.17802–5 with chant melody from Example 3.7. 176

10.5 In exitu Israel, John Sheppard. Gyffard partbooks, British Library (GB-Lbl), Add.17802–5. 178

10.6 In exitu Israel, William Byrd. Gyffard partbooks, British Library (GB-Lbl), Add.17802–5. 179

10.7 Teach me, O Lord, William Byrd. The English Services (The Byrd Edition 10a), ed. Craig Monson (London, 1980). 181

11.1 Miserere mei, Gregorio Allegri. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (I-Rvat) Capp. Sist. MS 185. 188

11.2 In exitu Israel, Johann Nucius. Canticum sacrarum diversarum vocum liber secundus (Liegnitz, 1609). 190

List of Music Examples xiii

11.3 In exitu Israel, Pedro Thalesio. Robert Stevenson, Luís Pereira Leal, and Manuel Morais (eds), Antologia de polifonia portuguesa 1490–1680, Portugaliae Musice 37 (Lisbon, 1982). 192

11.4 In exitu Israel, Serafino Cantone. Vesperi a versetti et falsi bordoni (Milan, 1602). 194

11.5 In exitu Israel, Francesco Severi. Salmi passaggiati per tutte le voci … sopra i falsi bordoni di tutti i tuoni ecclesiastici (Rome, 1615). 195

11.6 In exitu Israel, Giovanni Legrenzi. Vesper and Compline Music for Eight Principal Voices, ed. Jeffrey Kurtzman, Seventeenth-Century Italian Sacred Music (New York, 2001–2002). 198

11.7 In exitu Israel, Johann Stadlmayr. Psalmi vespertini omnes (Innsbruck, 1640). 202

11.8 In exitu Israel, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer. Vesperae seu psalmi vespertini pro toto anno (Augsburg, 1701). 204

11.9 In exitu Israel, Franz Xavier Anton Murschhauser. Vespertinus Latriae et Hyperduliae (Ulm, 1700). 206

11.10 In exitu Israel, Jan Dismas Zelenka. ed. Wolfgang Horn (Stuttgart, 1983). 214

11.11 Kyrie from Missa In exitu Israel, Diego de Pontac. Lira Sacra-Hispana, sigl. XVII, ser. 2A:I (1869). 218

11.12 Sanctus, from Missa In exitu Israel, Diego de Pontac. Lira Sacra-Hispana, sigl. XVII, ser. 2A:I (1869). 220

12.1 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Johann Sebastian Bach. Library of Congress, Washington DC (US-Wc), Whittall collection ML30.8b B2M4 (facsimile edition, Garland, 1985). 231

12.2 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Christian Gregor. (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1784). 232

12.3 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Michael Praetorius. Musae Sioniae, vol. 1 (Regensburg, 1605). 233

12.4 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Melchior Franck. Transcribed from Rhabanus Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus: Aus der Geschichte eines Psalmtons (Münsterschwarzach, 1971). 238

12.5 Meine Seele erhbet den Herren, Michael Praetorius. Musae Sioniae vol. 5 (Wolfenbüttel, 1607). 240

12.6 Magnificat, Samuel Scheidt. Samuel Scheidts Werke, vol. 14, ed. G. Harms and C. Mahrenholtz (Leipzig, 1971). 243

12.7 Magnificat, Johann Sebastian Bach. Neue Bach-Ausgabe, II/3, ed. Alfred Dürr (Kassel, 1955). 250

12.8 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (D-Bsb). 254

12.9 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Johann Sebastian Bach. Neue Bach-Ausgabe, II/3, ed. Alfred Dürr (Kassel, 1955). 257

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tonexiv

12.10 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Georg Philipp Telemann. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (D-Bsb), Mus. MS 21745/25. 259

12.11 In exitu Israel. Petri tablature, Visby Landsarkiv (S-VIl), B-Tbl. 26112.12 Magnificat, Samuel Scheidt. Tabulatura nova, vol. 3

(Hamburg, 1624). 26412.13 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Johann Christoph Bach.

Bibliothek der Universität der Künste, Berlin (D-Bhm), Mus. MS 1491. 265

12.14 Magnificat, Dieterich Buxtehude. Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (D-Bsb), Mus. MS 30 280. 267

12.15 Fuga sopra il Magnificat, Johann Sebastian Bach. Orgelwerke, vol. 7, ed. Conrad Griepenkerl and Ferdinand Roitzsch (New York, n.d.). 269

13.1 Verset fugué sur ‘In exitu Israël’, Louis Vierne. Transcribed from thematic catalogue in Rollin Smith, Louis Vierne, Organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral (New York, 1999). 278

Chapter 1

Theory, Method and Conventions

As one might expect, the subject matter of a historical-analytical study determines its nature and the methods used. An investigation of the tonus peregrinus from a comparative, analytical and historical viewpoint inevitably calls for flexible methods informed by the music theory, terminology and historical circumstances proper to each example discussed. Each piece studied must be compared with a considerable number of similar works based on different melodic formulae. This conforms essentially to what has sometimes been termed Musikgeschichte in Analysen or Problemgeschichte des Komponierens.1 The theoretical and epistemological framework is thus rooted in a belief that sources of music, music theory and liturgy carry information about historical circumstances that are not accessible elsewhere, and that the intellectual context in which specific musical items are studied is accessible only through the philological study of large quantities of interrelated contemporary sources. This perspective does not exclude theoretical and methodical perspectives from later contexts (it certainly could not, since musicologists are trained in a variety of modern analytical disciplines), but these are given only secondary importance in order to avoid any anachronistic or unduly teleological tendencies.

The breadth and openness of this study is reflected in the deliberately wide-ranging question: ‘What is the tonus peregrinus?’ However, the following more specific questions were identified at an early stage of the research:

1. What was the practical approach to a psalm-tone without a mode in the liturgies of the Western Church? What role did the tonus peregrinus have in music theory from about 800 to 1700?

2. To what degree has the tonus peregrinus affected the general development of polyphony?

1 Both terms have been used for studies such as Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Studien zur musikalischen Terminologie (Mainz, 1968); Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Musik im Abendland: Prozesse und Stationen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1991), as well as for the essays in the Festschrift in his honour – with contributions by Wulf Arlt, Carl Dahlhaus, Friedhelm Krummacher, Erich Reimer and others (Werner Breig, Reinhold Brinkmann and Elmar Budde [eds], Analysen: Beiträge zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens. Festschrift für Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht zum 65. Geburtstag [Stuttgart, 1984]). A similarly orientated analytical tradition is represented by Jacques Chailley, Traité historique d’analyse musicale (Paris, 1951); Jacques Chailley, Formation et transformation du langage musical, vol. 1: Intervalles et échelles (Paris, 1961).

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tone2

3. How many polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus have been preserved and from which musical and liturgical contexts? What properties do these share, and what common features set them apart, at a technical level, from other comparable settings from the same period?

4. How have regional variations in theological traditions and liturgical/musical practices shaped the way in which the tonus peregrinus has been applied to polyphony?

It is my hope not only to provide clear answers to these questions but also that they fit into the wider context of Western Church music. Naturally, various other unforeseen matters of considerable substance arose during the research, but it seems, in retrospect, that the original aims of the research turned out to be both an effective demarcator of the project and a fruitful stimulus towards knowledge of the music in its proper context.

Needles from the polyphonic haystack: research methodology for source identification

The search for polyphonic occurrences of the tonus peregrinus involved a thorough examination of all repertory of Christian polyphony that is in any way extant and accessible. Sifting through this enormous corpus of music was a constant process throughout all stages of the research. The special nature of the object sought – polyphonic occurrences of the tonus peregrinus – means that the research results are deep and narrow, whereas the method – a restricted search of monumental scope – was broad and shallow. Given the vast quantity of manuscripts and printed sources of European music before 1800, it is unavoidable that some, and possibly even many, occurrences of the tonus peregrinus were not identified. As for the many tonus peregrinus settings that have been identified, they are scattered over sources so diverse that a minute examination and description of them all could not readily be justified in a book centred on the analysis of compositional procedures. Moreover, within each tradition, the works are often too numerous and too similar for them all to be discussed separately without tedium. For this reason, few particulars of source, provenance, collation, printer, scribe, history and so on are given in the chapters covering the separate musical and liturgical traditions.

Where an item appears in several sources, there has often been no alternative but to study only one of them. Cases where it has proved extremely difficult to obtain manuscripts or original prints have at times necessitated recourse to modern editions. In order to ensure that the works selected for analysis represented a broad spectrum of all possible occurrences of the tonus peregrinus, the search could not be limited to a single approach: five strategies have therefore been used to identify sources for the tonus peregrinus:

Theory, Method and Conventions 3

1. scholarly report2. title or textual content3. liturgical function4. theological connection5. musical browsing

Scholarly report

A substantial proportion of the tonus peregrinus settings collected have been identified from descriptions by other scholars, either published or unpublished. In the first case, the starting point is typically a mention in a monograph on a composer or in some other kind of musicological study. Exceptionally, the writings of Carl-Heinz Illing and Rhabanus Erbacher provided reports of occurrences of psalm-tones with a wider scope.2 In many cases where an occurrence of tonus peregrinus was suspected but the source was not readily available, experts in the relevant fields were contacted. With great generosity, scholars have often been able to confirm or rule out the presence of the tonus peregrinus in the work in question, or at least to offer an informed guess at the likelihood of the presence of plainsong. Gratitude for this valuable correspondence is hereby expressed collectively, as space does not allow for specific mention of individual scholars.3 This search strategy includes not only direct reports of the tonus peregrinus but also indirect reports of works with a relevant textual content. Consequently, this category and the next sometimes overlapped.

Title or textual content

The various passages of Scripture connected with the tonus peregrinus in different traditions – Psalm 113 (In exitu Israel: Vulgate numbering; Pss. 114, 115 in Protestant Bibles) and the Benedicite (from the Song of the Three Children, an apocryphal addition to Dan. 3) in Roman Catholicism; the Magnificat (Lk. 1:46–65) and verses from Psalm 67 (Gott sei uns gnädig) in Lutheranism; various canticles in the Anglican Church – collectively offer a starting point for an informed search for possible occurrences of the tonus peregrinus. This method certainly accounts for more findings than any other. Large quantities of In exitu Israel or Meine Seele erhebt den Herren settings have been accessed, but the sheer amount of psalmodic music from the era when the tonus peregrinus declined in the Roman Catholic repertory (c.1650–c.1750) meant that selection had to be made at the analytical stage, since combing that repertory would otherwise be a lifelong task.

2 Carl-Heinz Illing, Zur Technik der Magnificat-Komposition des 16. Jahrhunderts (Wolfenbüttel and Berlin, 1936); Rhabanus Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus: Aus der Geschichte eines Psalmtons, 2 vols (Münsterschwarzach, 1971).

3 A list of correspondents is given in Mattias Lundberg, ‘The Tonus Peregrinus at the Polyphony of the Western Church’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Liverpool, 2007), pp. 4–5.


The search for music with specific textual content is greatly facilitated by the catalogues and databases of the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales.4 Where archive and library catalogues are available, these can also be very valuable, especially regarding manuscript details and pagination. On occasion, information was obtained from unexpected sources. A conspicuous example of this is the mention of Francisco Guerrero’s motet In exitu Israel in Francisco Pacheco’s Libro de descripción de verdados retratos de ilustres y memorables varores, which was originally accessed for reasons unrelated to the present research.5 Titles such as Missa In exitu Israel and Missa ad tonam peregrinam were also identified using this strategy.

Liturgical function

The liturgical functions of the tonus peregrinus are already to some extent reflected in the title and textual content. It is not sufficient, however, to restrict the search to the more or less ‘official’ applications represented by the above works. This would risk overlooking much music that is liturgically pertinent to the tonus peregrinus. The value of this method can be exemplified by Pedro Vaz Rego’s Credidi, a work with no outward connection to the tonus peregrinus, which would have been overlooked, were it not for a liturgical connection: it is a setting of Psalm 115, which is close to Psalm 113 in the Officium, the liturgy of the hours, and which has its normal place in Monday Vespers (and Sunday Vespers of the duplex feast of Apostles and Evangelists).6 By paying extra attention to psalms with an allocated place in Vespers, it was possible to identify Vaz Rego’s work as a composition based on the tonus peregrinus. Likewise, some works based on antiphons connected with the tonus peregrinus were located with the aid of a similar liturgiological search method.

Theological connection

Whatever definitions may be given to the concepts of devotio moderna and ‘abstract religious music’, there should be wide agreement on the overriding significance of theological exegesis in all sacred polyphony before 1650 and most before 1700. Since this aspect appears to be particularly significant for music based on plainsong, searching for occurrences of tonus peregrinus by way of theological connection became another research strategy. The theological concepts of pilgrimage, exile

4 Especially series A/I (Kassel and Basel, Bärenreiter, 1971–1999), series A/II (CD-ROM database, Baltimore, National Information Services, 1997–) and the constantly updated A/II database.

5 Francisco Pacheco, Libro de descripción de verdados retratos de ilustres y memorables varores [1599], ed. P.M.P. Ramirez and R. Reyes (Seville, 1985).

6 See John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1991), pp. 248, 258–259.

Theory, Method and Conventions 5

and covenant remained, throughout the various contexts and periods covered in this book, the chief textual images of the psalm-tone, appropriately reflected in Psalm 113.7 Predictably, occurrences of tonus peregrinus were found in works that are theologically connected with these concepts.

One example of such a connection is Die Fürsten verfolgen mich ohn Ursach by Heinrich Schütz, where a theological connection between the psalm in question (Ps. 119) and Psalm 113 and the concept of pilgrimage led to the detection of tonus peregrinus (regardless of whether or not this was a connection intended by the composer). Within already identified works, this strategy led to further understanding of how the tonus peregrinus was applied in relation to individual passages of text. This search strategy was guided first and foremost by the study of theological texts contemporary with the musical sources under examination.

Musical browsing

Hitherto, we have discussed cases where there is a clearly intelligible and predictable connection between the tonus peregrinus and a polyphonic work. We must now consider a few exceptions. In a small number of cases there is no such extra-musical connection and these works would not have been identified as settings of tonus peregrinus had we not stumbled upon them or found them through a purely mechanical search. This happened either arbitrarily, in the process of going through manuscripts for other reasons, or systematically, in the course of browsing through tenor parts in sources where Gregorian cantus firmi were to be expected. Several of the works discussed in the chapter on the tonus peregrinus in Zarlinian theory were located by this method of source browsing. The In exitu Israel setting in De musicae laudibus oratio (1540) by Georgius Libanus was unexpectedly found by a similar route.

Regardless of how individual occurrences of the tonus peregrinus were found, they were all identified by the strategies that have been outlined here. Given the amount of labour expended on the fifth strategy, it is not likely that the other four, more structured, methods should have biased the selection in any single direction. Rather, any works that were overlooked exist only in relatively remote sources or in miscellanies exceptionally lacking in internal indexation. This book is not concerned primarily with the historical importance of isolated ‘masterpieces’ (even if some of the works discussed have been granted that epithet by generations of musicologists). The routine character of much psalmodic music in fauxbourdon and similar idioms is likely to have been the single biggest obstacle in the search for occurrences of tonus peregrinus. In comparison with many other idioms in Western polyphony, considerable quantities of music based on psalm-tones have either not been preserved or are inadequately catalogued on account of the perceived inferior historical importance of this repertory.

7 Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 52–63.


Chapter 2

Historical Background of the Tonus Peregrinus in Monophonic Practice

General definitions of psalmodic structure

In order to examine and discuss the use of the tonus peregrinus in the liturgies of the Western Church, some definitions of psalmody must be established. To do so, one of the regular psalm-tones and then an archetypal form of the tonus peregrinus will be used as examples. Only when a common terminology has been determined can discussion of the separate variants of the tonus peregrinus commence. This will be done primarily with the aid of selected characteristic examples drawn from liturgical and theoretical sources and secondly by reference to other sources with similar readings.

The very term tonus is possibly confusing to the modern mind. The reason for this nomenclature is that a psalm-tone typically consists of one single recitation note. Since this is not the case with the tonus peregrinus, another psalm-tone, V, can serve as a more typical example (Example 2.1).

The pitch at which the bulk of the psalm text is recited is c. This is therefore called the tenor, dominant or repercussa in Latin theory and tuba in German. Within a statement of the psalm-tone the tenor occurs twice. The division is marked in the example by a bar line between the first and second semi-verse. The tenor represents the remnants of monotone declamation to which have been added several elements of ornamentation. The first of these is formed by the two notes that lead up to the tenor of the first semi-verse. This figure is called initium, inchoatio, intonatio or incipit. The first recitation is rounded off by a mediante, medium, mediatio or elevatio, which in turn is followed by a small caesura. The second recitation commences likewise with an incipit. It is concluded by a terminatio, finitio or finalis, which has a more important structural function than the mediatio.1 In the first semi-verse the tenor may be subject to a flexio (flectio) or flexa: a short

1 Finalis is a term best avoided as a description of the closing figure as a whole. It is also employed, often without clear distinction, to denote the final note of the psalm-tone,

Example 2.1 The sections of psalm-tone V


inflection, as represented by the pitch d in this example. It was mainly used for longer psalm verses and predominantly in the first semi-verse.

Here the terms first incipit, first tenor, flexa, mediatio, second incipit, second tenor and terminatio are used rather than any of their equivalents. The reason for this is that they are not only the most commonly used terms throughout the history of music theory but also conform to the same Latin terminological tradition and are thus often found together. The terms are not always – in fact not even most often – given in the grammatical form in which they are presented here. In early psalmodic theory they are often used as verbs, either in the active or the passive mood. Statements such as the following often appear as complements to a psalm-tone in notation: Primus tonus sic incipit, et sic flectitur, et sic mediatur, atque sic finitur: ‘Psalm-tone I begins like this, is inflected like this, is divided in half like this, but is finished like this.’2

Each of the eight regular psalm-tones appear in three different basic forms, used with three different purposes: (1) psalms, (2) canticles – notably the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis (Lk. 2:29–32), the Benedictus (Lk. 1:68–79) and the Benedicite – and (3) introitus psalm verses. In addition, there are special tones for the invitatory, the singing of Psalm 94 (Venite exultemus Domino) at the opening of Matins. These are normally in ternary form and several of them include changes of recitation degree. With psalms within the liturgical hours, the normal minores forms of psalm-tones were used, whereas canticles, often referred to as psalmi maiores were chanted to a more melodically elaborate (occasionally even melodically different) variant.3 Introitus psalmody occurs in the Mass when the celebrant and the ministers approach the altar after having entered the church: it is typically only a fragment of a psalm with its antiphon. Also the forms of the psalm-tones used for introitus psalmody in the Mass are more elaborate, but since the tonus peregrinus is not used for this purpose, it shall not be discussed at length here. The following chapter will examine the use of the tonus peregrinus with both psalms and canticles in the Officium. Suffice it to say here, that when the tonus peregrinus is prescribed for use with a canticle, it has, unlike the eight other psalm-tones, no special maioris form. Example 2.2 is an archetypal form of the tonus peregrinus, along with our established terminology.

which is often described as the fundamental pitch of a mode. It will be used with the latter meaning in this book.

2 Jacobus of Liége, Speculum musicae (sextus liber et septimus) [c.1330], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 2 (Paris, 1867; repr. Milan, 1931), p. 334.

3 The author of the Commemoratio brevis states that the former is used when the psalmody is slower, and the latter for swifter recitation. This may either actually refer to a desired difference in the tempo of chanting or to the mere fact that a more straightforward melodic contour led to a swifter rendition of the text (Commemoratio brevis de tonis et psalmis modulandis [c.900], in M. Gerbert [ed.], Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, vol. 1 [St Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963], pp. 213–229).

Historical Background of the Tonus Peregrinus in Monophonic Practice 9

Within the same source, psalm-tones I–VIII are often given with several variant forms of terminatio figures called differentiae (occasionally also called varietates or divisiones). These had the function of producing a smooth connection between the psalm-tone and its antiphons; throughout the periods that are central to this book the prevailing practice was to frame the psalm text, which was recited on the psalm-tone, with an antiphon. By means of various differentiae the singer could avoid the unsuitable intervallic leaps that result from taxonomically incongruous psalm-tones and antiphons. Because the tonus peregrinus was almost exclusively connected with one type of antiphonal melody there was no rationale for a range of differentiae – instead, the psalm-tone always terminates on d. Another major dissimilarity of the tonus peregrinus from the other eight psalm-tones – and this is indeed its most striking peculiarity – is that it has a different tenor degree for each of the two semi-verses. This unusual feature of the psalm-tone will be discussed more fully later on.

The forms and variants of the tonus peregrinus

The tonus peregrinus was in several ways more uniform than the other psalm-tones. Even so, some sources exhibit noteworthy differentiation, and occasionally the deviation reveals quite remarkable differences in the understanding of its function. Prior to our earliest sources, chant melodies were passed on orally and possibly also by sources that are no longer extant. With models borrowed from ethnomusicology, important and groundbreaking research on the oral tradition in early Western music has been carried out in recent years. Scholars of this ‘new school’ have drawn attention to the fact that the Gregorian tradition survived without notation for hundreds of years and therefore we should be cautious about reaching conclusions regarding ‘prototypical’ chant forms. Peter Jeffery asked: ‘Is it possible that the oldest written melodies we have are actually revisions that had never in that form been part of the “pure” oral tradition before the introduction of the modes and the neumes?’4 One answer could be that we can never be sure, but there must be a hierarchy of convention in the transmission of melodies based on the frequency of their singing. Thus early readings of psalm-tones must be more reliable than readings of their concomitant antiphons, and readings of psalm-tones I–VIII perhaps more reliable than readings of the tonus peregrinus – a hypothesis that is validated by the inconsistency mentioned above in early occurrences of the

4 Peter Jeffery, Re-Envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1995), p. 107.

Example 2.2 The sections of the tonus peregrinus


tonus peregrinus. Even so, the tonus peregrinus underwent little alteration during the period in which it was a natural element in polyphony, and the earliest notation is in fact more detailed as regards antiphons than psalm-tones (which suggests a stronger oral tradition for the latter). Therefore, investigation of the psalm-tone variants should be guided not by chronology but by geography.

Two main types of tonus peregrinus occur in the sources available – one with the incipit a–b–a and another with the incipit a–c–a: the latter, on account of its predominance in northern Europe, is sometimes referred to as the Germanic dialect; the former is known as the Roman dialect. The predominance of the Germanic incipit in northern European sources is remarkably clear-cut. The rare contrary instances are found in outlying regions and may have been copied ‘out of area’ by itinerant scholars. In the cases where we know the provenance of the source or the author, we can see that there are hardly any exceptions to the norm that the Roman incipit was used in Mediterranean, Alpine and British areas, while the Germanic incipit prevailed in all regions north and east of these areas. The Speculum musicae of Jacobus of Liége (c.1260–after 1330) is one of the few sources to include examples of both the Roman and the Germanic dialect.5

The Germanic incipit appears to be only one facet of a general tendency towards augmented intervals in northern European sources of Gregorian chant.6 There are several sub-types within the basic Germanic tonus peregrinus formula. The most common form has c in the first incipit and a in the second (see Example 2.3).7 It is possible that the b mediatio in the first semi-verse represents a remnant of the Roman incipit, in which case the Germanic intonation would logically be a developed form of the Roman, rather than representing a separate tradition. Another Germanic dialect has the same incipit for both semi-verses (Example 2.4). This, incidentally, later became the normative formula for the Magnificat in Lutheran liturgy. The fact that it results in two falling fourths in the terminatio figure made it the perfect vehicle for motivic development, as we shall see later. Along with these two variants, there are also versions without a second semi-verse incipit (Example 2.5).8

5 There are in addition occasional deviances even from these three main forms, as in MS lat. 780, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (F-Pc), with a flexa on g.

6 To cite just one example in the close proximity of psalmody, Carl-Heinz Illing has discussed a similar treatment of psalm-tone I (Zur Technik der Magnificat-Komposition, pp. 1–31). Peter Wagner cites, as an example of Germanic chant dialect, the canticle-tones as given in MS Mü 14745, where several such augmentations are present (Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien, vol. 3 [Leipzig, 1921], pp. 102–103).

7 Georg Rhau, Enchiridion utriusque musicae practicae [1538] (Kassel, 1951), fol. F viii v. Also Introductorium musicae ([c.1500], ed. H. Riemann, Monatshefte für Musikgeschichte, 29 [1897]: 149–164); Henricus Glareanus (Dodekachordon [1547] [New York, 1967], p. 42) give such variants.

8 Tractatus de musica plana et mensurabili [fifteenth century], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 3 (Paris, 1867; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 416–475, at p. 458. Johannes Spangenberg (Quaestiones musicae in usum scholae


The Roman tonus peregrinus dialect is to a high degree characterized by the semitone incipit. This figure could be repeated in the second semi-verse (Example 2.6).9 In other occurrences the incipit of the second semi-verse is instead a repercussion of the first tenor (Example 2.7), reproducing the first incipit in modal transposition. The latter variant became conventional in polyphonic settings, possibly on account of its greater modal separation of the semi-verses – something that seems to have appealed to sixteenth-century composers.10 In a variant such as this, given its emphasis on the second tenor, there is no ambiguity about the recitation degrees of the separate semi-verses. In the earliest sources, however, the second semi-verse and its tenor were the object of discussion regarding a possible incongruity. Some early Roman variants illustrate the idea that the tonus peregrinus in fact was based on one, not two, recitation notes. The author of Commemoratio brevis (c.900) recites the second semi-verse of the psalm likewise on a (Example 2.8). If this type of recitation was indeed commonplace in the late first millennium, it is hardly surprising that some theorists regarded the tonus peregrinus as a variant of a regular psalm-tone.11 We cannot, however, rule out the possibility

Northusianae [Nuremberg, 1536], fol. C vii r.) and Johannes of Szydlow (Musica magistri Szydlovite [fifteenth century], in W. Gieburowski, ‘Die Musica Magsitri Szydlovite’: ein polnischer Musiktraktat des XV. Jahrhundert [Poznań, 1915], pp. 9–72, at p. 68) give a similar second semi-verse.

9 Guillaume Guerson, Utilissime musicales regule (Paris, c.1500), fol. E viii r; see also British Library (GB-Lbl), MS Lansdowne 763, fol. 84 v; Jacobus of Liége, Speculum musicae, p. 335.

10 We will encounter it frequently in later chapters. For the purposes of illustration, Example 2.7 is reproduced from the tenor part of a motet by Claudin de Sermisy (1553; see Chapter 11).

11 Alia musica [c.900], in M. Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, vol. 1 (St Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 125–152, at p. 149; Commemoratio brevis, p. 218.

Example 2.3 The tonus peregrinus in Germanic chant dialect




that the true process was the reverse: the notion that the tonus peregrinus was merely a differentia of another psalm-tone may well have led the author of the Commemoratio brevis to alter the psalm-tone for the sake of conformity with the regular system.

Deviations in the incipit figures are occasionally found. The most common is not really a separate variant of the first semi-verse, but, rather, an inflected restatement of the first incipit, dividing the tonus peregrinus into three rather than two sections (Example 2.9).

Hieronymus of Moravia gives this variant for the fifteenth verse of Psalm 113, which indeed has a tripartite organization: Manus habent et non palpabunt, pedes habent et non ambulabunt, non clamabunt in gutture suo: ‘They have hands but cannot grasp, they have feet but cannot walk, they cannot cry from their throats.’12

The fact that the theorist gives this verse with a tripartite tonus peregrinus pattern in addition to a common Roman variant for the first verse of the psalm, suggests an established practice of dividing the first tenor into two sections by means of a flexa. The consequences of this practice in polyphonic composition will be discussed later.

12 Hieronymus of Moravia, Tractatus de musica and Discantus positio vulgaris [c.1275], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 1 (Paris, 1864; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 1–97, at p. 83.

Example 2.6 The tonus peregrinus in Roman chant dialect



Example 2.9 Variant of the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus


Variants without the normal mediatio figure are also encountered, as can be seen in Example 2.11.13 Versions with neither incipit nor flexa are predominant in Iberian sources. Diego del Puerto’s Portus musice, Juan Bermudo’s El libro llamado declaración de instrumentos musicales, the Intonarium Toletanum and the Breve instruc[c]ión de canto llano, all present variants with a plain three-note opening semi-verse (Example 2.13).14 Later Spanish sources, such as the Escuela musica según la práctica moderna (1724) of Pablo Nassarre (c.1655–c.1730) and the Arte de canto-llano (1778) of Ignacio Ramoneda (c.1730–1781), continue to uphold this practice. As we shall see in a later chapter, this variant was also employed in the polyphony of this particular region of Europe. This form will be referred to as ‘the Iberian variant’.

The second incipit is on rare occasions given as in Example 2.10. The d replacing the normal flexa-like incipit represents the most far-reaching deviation from the more usual tonus peregrinus variants. One must assume that this version relates to the closing of the psalm-tone in the same way as the version in Example 2.4 related to its opening and the d can be traced structurally to the terminatio figure, since the wealth of flexa variants found in the regular psalm-tones often relates to features of their basic shape. This particular incipit variant is very rarely found in polyphonic settings. Nicolaus Capuanus (fl. c.1415) gives another version of the

13 Tractatus de musica plana, pp. 433–483.14 Diego del Puerto, Portus musice (Salamanca, 1504); Intonarium Toletanum (Alcalá

de Henares, 1515); Juan Bermudo, El libro llamado declaración de instrumentos musicales (Ossuna, 1555); Luys de Villafranca, Breve instruc[c]ión de canto llano (Seville, 1565).

Example 2.13 The tonus peregrinus in Iberian chant dialect

Example 2.10 Deviant second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus

Example 2.11 Tonus peregrinus variant with deviant mediatio figure

Example 2.12 Tonus peregrinus variant with f in terminatio figure


second incipit, where the second tenor is arrived at via an f–g–a figure.15 Similarly, this may relate structurally to pitches already in the psalm-tone (the mediatio), but the consequence of this incipit is rather different from that of Ladislaus of Zalka (fl. late fifteenth century), since it produces a conjunct transition from the first incipit to the second tenor.

One alternative second semi-verse, particularly common in the Sarum use in the British Isles, includes an f in the terminatio formula (Example 2.12).16 This note weakens the contour of the psalm-tone, which elsewhere derives much of its linear character from the falling fourth in the second semi-verse. The terminatio in the Commemoratio brevis (Example 2.8) introduces one further alternative: the e in the figure not only alters the shape of the tonus peregrinus drastically but also gives the second semi-verse a configuration that is untypical of Western psalmody. It must have been difficult for untrained singers to fit the final syllables of the psalm verses to this very long terminatio.

We have now covered the tonus peregrinus variants that are most frequently encountered in liturgical and theoretical texts, as well as in the early polyphonic repertory. It becomes clear from these examples that most major variations in tonus peregrinus readings occur in the first semi-verse. As regards the various differentiae, these are not nearly as far-reaching as those normally employed for psalm-tones I–VIII. This fact possibly indicates that the uniformity of the antiphons connected regularly with the tonus peregrinus made differentiae superfluous. Indeed the term differentia is misleading in the study of the different tonus peregrinus endings, since these rarely depart from the normal terminatio d–f–e–d in their structure, and do not serve the same kind of function as the differentiae of the other psalm-tones. This was certainly due to the fact that the psalm-tone was used with a typologically very limited repertory of antiphons.

Other recitation formulas with more than one reciting note

The tonus peregrinus was not the only recitation formula to comprise multiple recitation pitches, even if it was the most common and widespread deviation from the normality of single-pitch recitation in the daily liturgy of hours. Deviations are otherwise most often found in responsorial psalmody, where the main body of singers respond to the verses chanted by one singer, or with texts other than psalms

15 Nicolaus Capuanus, Compendium musicale [c.1415], in A. de la Fage (ed.), Essais de dipthérographie musicale (Paris, 1864), pp. 308–338, at p. 331.

16 Antiphonale Sarisburiense (London, 1901–24; repr. Farnborough, 1966), pp. 110, 276, 308, 323, 543, 648; Libellus Tonarium [c.1075], Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig (D-LEu), MS 1492, fol. 93 r; Johannes of Tewkesbury, Quatuor principalia musicæ [c.1350], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi (nova series), vol. 4 (Paris, 1876; repr. Milan, 1931), pp. 200–298, at p. 245; Nicolaus Wollick, Enchiridion musices, liber tertius (Paris, 1512), fol. F viii v.


and canticles. In our attempt to explain why these other recitation formulas were not, like the tonus peregrinus, used in the antiphonal singing of psalms, we have to fall back on hypotheses, the most obvious perhaps being that contrast between the two pitches may have been undesirable when expressing the parallelismus membrorum (the compound structure of text and complementary addition or, less commonly, thesis and antithesis) of psalms and other bipartite forms: the balance of the two similar semi-verses, acting as mutual paraphrases, was disturbed by the change of recitation pitch. In early music theory deviant psalm-tones are often discussed as a group, and two Frankish writers addressed a problem that may relate to an unsuitability for antiphonal singing – one stated that non finiuntur ita ut inchoant: ‘they do not finish as they began’ the other that quia per omnia ab orbita in sui canore versiculi segregatur, huiusce toni, secernendam putavi a cæteris diffinitionibus: ‘as this psalm-tone is separated by a semi-verse from the common run of all singing [psalms] it was excluded from the others.’17 This hypothesis relies indirectly on the early indications that the tonus peregrinus earned its place in psalmody mainly on account of pre-existent problematical antiphons, something that is discussed further in Chapter 7. A complementary hypothesis is that the reason why multiple recitation pitches occur mostly in responsorial psalmody is not primarily homiletic but concerned with traditional musical practice. A contrast between ‘call’ and ‘response’ may have been widely cultivated in early Western Christendom and then have survived as a relic in responsorial psalmody.18

One psalmodic formula with two recitation pitches that is most probably distinct from the nothae, or deviant formulas relating to the eight regular psalm-tones, is the melody for Psalm 113 (In exitu Israel) in the Sarum use. As will be discussed below, this psalm was particularly associated with the tonus peregrinus – therefore, we need to refer also to an alternative In exitu Israel formula, not only on account of the liturgical context, but also because it may possibly tell us something about the tonus peregrinus itself. Similarly to the tonus peregrinus variants in Examples 2.8 and 2.9, this formula appears tripartite at first sight.19 The sequence, however, is reversed, the second recitation being higher than the first. The third phrase is the Alleluia, bearing witness to the special function that this melody had on Easter Day and the following week. It functions here in place of an antiphon, and the fact that it is appended after each single verse suggests an archaism: possibly a connection with an older responsorial psalmody (although each verse was treated antiphonally just like a psalm-tone).20 When the Sarum

17 Alia musica, p. 149; Aurelianus of Réôme, Musica disciplina [c.850], in M. Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, vol. 1 (St Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 28–63, at p. 51. The metaphor ab orbita is logical in the light of the word versus (vertere: ‘to turn’).

18 This is suggested by Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri [seventh century], ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Latinae 82 (Paris, 1850), coll. 73–728, VI: 9.

19 See Example 3.7.20 See e.g. British Library (GB-Lbl), Harley MS 2945.


use Directorium sacerdotum (1487) and Processionale (1502) were printed, the custom of repeating the antiphon after each verse of the psalm had passed out of general practice for several hundred years at least.21 This melody appears not only in English sources but also in ones originating from Western France. Guy Oury has suggested that this melody, and the entire psalmody based upon it, originated in France and then spread to the British Isles via Normandy.22

We have seen several melodic patterns with multiple recitation degrees used in psalmody. Within the context of the Mass, there are in addition several other melodic patterns with multiple recitation degrees which unlike the tonus peregrinus and the invitatory psalm-tones were used for texts other than psalms and canticles. The best-known of these is perhaps one of the common tones for the Prefatio (the first part of the Eucharistic prayers, which immediately precedes the Sanctus).23 It is important to note that the nature and function of a recitation formula like this is quite different from the tonus peregrinus and the invitatory chants, since the changes in recitation degree are here intended to express punctuation in the reading of the text. Thus, these chants and the tonus peregrinus have little in common as regards musical development or liturgical practice and are mentioned here only in order to illustrate that the tonus peregrinus was musically untypical in the liturgy of the Western Church. Falconer has raised the possibility that since the tonus peregrinus often was classified as a differentia of one of the eight psalm-tones, other differentiae of these psalm-tones might in the same way have originally belonged to irregular psalm-tones, since they resemble cadential patterns of the Mozarabic and Ambrosian rites.24 Ruth Steiner has drawn attention to similarly deviant psalm-tones, some of which are irregular (notably the psalm-tone she calls ‘Tone S’) in a manner recalling the tonus peregrinus, and Atkinson has catalogued four psalm-tones for the parapteres that he believes have origins similar to those of psalm-tones I–VIII. These, however, remained strictly invitatory tones and do not often appear even as such after 1200.

21 Directorium sacerdotum, ed. Clement Maydeston (London, 1487); Processionale ad usum Sarum [1502] (Clifden, 1980).

22 Erbacher relates that Jean Lebeuf (1687–1760) believed it to be a remnant of the Gallican rite (Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, pp. 77–78); see also Guy Oury, ‘Psalmum dicere cum Alleluia’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 79 (1965): 97–108, at pp. 103–104; Michiel Huglo (with Jane Bellingham and Marcel Zijlstra), ‘Gallican Chant’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol. 9 (London, 2001), pp. 458–472, at p. 467.

23 This melody is quoted as example 12 in John Boe, ‘Präfation’, in L. Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, section, VI (Kassel and Basel, 1997), coll. 1761–1776.

24 Keith Falconer, ‘The Modes Before the Modes: Antiphon and Differentia in Western Chant’, in P. Jefferey (ed.), The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West: In Honour of Kenneth Levy (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 131–145, at p. 142. It is clear that this line of reasoning continues the tradition of the postulated common source (‘Q’) hypothesis.


The liturgical context of the tonus peregrinus

The names, descriptions and liturgical functions of the tonus peregrinus prior to the rise of Western polyphony have been covered elsewhere as has the historiography of its origins (a matter in which there has been a great deal of disagreement among nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars).25 Suffice it to say here, that the origins of the term tonus peregrinus remain unclear, with suggestions that it relates to the musical properties of the psalm-tone (a ‘wandering’ or ‘migrant’ character), to its connection with the text of Psalm 113, to its use in processions in a special Easter Vespers liturgy or to any number of other explanations. Before discussing polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus and its role in Western music theory, a short description of its liturgical functions will be useful.

By far the most common application of the tonus peregrinus, which has been mentioned several times already, is its use for Psalm 113. This is not only the most common, but seemingly also the most ancient of its functions. The psalm in question is proper to Vespers on Sunday and it is in this context much of the music described in the present book will have been performed. It was connected almost exclusively with antiphons of one single melodic family, by far the most common being Nos qui vivimus, with text derived from verses of Psalm 113.

The second most frequent use of the psalm-tone, for the German Magnificat (Meine Seele erhebt den Herren), is peculiar to the Lutheran liturgical tradition. This holds true also of the application of the tonus peregrinus as a congregational response to the Benediction, with verses from Psalm 67 (Gott sei uns gnädig). As well as these three liturgical functions, we will come across a number of less common uses as we go on to discuss the polyphonic works based on the tonus peregrinus.26

25 Avigdor Herzog and André Hajdu, ‘À la recherche du tonus peregrinus dans la tradition musicale juive’, Yuval, 1 (1968): 194–203; Jean Claire: ‘The Tonus Peregrinus: A Question Well Put?’, Orbis Musicae, 7 (1980): 3–14. See Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, chapters 2–7 for further discussion as well as a full bibliography.

26 Others, such as the use of the tonus peregrinus for the Benedicite at Lauds, will not be discussed at all, since no polyphonic settings with this specific function has survived (the use of the tonus peregrinus with the vernacular Benedicite in sixteenth-century England is covered in Chapter 10); see also Ruth Steiner, ‘The Canticle of the Three Children as a Chant in the Roman Mass’, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, ns 2 (1982): 81–90; Ruth Steiner, ‘Antiphons for the Benedicite at Lauds’, Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 7 (1984): 1–17.


Chapter 3

Singled Out as a Model: The Tonus Peregrinus in Polyphony before 1500

At the dawn of the history of polyphony the tonus peregrinus already possessed an individual identity, both – through connections with certain texts – as a bearer of theological implications and as a distinct melodic formula with a specific liturgical function. Since the liturgical practice of the psalm-tone was taken for granted, the erudite discussion of its origins and its problematic aspects, as recounted here, most likely did not attract the interest and attention of the daily officiant or chorister.1 One may safely assume that the perfect knowledge of all psalms, canticles and hymns, set forth as an unconditional prerequisite for ecclesiastical ordination by the eighth council of Toledo in 653, pertained not only to Scripture but also to the practical applications of the same.2 The slow but significant rise of polyphonic music coincided with the crystallization of a special musical significance for the tonus peregrinus – one that is suggested not so much by the prose of theoretical treatises as by the simple fact that this tone was commonly taken as a practical example through which to describe theoretical topics that applied to polyphony in general.

The interpolation of an Alleluia into Psalms 112–118 was observed not only in Easter Week services but sometimes also in the normal Vespers in which these psalms had their allotted place. Many mediaeval Vulgate manuscripts make this normative by inscribing A E V I A (‘all–el–u–i–a’) at the end of every psalm in this group. If the psalms were framed by Alleluia sections, the function of the psalmodic antiphons must have taken second place – something that set the tonus peregrinus apart from psalm-tones I–VIII, which functioned with a variety of antiphon types. Thus the underlying reasons for the special treatment of the tonus peregrinus may have been at once technical and liturgical.

1 Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 36–51, 87–99.2 See Karl Joseph von Hefele, Conciliengeschichte nach den Quellen, vol. 3 (Freiburg,

1858), p. 99. There existed variants of these requirements for ordination: in the thirteenth century, vicars choral in Salisbury had to serve a probationary year, by the end of which memorization of the Psalter and antiphonale were expected. The Lincoln statutes of 1236 stipulate that the antiphonale and hymnal should be memorized in a first year of probation, whereas the Psalter should be known by heart at the end of the second year of service (Frank L. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain [London, 1958], pp. 5–6).


Organum and plainsong binatum

The earliest polyphonic occurrence of Psalm 113 is in fact one of the first, if not the very first, extant examples of polyphonic notation. In the so-called Scolica enchiriadis, verse 27 of this psalm, Nos qui vivimus, is used as an example throughout a discussion of parallel organum. The text of the psalm is given, not, as one would have expected, to the melody of that antiphon but to the tonus peregrinus itself, in a variant found in the Libellus tonarium and in Johannes of Tewkesbury.3 The treatise gives the psalm-tone in several different organa and is exceptional in yet another respect, as it is one of the very few extant specimens of Daseian notation. This system of exact pitch notation is based on four basic symbols (borrowed from Greek prosody) that are permutated in order to produce 18 different pitch signs. This makes diatonic degrees spanning over two octaves available.

Daseian notation presents a problem as regards the b durum or naturale and b molle (b): the author presupposes b in the graves (low) register, whereas the equivalent in the superiores (an octave higher) is b.4 The superiores is the range that encompasses the two tenor degrees of the tonus peregrinus and also its flexa figure – a fact that makes the b a problem. As regards extempore polyphony – for organum technique was, when put into practice, an art of singing in which the individual choristers were ignorant of all concepts pertaining to the sum of the parts – an interpretation resulting in the inflection of individual voices in order to ‘fine-tune’ the organum as a whole is less than credible. Such a notion presupposes that harmonic considerations were taken into account by the executants, with the further implication that organa were vertically, rather than horizontally, conceived. This appears an anachronism in the light of our understanding of mediaeval musical thought. From a theoretical perspective, on the other hand, it would have been possible to put together a passage of organum in which the intervallic motion was adjusted so that only perfect consonances resulted.

As a result of the confusion surrounding the Daseian notation of these organa, it has in some twentieth-century transcriptions been understood as yielding an a–b–a

3 Scolica enchiriadis de musica [ninth century], ed. H. Schmid (Munich, 1981), pp. 60–156. The sources with which comparison was made are Libellus Tonarium, fol. 93 r; Johannes of Tewkesbury, Quatuor principalia musicae.

4 The author states that tertio tritos, qui semitonio distat a deutero: ‘the third tritos [B in the graves], which differs from the second [A] by a semitone’; and that secundo deuteros, qui tono distat a proto: ‘the second deuteros [b in the superiores], which differs from the first [a] by a [whole] tone’ (Scolica enchiriadis, p. 62). The distinction between b durum and b molle was problematic in all early notation systems. This is clearly exemplified by the Dijon Tonarius in the Faculté de Médécine, Montpellier (F-MOf, MS H.159), which presents an early chant repertory in two different types of notation. Comparing the two, it is clear that durus and molle were used inconsistently not only between different items but also within different versions of the same item.

Singled Out as a Model: The Tonus Peregrinus in Polyphony before 1500 21

(rather than a–b–a) incipit for the tonus peregrinus.5 As regards early organum, it is the present author’s opinion that a modern scholar should be concerned only with the cantus firmus (if known beforehand, as in our case) and with the given principles. Any consequence, such as the presence of accidentals (in modern notation), was obviously not a problem in extempore practice or in a theoretical and notational system that did not include the concept of accidentals (such as the Daseian system). If any problem arose for the author of the Scolica enchiriadis, this is more likely to have been related to the abstract concept of permutation in the Daseian signs than to the audible result. It seems, in short, as if the b in the superiores range is no more than a simple consequence of the concept of identically formed tetrachords:

It is obvious that the available notes are determined entirely by the desirability of using the same four signs for all notes and having them correspond to the same ratio within each tetrachord group. It is equally obvious, however, that this structure can be ruled out for organum singing, since the Scolica enchiriadis reckons with the ‘normal’ octave-doubling of men and boys, in which both adhere to the same pitch degree.6

5 See e.g. A.T. Davison and W. Apel (eds), Historical Anthology of Music, revd edn (Cambridge, Mass., 1948); T. Alvad and S.G. Asmussen, Chorus, vol. 1, 2nd edn (Egtved, 1966). In 1959, Lincoln Bunce Spiess laid out four rules of interpretation of the notation system, but he seems strangely unaware of the problems raised by the tonus peregrinus, which he does not find either in the Liber usalis nor in the antiphonale Ambrosianum (and the search apparently ended there). As a consequence, it is stated that we ‘are not tempted to add a bb’! (Lincoln Bunce Spiess, ‘The Diatonic “Chromaticism” of the ‘Enchiriadis’ Treatises’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 12/1 [1959]: 1–6, at p. 4). Again, the overriding aim must be to respect, or at least consider, the common musical form(s) of the chant set to organum, if known beforehand.

6 Scolica enchiriadis, pp. 90–92.

Relationship to previous note: tone semitone tonegraves: G A B flat Cfinales: d e f gsuperiores: a b c’ d’excellentes: e’ f sharp g’ a’residui/remanentes b’ c’’ sharp

Example 3.1 Organum


The accepted axioms leave us with only one possible solution to this problem in relation to a given example of tonus peregrinus organum at the lower fifth: Example 3.1. The tritone was not tolerated, and so the E in the finalis range had to be conjugated in order to conform to the rules of strict consecutive motion and to the melodic properties of the tonus peregrinus. The f in the mediatio of the vox principalis is properly supported by B in the organalis part, which is, as stated above, the normal tritos of the graves register. It does not seem as if the author regards vox principalis as a ‘rule’ in strictly parallel organum – hence it is not really problematic if principalis is adapted to organalis in this type of polyphony, seeing that both parts are adapted to the exact properties of the chant, as we know them from a vast number of concurrent sources. The author also provides examples of strict consecutive motion at the fourth, in which instance, of course, the lower voice need not be adjusted during the incipit figure. Rather, its B must be made natural in order to avoid making a tritone with the e of the principalis.

It seems from the Scolica enchiriadis that the modal inconsistency of Example 3.1 – its ending on a perfect consonance different from that of its beginning – was considered something of a problem even at this early stage of polyphony, since the source presents also another, more advanced model of organum. This model differs from the one discussed previously in that it prescribes a genuine subordination of the organalis part, thereby making a clear move towards free composition against a cantus firmus. The new rule applied to the lower organalis is that it must not descend below its own tetrardus, the species of fourth of its own register.7 This prohibits writing such as that in the organalis of Example 3.1, which removed the organum from the modus of the vox principalis. In addition, this rule avoids the problem of the B conjugation in parallel motion at the lower fourth, so it was certainly also conceived as a way of avoiding the interval of the tritone. Example 3.2 illustrates the rule: the tonus peregrinus remains as it stands in the principalis, but at the terminatio figure the lower part is not allowed to follow in parallel motion, since that would entail an illicit migration to the neighbouring lower tetrachord. Instead, it prolongs its lowest pitch and terminates with part-writing in contrary motion.

To a much greater extent than in parallel organum, this manner of singing respects the innate qualities of the tonus peregrinus. It focuses on d as the finalis of the psalm-tone, giving the setting (here, one can in reality begin to speak of a ‘composed’ musical work) a modal centre. It signals the first stirrings of the rules of part-writing that were to remain active over the course of more than five hundred years. It is also interesting to note that there is here the nucleus of the archetypical harmonic scheme of the tonus peregrinus with the mediatio leading to a sonority based on f and the terminatio closing on d as finalis.

7 This rule became central in later organum theory, for example in that of Guido of Arezzo, who in other respects found much fault with the Scolica enchiriadis and with the Daseian notation (Micrologus [c.1020], ed. J. van Waesberge [Rome, 1955], p. 202).


So why was the tonus peregrinus singled out as an example to illustrate these organum models? Was it for liturgical reasons? Its importance as a central element within several festive celebrations that called for polyphonic music may be relevant here. In this case, it reflects a tradition that was especially associated with Sunday Vespers, but that service included many other plainsong items alongside the tonus peregrinus, so liturgical considerations must be accompanied by a closer look at the tonus peregrinus itself. Was the tonus peregrinus chosen as an example on account of some characteristics regarded as typical for a great variety of plainsong items? This supposition is challenged by the discussions of the tonus peregrinus as an anomaly in mediaeval music theory and also by the very examples given in the Scolica enchiriadis, since, according to the rules of parallel organum, the tonus peregrinus is problematic in comparison with the other psalm-tones.8 Psalm-tones II, III, IV, VI and VIII, in their normal Officium form and according to their most common differentiae, all fit neatly into one tetrachord, which means that the problems connected with the organalis part descending too low do not occur. Moreover, the tonus peregrinus and psalm-tone I are the only psalm-tones that have to be modally conjugated in the superiores range – the one in which the tenor recitation of all psalm-tones occurs. Rather than surmising that the tonus peregrinus was chosen to exemplify organum singing because it was typical, one therefore wishes to suggest that it was chosen precisely because it raises these difficult questions.

Smits van Waesberghe has suggested that the development of mediaeval polyphony was somehow set apart from the mainstream of liturgical tradition. Since polyphony tampered with the inviolable melodies of the Mass and Officium, it was only acceptable where there was a certain flux or liberty within the liturgy.9 This observation possibly provides a third argument for the over-representation of the tonus peregrinus in polyphonic experiments, but it must be viewed as the least likely factor.10 Throughout the period under discussion the Easter Vespers liturgy

8 Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 92–99.9 Smits van Waesberghe, ‘Einleitung zu einer Kausalitätserklärung der Evolution der

Kirchenmusik im Mittelalter (von etwa 800 bis 1400)’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 26 (1969): 249–275.

10 Van Waesberghe’s notion is contradicted by the rather frequent use of psalmody in early polyphony, especially in Vesper collections like that in the British Library (GB-Lbl), MS Eg. 2615. The term organum has indeed been associated with the text itself, by Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, col. 231: Psalmorum liber, Graece psalterium, Hebraeice

Example 3.2 Organum


allowed for a degree of freedom and the tonus peregrinus was theoretically not on equal terms with the other psalm-tones.11 Both of these factors may, in addition to those mentioned above, have made the tonus peregrinus the most suitable Gregorian example for the discussion of polyphonic music.

The Scolica enchiriadis describes a practice already in widespread use. This type of organum most likely continued, in some places, throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and even beyond. Johannes Cotto proposes the following etymology for the word: qui canendi modus vulgariter organum dicitur, eo quod vox humana apte dissonans similitudinem exprimat instrumenti quod organum vocatur: ‘a way of singing regularly called organum, as the suitably dissonant human voice resembles the instrument that is called organum’.12

In what way did the sung organa resemble the instrument? Note that the perceived likeness applies to this particular manner of singing, not to the human voice per se. If Cotto’s statement has any real bearing on the etymology of the word, it carries at the same time a strong implication that polyphony of a kind similar to that described in the Scolica enchiriadis had previously been practised instrumentally. If Vespers psalms continued to attract the attention of polyphonic experiment, it is possible that the more advanced and florid models of organum and conductus described by twelfth- and thirteenth-century authors and recorded in contemporary sources were applied to the tonus peregrinus during that period, but no such work has survived.13

The fourteenth century witnessed an increase in polyphonic music in the liturgy, but no tonus peregrinus setting of Psalm 113 from this century appears to have survived. One extant remark of psalmody (unrelated to any specific musical setting) deserves a brief mention here. Information concerning Psalm 113 is provided by Dante Alighieri in the second canto of his Purgatorio: ‘In exitu Isräel de Aegypto’ cantavan tutti insieme ad una voce con quanto di quel salmo è poscia

nebel, Latine organum dicitur: ‘The book of Psalms, called psalterium in Greek, nabla in Hebrew and organum in Latin.’

11 The freedom referred to here is that connected with liturgical plays and peculiar procession practices (see Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church [Oxford, 1933]; Clyde Brocket, ‘Easter Monday Antiphons and the Peregrinus Play’, Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, 61–62 [1977–78]: 29–46; Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church [Toronto, 1971], pp. 23–24, 111; Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 56–63).

12 Johannes Cotto of Affligem, De musica (cum Tonario) [c.1100], ed. J. van Waesberghe (Rome, 1950), p. 157.

13 See the Codex Calixtinus in the Biblioteca de la Catedral Metropolitana, Santiago da Compostela (E-SC); the Winchester Troparium in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (GB-Ccc) MS 473, as well as the group of sources that relate to the Magnus liber organi of the Parisian Notre-Dame school: Plut.29.1 in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence (I-Fl), MS W 628, and W 1099 in the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (D-W). Given the tradition of elaborate alleluia exclamations in the hallel psalms, the Winchester Troparium is, of course, especially pertinent to our topic.


scripto.14 Charles S. Singleton’s translation of this passage reads: In exitu Israel de Aegypto all of them were singing together with one voice, with all the rest of that psalm as it is written’.15 Dante is generally regarded as a reliable source of liturgical information, and would certainly be familiar with polyphony.16 The fact that he does not mention polyphony here strengthens slightly the assumption that the use of polyphonic psalms was still uncommon in the thirteenth century and that polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus are rather unlikely to be found.

Fauxbourdon settings

The tradition of polyphonic organ music appears to be almost as old as that of vocal polyphony, albeit in all likelihood much more rarely cultivated on account of obvious practical factors. In support of Johannes Cotto’s etymological interpretation stands the extant repertory of early organ music. From the fourteenth century onwards several organ alternatim settings of liturgical music have survived (notably in the Robertsbridge fragment and the Codex Faenza).17 The music that replaced plainsong seems to have comprised, first and foremost, sections of the Mass and therefore reflects the corresponding figural music by employing freer, two-part writing rather than fauxbourdon. It seems reasonable to assume that organs, too, were used in the performance of music from the Officium in this era, and also that such music mirrored the equivalent vocal music (both Mass and Officium sources of vocal music may, of course, have been used also for organ performance), but it is not in fact until the fifteenth century that we find sources to validate this hypothesis, and even then, it seems that the organ was used mostly for hymns and canticles but rarely for psalms.18 Conrad Paumann (c.1410–1473) is described in a 1477 source as playing on the organ the three parts primitonus, contratenor and faberdon.19 In his few surviving works the upper

14 Dante, Purgatorio, 2:46–48; 15 Dante, Purgatorio, ed. and trans. Charles S. Singleton, 2nd edn (Princeton, 1977),

pp. 14–15 (Durling has ‘… they were singing all together with one voice, with as much of that Psalm as is written thereafter’ [Dante, Purgatorio, ed. and trans. R.M. Durling (Oxford, 2003), p. 37]). This is especially interesting in the light of the prescribed use of Ps. 113 at the point of the deparature of the soul in the burial ceremony of the Roman Ordo XLIX (see Barbara Haggh-Huglo, ‘Binchois and Sacred Music at the Burgundian Court’, in A. Kirkman and D. Slavin [eds], Binchois Studies [Oxford, 2000], pp. 11–26).

16 See Evelyn Birge Vitz, ‘The Liturgy and Vernacular Literature’, in T.J. Heffernan and E.A. Matter (eds), The Liturgy of the Medieval Church (Kalamazoo, 2001), pp. 551–618.

17 British Library (GB-Lbl) Add. MS 28550; Biblioteca comunale, Faenza (I-FERc) MS 117.

18 See the discussion of this in Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 136.19 Hans Rosenplüt’s poem in praise of the city of Nuremberg is quoted by Manfred

Bukofzer, Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons nach den theoretischen


line is often significantly ornamented, but the parts nonetheless often fulfil typical fauxbourdon functions, as inherited from earlier models of organa (the account may have meant that he played over a previously conceived bass part, which in turn was derived from a plainsong melody, as was common practice in England at the time). Despite rigorous searching, no trace of any organ setting of the tonus peregrinus from the period covered in this chapter was found.

If organ fauxbourdon, such as Paumann’s, was associated with the Mass and non-psalmodic elements of the Officium, vocal fauxbourdon became a dominant polyphonic device for psalmody proper: as in an In exitu Israel by Gilles Binchois (c.1400–1460) that survives in two Italian sources.20 From the time of Binchois onwards, the connection between vocal fauxbourdon and psalmody is first and foremost evident from the repertory; later on, theorists such as Gafurius remarked on the connection:

Huiusmodi autem contrapunctum cantores ad Faulxbourdon appellant: in quo quidem medius ipse contratenor sæpius notulas cantus subsequitur: diatessaronica sub ipsis depressione procedens: quod in psalmodiarum modulationibus a musicis frequentius obseruatur.

Singers, moreover, call this type of counterpoint faulxbourdon: in it, this middle part, contratenor, very often follows the notes of the cantus, proceeding at the interval of a diatessaron [fourth] below it. It is very often observed by musicians in the singing of Psalms.21

It is interesting that Gafurius regards the cantus as the core of the structure, whereas the psalm-tone terminationes in his own three-part examples always occur in the tenor part. We can trace the compositional procedure by observing that the cantus follows the psalm-tone except at cadences, where it complements the terminatio figure (in the tenor) with routine progressions (proceeding from imperfect consonance to perfect consonance by contrary motion), much according to the same principle as in the vox organalis in the second type of organum described in the Scolica enchiriadis. The contratenor was then derived with greater strictness from the cantus. The process seems to have been the same much earlier in the fifteenth century, and a similar structure is encountered already in the In exitu Israel by Binchois.

As can be seen from Example 3.3, an alternative is suggested to that of the editor of the Binchois edition with regard to the ficta interpretation of the terminatio cadences (bb. 187, 373, 382–383). The tri-hexachordal system was of utmost importance for hexachordal structures of compositional practice in the fifteenth

Quellen, Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 21 (Strasbourg, 1936), p. 123.20 The Biblioteca nazionale centrale, Florence (I-Fn), MS 112; Biblioteca Estense e

Universitaria, Modena (I-MOe), MS a.X.1.11. 21 Franchinus Gafurius, Practica musicae [1496] (New York, 1979), fol. dd, iv r.


Example 3.3 In exitu Israel, Gilles Binchois


century and a change of recitation (or dominant cantus firmus tenor degree) may give rise to an alteration of the entire hexachord. One cannot, however, completely disregard the hierarchy within that hexachordal structure. Hence one would not have to alter the terminatio figure of the psalm-tone in order to avoid the interval of a tritone – the resolution given in ‘ossia’ staves shows how the psalm-tone could had been maintained. It is true that ficta is problematic in extempore fauxbourdon on account of the two modal levels at which the singers of the upper parts operate (just as we saw even more strongly in the much earlier organum). It is equally true that the b was in fifteenth-century theory and practice a recta note, while sharps were ficta notes. Therefore, we do not wish to take issue with the editorial decisions in the Binchois edition. The case presently under discussion is a manuscript, and one could quite possibly reckon with some amendments to separate parts for the benefit of the whole in relation to the cantus firmus as a modal axis. The under-third cadence (as observed in b. 187) may originally have been introduced in order to avoid such tritones between the two upper parts, but by the early fourteenth century the direct under-second cadence (as in the two other instances) is equally common. Even so, a third alternative, with the chromatic inflection g in the middle part, is possible; this would result in exactly the same internal relationship as the variant proposed by the editor, but now without compromising the psalm-tone. This discussion touches on the crucial matter of hierarchy within a replication structure such as fauxbourdon. The migrating cantus firmus style represented by this Binchois setting was to become the most common in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: the tonus peregrinus is initiated in the highest part and finishes in the tenor. This is not just a matter of simple dual distribution corresponding to the division between recitation and cadence: if anything, it is a fourfold division, as the migration between the two parts occurs in each semi-verse of the psalm-tone. This is clearly seen in the verse Manus habent, typical of verses of the same kind in Binchois’s work. The recitation degrees are found exclusively in the superius (bb. 169–171, 175–178, 181–184), whereas the mediatio and terminatio figures are found exclusively in the tenor (173–174, 179–180, 186–188). This fact alone could justify a ficta interpretation that at cadences adjusts the upper parts to the tenor, rather than vice versa. When one can, as here, clearly perceive a distinction between plainsong material and conventional figural material, one can also understand the compositional procedure and possibly apply musica ficta accordingly. Perhaps Philip Kaye was guided in making his edition by statements such as that of Gafurius previously quoted, which seem to regard the highest part as the one central to the fauxbourdon structure. The problem is that Gafurius’s description does not fit the extant repertory of fauxbourdon. The ficta policy of the Binchois edition also overlooks, or ignores, the attempted unity between plainsong and polyphony that apparently enabled singers to produce fauxbourdon ‘from sight’ on the basis of Gregorian melodies sung from memory or read from liturgical sources. This was no mere organum-like reproduction at two levels, but whether the tenor or the superius had the overriding function will not be discussed further here.


The verse Manus habent demonstrates yet another feature that was to become common in later fauxbourdon psalms. Binchois reiterates the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus to fit the tripartite structure of the verse. The second recitation of the first tenor degree (bb. 175–178) is supported harmonically by the middle part’s crossing over to descend to an f, exactly as if the composer had wished to avoid a return to the normal disposition of fauxbourdon after the first mediatio, the harmony of which is prolonged by this alternative.

Along with In exitu Israel, Binchois sets the antiphon Nos qui vivimus separately (in the verse Sed nos qui vivimus no reference is made to the antiphon melody). This antiphon does not end, as it usually does, on g, but is brought to its close by the tonus peregrinus terminatio in the tenor in accordance with the psalm (b. 373). The concluding Amen does not seem to draw melodically either on the tonus peregrinus or on the Nos qui vivimus chant, unless the latter is being paraphrased exceedingly loosely. Binchois’s rendering of Psalm 113, as transmitted by the manuscript in the Biblioteca nazionale of Florence, has an overall form that is rather odd in liturgical respects:

1. the first semi-verse of the psalm intoned on psalm-tone I in plainsong2. the remainder of the psalm and the lesser doxology (lacking the Amen) in

fauxbourdon based on the tonus peregrinus3. the Nos qui vivimus antiphon in fauxbourdon4. the Amen in fauxbourdon (with possible allusions to the antiphon).

The intonation on psalm-tone I may be a scribal error – one frequently finds that liturgical manuscripts from this period have plainsong and polyphony notated in different hands. One would expect the Amen to follow the doxology and the Nos qui vivimus to frame the psalm. This has led Kaye to describe the Amen as ‘liturgically superfluous’, whereas I would regard it, rather, as displaced within the larger psalmodic unit.22 The fact that the work is through-composed led Denis Stevens to rule out entirely the possibility that it was intended for the procession in Easter Day Vespers, since psalms there were always sung alternatim.23 A more obvious indication that it was not intended for such an occasion is the lack of Alleluia refrains, as Barbara Haggh-Huglo pointed out.24 Haggh-Huglo has proposed as a probable context of this work, a particular funeral rite. This would

22 Philip Kaye, critical commentary to Gilles Binchois, The Sacred Music of Gilles Binchois, ed. Philip Kaye (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 314.

23 Denis Stevens, ‘Processional Psalms in Faburden’, Musica Disciplina, 9 (1955): 105–110, at pp. 109–110. The rubrics from which he drew these conclusions were from the Sarum use, which does not necessarily coincide with the situation at the Burgundian court.

24 Haggh-Huglo, ‘Binchois and Sacred Music’, p. 22. Here she also questions its use in normal Sunday Vespers as a possibility, since de tempore would have been greatly outnumbered by de sanctis where Binchois was active.


explain the absence of Alleluia and finds support in the Roman Ordo XLIX, which prescribes Psalm 113 at the departure of the soul of the deceased person.25

Edward Lowinsky cited this psalm setting as a typical example in his survey of the music of Binchois:

For the most part they [the sacred works] are set for three voices in two clearly distinguished harmonic techniques: a fairly strict homorythmic fauxbourdon style of a very formulary character combined with a syllabic declamation of astonishingly good accentuation (used for liturgical occasions) – a good example is his setting of the vesper psalm In exitu Israel – and a somewhat freer contrapuntal style in which homorythmic motion and fauxbourdon harmony are considerably loosened, but still latently present.26

Relating the accentually accurate word-setting to composition ‘for liturgical occasions’ may seem oddly inappropriate, but Lowinsky doubtless intended to stress the especially close correlation between psalm-tone and polyphony in this group of works by Binchois – they represented music composed for very particular practical circumstances. Works belonging to Lowinsky’s second category departed from their cantus firmus and therefore could not so readily function within a well-established liturgical tradition such as that of Easter Vespers or the burial service suggested by Haggh-Huglo.

Many fauxbourdon settings in two and three parts are contained in Codex Tridentus, which originated in Trent in the first half of the fifteenth century. This enormous group of sources was moved precariously around Europe several times during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but after a complete restoration it is now housed in the Castello de Buonconsiglio (I-TRbc) in Trent. It includes three fauxbourdon settings of Psalm 113, all based on the tonus peregrinus.27

The first (Example 3.4) for two voices states the psalm-tone in the cantus part throughout. We can now see clearly how a middle part would be added according to the principles outlined above; in the second semi-verse it would centre on e and follow the upper part loosely at the terminatio cadence (bb. 5–6). Just as in Binchois’s work, we can observe that the highest part takes responsibility for the recitation notes. Similarly, again, the lower part follows in sixths, according to generic fauxbourdon principles, supplying the mediatio and terminatio figures and occasionally a gymel (e.g. b. 10) – something suggesting that a third part

25 Michel Andrieu (ed.), Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge, Specilegium Sacrum Lovaniense (Leuven: 1985), pp. 529–530. This may possibly also shed some light on Dante’s mention of the psalm in the purgatory procession.

26 Edward Lowinsky, ‘Canon Technique and Simultaneous Conception in Fifteenth-Century Music: A Comparison of North and South’, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1989), pp. 884–910, at p. 904.

27 Codex Tridentinus, 90, fols. 346b–348a, 379b–381b, 382a.


was not intended in this particular instance. In bb. 14–15 the tenor presents the terminatio figure which includes an f before the first d. This fact has interesting implications, since that variant is encountered predominantly in north European and English sources.28 The In exitu Israel settings in Codex Tridentus, with their Germanic tonus peregrinus incipit, as quoted in our example, together with the north European neumatic notation found in many plainsong sources from the Trentino region, locates northern Italy within the Germanic dialect region of plainsong at this time (not unexpectedly, given the complex demographic and cultural history of that province). The structure in this two-part work is governed by the mode of the cantus firmus, which in the case of the Roman tonus peregrinus would be a mutated hexachord starting on D with naturale and molle. In the present case of the German variant, however, the cantus firmus itself overstepped the hexachordal limits. As has already been stated in relation to the tri-hexachordal system, not only the recitation degree but also the hexachord is mutated in the second tonus peregrinus semi-verse. One would be tempted to envisage a pragmatic solution to this problem in the use of the Roman incipit in the polyphony, but there are other, more credible reasons behind the tension between plainsong and polyphony in this work. The first possibility was mentioned already in connection with the peculiar intonation in one of the Binchois sources: the intonation was copied by a different scribe from the one who undertook the polyphonic notation (or by the same scribe using another source). The raison d’être for these intonations was not merely that of a note-true reproduction in performances – they additionally acted as an important means of classification, or even as rubrics, for the polyphonic work (this of course makes the intonation of psalm-tone I in the Binchois work a much graver anomaly than in Codex Tridentinus). An alternative – or, rather, complementary – explanation is that Trentino was the borderland of a chain of chant dialects in which both main tonus peregrinus versions would be in repeated liturgical use (this would fit the region’s

28 The version given in bb. 14–15 is identical, note for note, to that in the Antiphonale Sarisburiense.

Example 3.4 In exitu Israel


mixed linguistic heritage). The hypothesis is strengthened by the presence of the Germanic terminatio figure elsewhere in the polyphony.

The fluctuating state of chant dialect in Trentino at this time manifests itself also in another of the Trent In exitu Israel settings: a piece in three parts in which the polyphonic verses are set alternately to the two recitation melodies shown in Examples 3.5 and 3.6. The melody in Example 3.5 appears to be a variant of psalm-tone I in Germanic dialect. Example 3.6, however, is the Germanic tonus peregrinus with a deviant terminatio and an incipit preceding the second semi-verse. If this was a tonus peregrinus variant that was in common use in Trentino, one can safely assume that its perceived relation to psalm-tone I was due only to this second incipit and that this oddity is not really related to the one encountered in the Binchois source. Since only the odd-numbered verses are set polyphonically, this shift of recitation melodies renders the entire psalmodic performance tripartite or tetrapartite, depending on whether or not the plainsong verses likewise alternated their recitation formula.

Fifteenth-century polyphony was governed not only by the hexachordal alignment of the cantus firmus but also by the latter’s melodic course and by the perceived importance of the tenor degree. In this respect, little had changed since the period before polyphony proper emerged, when Johannes Cotto stated: Et tenores quidem in musica vocamus, ubi prima syllaba saeculorum amen cuiuslibet toni incipitur. Quasi enim claves modulationes tenent, et ad cantum cognoscendum nobis aditum dant: ‘And in music we really call tenor the place where the first syllable of the saeculorum amen of whichever psalm-tone is begun. For they control melodies like door-keys, and give us a way to identify [types of] song.’29

This view was to persist in Western music for as long as psalm-tones were used as the basis of a work. Indeed, the concept of claves or Schlüssel was to dominate music theory even more strongly during the period that witnessed the last great surge of psalm-tone compositions – the seventeenth century. The time-span covered by this focus on tenor and terminatio is so vast that one may safely say that no other governing concept in music theory affected the practice of polyphony for an equal length of time. It should be noted that the two recitation melodies that were

29 Johannes Cotto, De musica (cum Tonario), p. 82.

Example 3.5 In exitu Israel chant variant

Example 3.6 In exitu Israel chant variant


used in the three-part Tridentine setting both had their second tenor, the key to their classification according to theoretical tradition, on the degree a, and not on g as in all other versions of the tonus peregrinus. This makes this work atypical for the tonus peregrinus repertory, since it fails to display one of the most characteristic aspects of the chant. Since the setting would still have been classified according to its incipit intonation, it seems unlikely that the replacement of the customary tenor was a device aimed at obscuring identification with the tonus peregrinus as such.

Another extraordinary recitation formula is found in an In exitu Israel setting from the same period. In the Sarum use, Psalm 113 was sung to a different melody than the tonus peregrinus (which may still be related to it in some way) at the procession closing Vespers within the Easter octave (Example 3.7).The liturgical function of this tone was thus not exclusive, but used only under certain circumstances.30 The British Library Harley MS 2945, a processional, contains palimpsest sketches relating to the singing of the Sarum In exitu Israel melody in faburden polyphony. The melody, covering one psalm verse and an Alleluia refrain, is observably tripartite as regards both melodic arch formation and text allocation in the plainsong verses (the polyphonic verses of Harley MS 2945 do not always respect this structure, since the Alleluia is sometimes underlayed only to the last notes of the third phrase).31

The processional In exitu Israel in Harley 2945 is intended for alternatim use between choraliter and faburden (the same is true also for Ps. 112, Laudate pueri, which precedes it in the series of processions). The problem with reconstructing the polyphony is that the chant for the even verses has been erased by a scribe and replaced with a polyphonic part in white mensuration. Since we therefore do not have both parts notated for any verse, we cannot be exactly sure how they were supposed to fit together. The part supplied for the polyphonic verses is clearly a lower part – the faburden. Taken together, the parts present in the Harley source represent a bicinium with acceptable voice-leading (Example 3.8).32

30 See how the tonus peregrinus was otherwise used in the edition of the Tonale secundum usum Sarum et universalis ecclesie [thirteenth century], vol. 2, ed. W. Frere (Cambridge, 1898–1901), p. lxiv.

31 We have previously surmised that the intercalation of the Alleluia after each verse in this psalmody was an archaic feature.

32 The example is transcribed from British Library (GB-Lbl) Harley MS 2945, fols 67r–70v (in some of the verses the faburden rises to a g after the final e). The bulk of

Example 3.7 In exitu Israel recitation formula


To this, one would typically expect a middle part added extempore, following the upper part at the lower fourth, something that would indeed fit well here. Denis Stevens, however, described the realization of the inserted part as a faburden and a middle part in fourths below the chant melody as ‘neither flesh, fish nor fowl; neither bourdon, fauxbourdon nor English descant’, as the rules of the Lansdowne faburden treatises do not seem to apply to this manner of singing.33 There is, however, an early fifteenth-century manuscript originating from the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, that appears to be a polyphonic part book complementary to Harley MSS 2945 and 5249.34 In one instance (Salve festa dies), Susan Rankin has managed to reconstruct a composed-out three-part work from the chant melody, a treble part from a manuscript from Shrewsbury and the bass (faburden) part from another fifteenth-century manuscript.35 The music given in Example 3.8 is not a tonus peregrinus work, and since it is included here mainly for the discussion of its liturgical context, which is identical with that of the tonus peregrinus (and on account of its possible – but only possible – musical relationship with the psalm-tone), this is not the place to investigate further how the three sources would fit together, but both the practice of singing ‘upon the faburden’ and this peculiar psalm melody will be discussed in Chapter 10.

The Benedictine Abbey of Montecassino holds a valuable manuscript containing music from around the middle of the fifteenth century.36 Much of the repertory is connected with the Neapolitan court chapel, and this is the case also

this collection was originally in the possession of the Harley family, the Earls of Oxford. We have already mentioned that this melody is found also in some sources from Western France. A more or less identical part is found in the Harley MS 5249 (British Library: GB-Lbl). Here, however, the Alleluia refrain is different.

33 Stevens, ‘Processional Psalms in Faburden’, p. 109; The Sight of Faburdon [c.1400], British Library (GB-Lbl), Lansdowne MS 763, fols 69 r–87 v; A litil tretise [c.1400], British Library, Lansdowne MS 763, fols 113 v–116 v.

34 Susan Rankin, ‘Shrewsbury School, Manuscript VI: A Medieval Part Book?’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 102 (1975–1976): 129–144. The source is Shrewsbury School MS VI (GB-SHRs).

35 The latter part is in Harley MS 2942 (British Library).36 (I-MC) MS 871.

Example 3.8 Combination of recitation formula and second part


with an In exitu Israel setting by the Valencia-born composer Pedro Orihuela (c.1420–c.1485). Orihuela served at the court chapel in the 1440s and 1450s, and his work probably dates from this period. Unlike any of the fauxbourdon settings discussed so far, this is in four parts.

It has been suggested that the work may have been composed in connection with the singing of Psalm 113 before and after battles in which the Neapolitan armed forces were engaged.37 From Example 3.9 we can see that the work is largely homosyllabic.38 It differs from the fauxbourdon works discussed so far in several important aspects. It is in four parts, the upper three taking on the fauxbourdon functions that we have seen earlier in a loose way, while the bass part provides the notes necessary to achieve root-position harmony whenever this is possible. This addition, which we shall call falsobordone, in accordance with a definition that reserves the term fauxbourdon to works like that of Binchois, gives the work a much more ‘anchored’ character than one could achieve via three-part

37 André Pirro, ‘Un manuscript musical du XVe siècle à Montecassin’, Cassinensia: Miscellanea di studi cassinesi, I (Montecassino, 1929), pp. 205–208, at p. 207. Pope and Kanazawa found support for this suggestion in the style of the work (The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871, ed. Isabel Pope and Masakata Kanazawa [Oxford, 1978], p. 33).

38 The Montecassino collections remain in the possession of the Benedictine community. Ever since the fine edition by Pope and Kanazawa (The Musical Manuscript Montecassino 871) was prepared, the abbey library has been reluctant to provide reproductions of MS 871. The examples, therefore, are transcribed from that edition.

Example 3.9 In exitu Israel, Pedro Orihuela


fauxbourdon, which, as we saw, is in its strictest form simply an amended form of the linear progression of first-inversion triads. The added lower part also enables some freedom of part- writing in the inner parts. An example of this occurs in bb. 11 and 12, where the g and d in the highest part (here functioning as the second tenor and the first half of the terminatio) are accommodated within striking E and B harmonies; the logical fauxbourdon progressions would otherwise give rise to G minor and D minor triads, but since the lowest part can provide low e and b, the altus can have e instead of d in b. 11 and b instead of a in b. 12 (without the lowest part, these would produce second-inversion chords in violation of the principle of three-part fauxbourdon). Despite the expanded possibilities arising from this freer part-writing, Orihuela continues to assign the tenor degree to the highest part and the terminatio to the tenor. The distinctive octave leaps of the lowest part at the cadences illustrate both the subordination of that part to the tenor part and the perceived importance of an intact terminatio figure in polyphonic psalmody.

Orihuela’s work stands with one foot in the fauxbourdon tradition and the other in freer forms of homophonic composition in four parts. In fact, it resembles stylistically the late-fifteenth-century villancico from the Iberian peninsula. It similarly foreshadows the Iberian fabordón of the sixteenth century, but it possesses in greater measure the character of an individual musical work that comes from freer part-writing and is clearly something that could not have been extemporized on the mere basis of a set of given principles. Rather, it draws inspiration from standard cadential clichés that were to be perfected and elaborated in the early sixteenth century.

Conclusion

We have seen how the tonus peregrinus featured in both the oldest preserved organa and in several of the very first notated instances of fauxbourdon and falsobordone. The fact that tonus peregrinus settings account for some of the earliest surviving examples of two, at least to some extent independent, practices of psalmody, separated by several hundred years, clearly indicates a detached and special treatment for both Psalm 113 and its associated psalm-tone. This prominence could have been either on account of its liturgical frequency – Psalm 113 enjoyed regular use at Vespers – or, almost in contrast, on account of its liturgical exoticism: its specific use in the festive Vespers at Easter. The first hypothesis is contradicted by the relative scarcity of polyphonic settings of other psalms with a similar character in the normal Officium. In all the settings considered, we have seen that the polyphony remained true to the characteristics of the psalm-tone. The settings discussed thus seem to exist not only by virtue of the text of Psalm 113 but also because of the characteristics of the tonus peregrinus.


The development away from the practice of having strictly identical parts at different pitch levels (the first type of organum in the Scolica enchiriadis) to that of fauxbourdon, with its clear subordination of the non-cantus firmus parts, are structurally overlapping: the second kind of Scolica enchiriadis organum sets aside the tonus peregrinus in a way that closely resembles the earliest fauxbourdon types, where the added parts abandon consecutive motion only at phrase-ends (mediatio and terminatio) of the psalm-tone. Within this broad development certain features of ‘free’ composition were able to emerge – the divided or ‘migrating’ cantus firmus and embellished cadences. We can also learn from an examination of Orihuela’s work that if a composer is willing to treat fauxbourdon flexibly, a four-part texture can greatly extend the harmonic possibilities and will allow even more ‘centralization’ around the modal properties of the tonus peregrinus itself. The English faburden approaches original part-writing in a similar way, since there one part (the faburden bass) can be at least partly detached from the parallel movement. At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries polyphony was poised to produce even more sophisticated forms of this basic musical form alongside, and sometimes in combination with, more elaborate compositional techniques.


Chapter 4

The Role of the Tonus Peregrinus in the Extended Modal Systems of

Glareanus and Zarlino

An extended modal system

Music theory of the late sixteenth century was marked by an extension of the modal system to comprise twelve modes, one authentic and one plagal species being formed on each diatonic scale-degree (excluding the species B–b divided at f and its plagal version, which were not acknowledged in theory although occasionally cited with practical examples). In its final form, used today not only in Western music theory but also as an analytical tool in many different fields of musicology, this system is regularly ascribed to the Venetian theorist and composer Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–1590). Zarlino’s renumbering of the modes was, however, anticipated by that of the Swiss humanist scholar Henricus Glareanus (1488–1563). The latter had, in his Dodekachordon (Basel, 1547), introduced a modal system of twelve species, which was a logical extension of the old system of eight modes, the two new species following in succession both in number and scale-degree.1 Zarlino, on the contrary, based his first mode (and his first octave species) on C rather than D; a system that in its organization incidentally foreshadows our system of tonality and which caused quite a stir in music theory at the time.2 Confusion often arises from the fact that Zarlino actually introduced two separate systems of numbering. The less controversial is that which was first presented in Le istitutioni harmoniche, and which resembles more closely that of Glareanus: here, the octave species are merely renumbered in order to include two new species, the order of the modes being retained as it stood. Zarlino’s fully developed system is encountered first in the Dimostrationi harmoniche. In that treatise there occurs a direct statement of something that had

1 Zarlino used Glareanus’s twelve-mode classification in his motet collection (Gioseffo Zarlino, Moduli motecta vulgo noncupata [Venice, 1549] and in Zarlino, Gioseffo, Le istitutione harmoniche (Venice, 1558), but not once did he acknowledge Glareanus as its originator. This could indicate either pride or complacency on Zarlino’s part, or the fact that the new system was already well known and established – in which case Glareanus’ conception would indeed have taken the musical world by storm.

2 Dorius was the first mode in ancient Greek theory. It was thus unthinkable for Glareanus the humanist to change the traditional numbering, even if it incidentally preserved the mediaeval numbering.


been inferred with increasing conviction in earlier sixteenth-century theory: that there is an irrevocable conflict between the horizontal dimension of monophonic music, with its arithmetically perfect intervals, and its vertical dimension, where pitches must conform to harmonic considerations. It was on account of factors related to this insight that the theorist broke with the old numbering. One of the new modes, the one that Glareanus called Ionian (and in a few passages Iastian, which he must have obtained through the study of Greek music theory), in Zarlino’s system stands at the head of the numbering, while the others follow in succession. Before Glareanus and Zarlino the tonus peregrinus had been conceived horizontally in polyphonic settings, its vertical configuration generally being ascribed to one modus or another. In Zarlino’s attempt at reconciliation between the two dimensions, it, too, had to be assigned its own modus.

As the table makes clear, both systems place the tonus peregrinus, by virtue of its spatial qualities, in its logical position: following on after the tetrardus plagis (d–G–d). Its theoretical form in a system of absolute pitch would be that given here (A–e–a), whereas we find that the tonus peregrinus is normally given in the

Glareanus (1547) Zarlino (1571)

I (Dorius) D–a–d I C–g–c

II (Hypodorius) a–D–a II g–C–g

III (Phrygius) E–b–e III D–a–d

IV (Hypophrygius) b–E–b IV a–D–a

V (Lydius) F–c–f V E–b–e

VI (Hypolydius) c–F–c VI b–E–b

VII (Mixolydius) G–d–g VII F–c–f

VIII (Hypomixolydius/Hyperiastrius) d–G–d VIII c–F–c

IX (Aeolius) A–e–a IX G–d–g

X (Hypoaeolius) e–A–e X d–G–d

XI (Ionius/Iastius) C–g–c XI A–e–a

XII (Hypoionius/Hypoiastius) g–C–g XII e–A–e

The Extended Modal Systems of Glareanus and Zarlino 41

position D–a–d. Zarlino, however, conceived the idea that much music notated in the Dorian position with b molle had been ‘stolen’ from the normal Aeolian position.3 His system takes the logic of order one step further, since its series of species follow adjacently, the unsanctioned species B–b, called Hyperaeolian by Glareanus, not causing a gap in the series.

That the modes called IX–XII by Glareanus and I, II, XI and XII by Zarlino should not have been recognized in practice as modal species prior to their publications is a surprisingly common misunderstanding of the Western repertory as it existed up to that point. Sacred music based on these two spatial qualities abounds throughout the early history of polyphony. Apart from Glareanus and Zarlino themselves, who listed many contemporary polyphonic examples in each modal category, Richard Crocker has probably done more than anyone else to banish this myth.4 The existing body of planus and contrapunctus singing that had until then been assigned to one of the eight modes and thereby related to one of the eight psalm-tones was now reinterpreted to fit into the extended system(s). Already accepted in practice, polyphonic works based on the tonus peregrinus now needed ‘theorization’ in order to gain acceptance from the readers of Glareanus and Zarlino.

Both theorists connected the tonus peregrinus with the same mode (numbered IX and XI, respectively). We have already seen that both described the Aeolian mode as being ancient but deprived of name and theoretical recognition.5 Zarlino, when speaking of its venerable history, is almost certainly referring to a body of work into which, for example, the Flemish canon of In exitu Israel settings (with works by Josquin, Mouton, Sermisy and others) fits. Those who followed in the tradition of the two scholars saw no need for a justification on behalf of the tonus peregrinus, and discussions of it usually take the form of attempts to reconcile older and newer modal theory. An example of this is found in A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke by Thomas Morley (c.1557–1602): ‘also if you divide the same kind of diapason [A–a] harmonically, that is, set the fifth lowest, and the fourth highest, you shal have the compasse of that tune which the ancients had for their ninth, and was called aeolius, though the latter age woulde not acknowledge it for one of the number of theirs’.6

3 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, p. 330. In modern times, this view is paralleled by that of David Crook, ‘The tonal type – low – D is a transposition down a fifth, with the appropriate change in system, of – high – A’ (Orlando di Lasso’s Imitation Magnificats for Counter-Reformation Munich [Chichester, 1994], pp. 136–137).

4 Richard L. Crocker, ‘Why did Zarlino Re-number the Modes?’ Studies in Medieval Music Theory and the Early Sequence (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 1–10. This article advances the idea that the modal and hexachordal systems did not encounter any genuine theoretical contradiction before the sixteenth century.

5 Glareanus, Dodekachordon, p. 104; Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, p. 329.6 Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (Amsterdam

and New York, 1969), ‘The Annotations upon the third part’, p. 2.


Glareanus was fully aware that to his theorist forebears mode and psalm-tone were inseparably related. Throughout Dodekachordon he meticulously advances the idea of four restored modes of the ancients (IX–XII). The tonus peregrinus and the proto-Aeolian mode were in this respect highly problematic for the humanist mind, since they had long held their place in mediaeval liturgy, while having no prominent function among the Greek music theorists. Glareanus, mindful of scholastic theorists and their scrutiny of the parapteres, or deviant recitation formulas, eloquently treats that liturgically orientated discussion as a factor in favour of his theory: Quod Berno … quasdam fuisse dicat, qui IIII alios modos excogitarint, ut omnino duodecim essent modi, adeo veritas de XII modis aliquid vestigii etiam apud tam barbari seculi homines habuit: ‘But Berno … says there had been some who developed four other modes, so that there were twelve modes in all, so far has the truth about the twelve modes left some trace also among men of such a barbarous age.’7

Likewise, he himself always retained the connection between psalm-tone and mode, even if he was primarily concerned with heptachordal division: Modi non perpetuo impleant extremas chordas, sed phrasi noscantur, ac partim etiam finali clavi: ‘The modes do not at all times fill out the outermost strings [on the (real or imagined) Dodekachordon instrument], but are recognized by their phrasis and also partly by their final key.’8 We will not attempt a translation of the term phrasis: it is never defined by Glareanus, and is exceptional even in the elegant Latin of the humanists. It appears to denote, in music, a commonly known rule of modal progression on both melodic and harmonic levels. This establishes a special connection between the tonus peregrinus and the Aeolian mode, which would become of great consequence to psalmodic theory in the following generation. Theorists of the latter half of the sixteenth century stressed the importance of modal theory for the invention of motives and the formulation of cadences.9 These sources prevent us from interpreting mode as a mere abstraction or harmonico-typological tool. The tonus peregrinus was not, to Glareanus, merely an Aeolian example: it was also an essential substructure for polyphony in that mode. The much younger Zarlino seems to have been better equipped to discriminate between ancient music theory on the one hand and the pragmatic approach of mediaeval scholars and sixteenth-century composers and choristers on the other: Il nono modo (come dicono li Prattici), nasce dalla congiunzione della prima specie della Diapente A & e, ouere a & e (come più piace) con la seconda specie della Diatessaron E & a, or e and aa: ‘The ninth mode (as practical musicians assert) arises from the combination of the first species of the fifth A and e, or a and e (as one prefers) with the second species of the fourth E and a, or e and aa.’10

7 Glareanus, Dodekachordon, p. 164.8 Ibid.9 See e.g. Gallus Dressler, Practica modorum explicatio (Jena, 1561), ch. 6.10 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, p. 329.


For practical purposes, he means: this mode has everything below its tenor in common with mode I and everything above it in common with mode III. This description is followed by Zarlino’s own definition, clearly with the intention to assert that this is not a commixtio but a ‘natural’ species, fully on a par with the eight regular modes. The allusion to practical musicians corroborates further the special relationship existing between the tonus peregrinus and the Aeolian mode. Hyun-Ah Kim has pointed to the similarities of the tonus peregrinus, in a form given in the Booke of Common Praier noted (1550) and the melody of an Horation Ode given in the Dodekachordon.11

The modus peregrinus and the Aeolian tone

Before we enter further into the Dodekachordon, we must establish here a difference between the Gregorian psalm-tones and a system of voice-leading rules on which much theory from the generation before Glareanus had rested. To Nicolaus Wollick and Pietro Aaron, psalm-tone terminationes had taken on a certain function of polyphonic structure in non-psalmodic music as well.12 The way in which the psalm-tone terminated gave rise to typical cadences, clausulae, within a framework where the ‘free’ parts were governed by the cantus firmus. When Aaron allocates music to modal categories, the concept of processo (‘advancement’ or ‘progression’) is crucial.13 This illustrates the overriding importance of the horizontal level, just as in the phrasis concept. It seems that the terms phrasis and processus were attempts to discriminate between the psalm-tones as such (tonus) and general patterns of closure within a mode (clausula, phrasis and/or processo).14 Rather than being a

11 Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England: John Merbecke the Orator and the Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (Aldershot, 2008), p. 135.

12 Nicolaus Wollick, Opus aureum partes I et II [after 1501 and 1509], ed. K.W. Niemöller, Beiträge der rheinischen Musikgeschichte, vol. 9 (Cologne and Krefeld, 1955), pp. 1–80; Pietro Aaron, Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato [1525], (Bologna, 1970).

13 Aaron, Trattato della natura; see also Harold Powers, ‘Is Mode Real? Pietro Aron, the Octenary System and Polyphony’, Basler Jahrbuch für historischer Musikpraxis, 16 (1992): 9–52, at pp. 30–31.

14 Leofranc Holford-Strevens shares this interpretation (personal communication, October 2005), whereas Leeman Perkins disagrees, interpreting phrasis as ‘identical with the species of fifth characteristic of the mode’ (Music in the Age of the Renaissance [New York, 1999], p. 1008) – this being a spatial, rather than a melodic, quality. Our contradiction is minuscule, however, for Perkins regards that same orientation around tenor and flexio as ‘an important melodic entity’ (Music in the Age of the Renaissance, p. 1009, and private correspondence). Walter Werbeck seems to regard phrasis as a prominent scale-degree, but from the viewpoint of musica practica: the tenor rather than the arithmetic fifth of the modus (Studien zur deutschen Tonartenlehre in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts,


mere framework of tenor and finalis, the concept seems related to the accentus prosae (‘accentuation of prose’) used as a model for tonus clausula voice-leading by Adam de Fulda.15 How, otherwise, should Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552) be understood when he writes that music in a certain mode is controlled and determined by solita notarum deductio secundum intervalla: uni tonorum magis quam alteri familiaris: ‘customary succession of note intervals: being more common to one psalm-tone than to another’?16 Johannes Tinctoris even seems to trace the word modus etymologically to horizontal considerations: Tonus itaque nihil aliud est quam modus per quem principium, medium et finis cuiuslibet cantus ordinatur: ‘Tonus, then, is nothing other than the manner [modus] in which the beginning, the middle and the end of a song are ordered.’17 Modus, to him, was a descriptive apparatus for the absolute quality of tonus.

The way in which original melodies were used to exemplify the twelve modes at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries indicates, on the surface, that phrasis or processo did not affect composers and theorists to the same extent in the post-Glareanus generations as had been the case earlier. This suggestion must be complemented, however, by the perception that composers frequently regarded their original themes as examples not only of mode but also of psalm-tone. The importance of this change of conception in modal theory, so far as our topic is concerned, lies in the fact that many composers began to use the twelve modes as the basis of composition for instrumental music. Normally, such works employ freely invented themes based on the spatial properties of the modes, but sometimes these themes bear some relation to the psalm-tone of the corresponding number. This fact has rarely been discussed in depth by modern musicologists: although many scholars assert some connection between psalm-tone and the tones added by Glareanus and Zarlino, others – no less distinguished – have overlooked this bridge between ancient and modern polyphonic approaches during the sixteenth century.18

Detmold-Paderborner Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 1 [Kassel, 1989], p. 5). It is true that processus sometimes seems to denote ambitus, but that word in itself, related as it is to ambulare (‘walk’ or ‘move around’), seems to have served originally as a description of melodic movement.

15 Adam de Fulda, De musica [c.1490], Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, vol. 3, ed. M. Gerbert. (St Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 329–381, at p. 352.

16 Johannes Cochlaeus, Tetrachordum musices, vol. 3 (Nuremberg, 1514), fol. C iii r.17 Johannes Tinctoris, Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum [MS 1476], in E. de

Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, vol. 4 (Paris, 1876; repr. Hildesheim, 1963), pp. 16–41, at p. 18.

18 The former category of scholars includes Murray Bradshaw: ‘The roots of the toccata lay in the simplest of all vocal chants – the Gregorian psalm tones’ (‘The Influence of Vocal Music on the Venetian Toccata’, Musica Disciplina, 42 [1988]: 157–198, at p. 157) and Theo Schmitt: ‘Die Betrachtung der Tonartlichkeit muss für die Zeit der Herrschaft des kirchentonartlichen Systems zunächst davon ausgehen, dass die Tonartenfrage zuallererst


Designations of the ‘restored’ modes rarely occur in vocal music, although psalm and canticle settings alluding to psalm-tones IX–XII do exist.19 Yet the majority of the music in question is either for solo instruments or for instrumental ensemble. The former category features titles such as ricercar, toccata, verset (of a vocal work in instrumental alternatim performance) and tiento. Works in the second category are often titled sonata, canzona or sinfonia. The first problem when identifying a psalm-tone in such a work is that the composer might have used either the numbering of Glareanus (in which case psalm-tone material does not normally occur in modes X–XII – although we shall see later that some scholars indeed claimed the existence of twelve psalm-tones) or that of late Zarlino. In the second case, the tonus peregrinus would in theory be termed psalm-tone IX, because at this point the terms tonus and modus were often used indiscriminately – the former not necessarily indicative of melody, nor the latter of harmony.20 There are several reasons behind the preference of most composers for the numbering of Glareanus (and early Zarlino). The most obvious was tradition: since the tonus peregrinus had already, in some circles, been conceived as an extension of the series of eight psalm-tones, it was only logical to regard it as an extension also of the modal system, the ninth psalm-tone corresponding to the ninth mode. A sense of conservatism was also in evidence behind the practical reasons for adopting the numbering of the Dodekachordon. The risk of confusion was minimal if modes I–VIII were retained as they stood: the b molle permutation of the Dorian mode, to take just one example of common deviance, could then be treated separately, while the bulk of the system remained unchanged. The final, but probably the most important, reason was that Zarlino himself had initially presented a ‘conformist’ extension of modal theory.21

als an die melodische Linie gebunden erscheint und sich dann im mehrstimmigen Satz die einzelnen melodischen Linien in einem zweiten Schritt zu einer Einheit des Klanggeschehens zusammenfinden’ (‘Zur Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 41/2 [1984]: 27–34, at p. 28).

19 See e.g. the Magnificat sets of Andreas Raselius (c.1565–1602), Conradus Hagius (1550–1616) and Christoph Demantius (1567–1643) – curiously, all German-speaking, Protestant composers.

20 Reinhard Strohm implicitly identified the signal function of polyphonic pieces based on the D–d b molle mode: ‘Glareanus had a better practical motivation for the conceptualization of the Aeolian than of the Ionian mode. And a better theoretical one, as well, if theory is to explain what practice makes heard’ (‘Modal Sounds as a Stylistic Tendency of the Mid-Fifteenth Century: E-, A- and C-Finals in Polyphonic Song’, in U. Günther, L. Finscher and J. Dean [ed.], Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries [Stuttgart, 1996], pp. 149–175, at p. 175).

21 French composers and theorists, exceptionally, seem to have been overtly influenced by Zarlino’s second system (see Claude Le Jeune, Octonaires de la vanité et inconstance du monde [1606, RISM A/I/5: L 1693]; Pierre Gassendi Manductio ad theoriam musicae [1658], in Opera omnia, vol. 5 [Stuttgart, 1964], pp. 629–658). Sethus Calvisius’s Melopoeia (Erfurt, 1592) and Johannes Crüger’s Synopsis Musica continens


The processus or phrasis concepts, if indeed inherited from the psalm-tones, seem to have sufficed as a typological tool for most practical musicians. Certain practical-cum-liturgically orientated scholars persevered further in their attempts to synthesize traditional music theory with Zarlinian thought. The Italian theorist Pietro Cerone (1566–1625), in his 1160-page magnum opus El melopeo y maestro, confidently proclaimed the existence of twelve psalm-tones.22 It is unclear to what extent his line of reasoning rested on any real liturgical tradition or on original compositions intended to amalgamate the liturgical and theoretical traditions. Notwithstanding this, his argument is strengthened, of course – in the case of mode IX – by the reality of the tonus peregrinus and its long history. Cerone was joined in this cause by Adriano Banchieri (1568–1634), who in his Cartella musicale warns inexperienced composers against diving precipitately into the modal system of Glareanus without first having mastered the ‘traditional system’, in which he includes nine psalm-tones, thus making a clear separation between the tonus peregrinus and psalm-tones X–XII in this respect.23 One must be aware that, regardless of which melodic properties a theorist assigns to the Aeolian mode, this is not merely a matter of liturgical tradition contra theoretical models, for the tonus peregrinus and the Aeolian mode were assumed to fit those models perfectly. Since Zarlino defines mode IX as the species A–a divided harmonically by the e, the tonus peregrinus and its (first) tenor are supported also by the mathematical division of the heptachord.

In the late sixteenth century the entire Gregorian repertory was reinterpreted in order to facilitate its categorization within the new modal doctrine. This had some consequences that are pertinent to our topic. To take only one instance from this period, a northern German handbook provides us with examples of an extended function for the tonus peregrinus characteristics.24 The compiler of this print, Franciscus Elerus (c.1500–1590), lists as Aeolian, in addition to Nos qui vivimus and the tonus peregrinus (in A–a position), also some other items – the hymn Vexilla regis prodeunt and the widely used Kyrie maius virginum. It is noteworthy that the designation ‘IX’ occurs – exclusively in connection with this kind of melody – only six times (of which three instances refer to unadulterated tonus peregrinus variants), whereas Elerus is more generous in his use of the other ‘new’ modal classifications: mode X (ten occasions), mode XI (fifteen occasions) and mode XII (eighteen occasions): this despite the fact that the Aeolian was regarded by many theorists as a very common mode. No examination of Vexilla regis prodeunt can fail to bring out its similarities to the tonus peregrinus – which

rationem constituendi et componendi melos harmonicum (Berlin, Runge and Kalle, 1630) are rare examples of German adherence to Zarlino’s numbering.

22 Pietro Cerone, El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613), pp. 884–885.23 Adriano Banchieri, Cartella musicale (Venice, 1614), p. 136. See also Athanasius

Kircher, Musurgia universalis (Rome: 1650), p. 231.24 Franciscus Elerus, Cantica Sacra … in usum ecclesiae et iuventutis scholasticae

Hamburgensis collecta (Hamburg, 1588).


is all the more interesting as the hymn is not related to antiphons of the Nos qui vivimus group (see Example 4.1). Thus Elerus, too, seems to have regarded the Aeolian species not merely as a modal pitch set but also as a melodic entity; like Banchieri later on, he drew a clear distinction between mode IX and the three last species of the Glareanian series.

It would be a mistake to assume that the reorganized modal system won instantaneous and uncomplicated acceptance among composers and practical musicians. The painstakingly reproduced record of learned men, who, according to Zarlino himself, supported and agreed with the new order, reveals some degree of insecurity on the part of the theorist.25 This constant appeal to authorities (Adrian Willaert [c.1490–1562], Claudio Merulo [1533–1604] and others into whose mouths Zarlino places enlightened praise of his system) was no doubt rooted in some kind of opposition – real, imagined or anticipated.26 This opposition could have been either of a practical nature (the indignation of choristers in response to the new complication) or the product of a more rationally motivated conservativism. Representative of the latter school of thought was Leonhard Lechner (1553–1606), who stated his viewpoint clearly in a letter to Samuel Mageirus, professor musices and Stiftsmusikrepetent in the diocese of Tübingen. It appears that Lechner and Mageirus were in some disagreement over the modal designation of a work that had recently been performed at Tübingen. Apparently, the discussion began on a walk in the forest between Tübingen and Bebenhausen. Lechner then continued the debate in a letter to his friend:

Ich halte sambt dem Orlando, mit den eltisten Musicis das allein vier thon sein, nemlich re, mi, fa, sol, (die andern 2 extremæ uoces, als Vt vnd La sind in mutatione vnder diesen begriffen.) Solche vier Toni werden wieder Zerteilt, ieder in autenticum & plagalem, hieraus werden nun 8 tonj, vnd die sollen regulariter alle b durales sein.27

I am, together with Orlando [Lechner rarely fails to mention his discipleship under Orlandus Lassus] and the most ancient of musicians, of the opinion that there are only four psalm-tones [or modes], that is re, mi, fa, sol (the other two

25 See Crocker, ‘Why did Zarlino Re-number the Modes?’26 Gioseffo, Zarlino, Dimostrationi harmoniche, vol. 5 (Venice, 1571).27 Reproduced in Georg Reichert, ‘Martin Crusius und die Musik in Tübingen um

1590’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 10 (1953): 185–212, at p. 210–212. The letter is preserved in the Archiv des Evangelisches Stifts in Tübingen.

Example 4.1 Vexilla regis prodeunt


outer tones, ut and la, are contained within these by permutation). Those four psalm-tones [or modes] are then divided, each one into authentic and plagal. As a result of this, we now have eight psalm-tones [or modes], and they shall generally be b durales.’)

The normality of the ‘hard’ b excludes the possibility that mode IX was here an accepted permutation of the first species – on the technical level it would rather, even if it seems an anachronism, be a case of transposed Aeolian (something that could also be said about the examples cited by Elerus, Vexilla regis prodeunt, Kyrie maius virginum and other chants depending on a b, such as the Kyrie orbis factor). In similar fashion, Banchieri held that if one were to apply the twelve modes to polyphony in more than two parts, they would not exceed the original series of nine.28 By this he certainly intended to argue that they could not exhibit any original polyphonic clausulæ that were not already used in settings of psalm-tones I–IX. But could all original themes at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries be drawn from that series? Lechner, in his letter to Mageirus, discusses a volume of Magnificat settings by Lassus: Darin steht ein Magnificat super Deus in audiutorium. hat er den tittel darüber gesetzt. Magnificat peregrini tonj, super Deus in adiutorium etc. (Dan welche die 12 tonos obseruiren, nennen diesen nit peregrinum, sondern nonum tonum, wie dan hernach auch gemeldt wirdt). ‘In it is found a Magnificat super Deus in adiutorium. He has given it the title Magnificat peregrini tonj, super Deus in adiutorium etc. (those who allow twelve psalm-tones [or modes] call this not peregrinus, but psalm-tone IX, as it shall also be called here).’29

Lechner is of course right to regard the titular ‘IX’ as a new invention, since many earlier theorists wished to assimilate the tonus peregrinus to one of the eight modes. Composers of Lassus’s generation, on the other hand, seem to have acknowledged the spatial qualities of the tonus peregrinus as a mode in its own right precisely on account of their rigid stance in favour of the older modal system, into which this species did not fit. One could thus regard the theoretical concept of a tonus peregrinus mode as a precursor of the twelve-mode system rather than a logical necessity flowing from it. Lechner, who opposed the new system, claimed the tonus peregrinus for his school, arguing against psalm-tones and modes X–XII and writing to Mageirus: Ir decimus tonus ist unserm tertio und quarto: ‘Your psalm-tone X is our III and IV’. Psalm-tones XI and XII he believes to be derived from V and VI, respectively, but ir Nonus tonus

28 Banchieri, Cartella musicale, p. 136. Conversely, Pierre Maillart argued that the toni were only constituents within the all-encompassing modal system of Glareanus (Les tons ou discours, sur les modes de musique, et les tons de l’église, et la distinction entre iceuex [Tournai, 1610], pp. 194–195). David Crook has shown that formulae X–XII as given by Ludovico Zacconi (Prattica di Musica utile et neccesaria [Venice, 1622]) relate to toni IV, III and VI, respectively (Orlando di Lasso’s Imitation Magnificats, pp. 138–140). Zacconi’s ninth formula is, of course, the tonus peregrinus.

29 Reichert, ‘Martin Crusius und die Musik in Tübingen’, pp. 210–212.


ist durchaus unser peregrinus tonus, so vor gemeldt: ‘your psalm-tone IX is definitely our tonus peregrinus, as has been said’. In his illustration of this stance the tonus peregrinus is notated in the position A–a regulariter (‘according to rule’ or ‘normally’), according to Lechner, although we do not possess a single tonus peregrinus setting notated at that pitch level before that time. Hence it was not only Glareanus and Zarlino who could lay claim to the reinstatement of the Aeolian mode but also this conservative group of composers. If we turn to the Magnificat by Lassus, this does indeed make some possible reference to the tonus peregrinus; but it is first and foremost a parody work based on his own motet Deus in adiutorem and on the original themes of that motet. As Lechner points out, Lassus used the label peregrini toni.30 Among the theorists of Lechner’s generation who shared his view we may number Johannes Magirus, who used the term peregrinus for Aeolian examples in his Artis musicae…libre duo (Frankfurt, 1596).31

Many examples totally devoid of tonus peregrinus references may be cited from the seventeenth-century repertory of psalm-tone IX music. Hassler’s Canzon noni toni in his Cantus Sacri Concentus (Nuremberg, 1612) does not imply it either melodically or modally. In some instances, however, a link between sixteenth-century tonus peregrinus works and seventeenth-century psalm-tone IX works is discernible. Christian Erbach (c.1570–1635) certainly follows the tonus peregrinus modality closely in his two Canzone IX toni.32 Ostensible motivic intimations resembling the tonus peregrinus is also occasionally found, for example in a Ricercar IX toni by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562–1621).33 A third example is the psalm setting Die Fürsten verfolgen mich ohn Ursach by Heinrich Schütz.34

30 This was the case when the work was originally published in 1587 under the supervision of Lassus himself. When it was republished by the composer’s son Rudolf in 1619, it was categorized as septimi toni (see James Erb, Preface to Orlando di Lasso, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 14 [Kassel, 1986], pp. vii–lxiii). David Crook ventures the interesting hypothesis that Lassus’s awareness of Lutheran music and liturgy may have played a part in his definition of this modus as ‘peregrinus’ (Orlando di Lasso’s Imitation Magnificats, p. 137). Be that as it may, it should be noted that this Magnificat is a self-parody: Lassus can therefore hardly have been influenced by a modal assignation made by another composer.

31 We have not been able to confirm the possible relationship between this theorist and Samuel Mageirus. One Johannes Mageirus with Tübingian connections is mentioned by Richard Stuckwisch (‘Justification and Deification in the Dialogue between the Tübingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremias II’, Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology, 9/4 [2000]: 17–28). He apparently moved in the same academic circles as Lucas Osiander and Martin Crusius, which strongly suggests kinship with Samuel.

32 Ernst von Werra (ed.), Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern, vol. 4/2, Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst, 2 (Wiesbaden, 1903), pp. 26–28, 38–39.

33 Max Seiffert (ed.), Werken voor orgel en clavecimbel, 2nd edn (Gravenhage and Leipzig, 1943).

34 See also Chapter 12.


There seem, therefore, to be at least two types of compositions responding to the teachings of Glareano–Zarlinian modal theory. We can see that composers who are equally likely to compose works in psalm-tones IX and X show little regard for the psalm-tones, since Zacconi’s and Cerone’s psalm-tones were probably unknown to most of them. In cases where compositions in modes I–VIII are in a clear majority, some reference to psalm-tone, as well as to mode, can rightly be suspected. An unwillingness to jettison ‘preconditioned’ thematic material on the part of organists and composers in northern Germany, for example, may account for the Lutherans’ acceptance of the psalm-tone IX as a definition, quite apart from the general application of tonus peregrinus in the German Magnificat. The altogether different organ traditions in southern Europe were, in contrast, more strongly oriented towards freer forms of composition and more readily embraced a more harmonically conceived system. It is clear that some composers did not distinguish between plagal and authentic. Johann Erasmus Kindermann (1616–1655), for example, included in his Harmonia Organica (Nuremberg, 1645) two praembula in each of psalm-tones I/II, III/IV, V/VI and IX/X, and three in VII/VIII and XI/XII. This state of affairs removes any suggestion that he was in some way concerned with psalm-tone; rather, he used the modal framework for his original themes. This does not mean that works of this type were necessarily insulated from psalmodic patterns: a Roman ceremoniale published in Venice in 1689 states clearly that an organ work may replace the antiphon after a psalm, so long as the text of the antiphon is recited in a clear voice in the middle of the choir.35 Stephen Bonta has moreover suggested that the sacri concerti and Sonata sopra Sancta Maria from Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 were meant to substitute for antiphons in performances of the psalm settings of that composer.36

What ultimately weakened the hold of common psalmody over free polyphony was the gradual abandonment of the polyphonic psalm-tone cadences – the archetypal clausulae of all parts (all with their own characteristics but all typically ending in leading note [in musica ficta]–ut in the upper part, re–ut in the tenor, sol–ut in the lowest part and sustained sol or sol–tierce de Picardie in the middle parts), as prescribed by examples in counterpoint treatises. With the appearance of the vertical conception of structural harmony, the psalm-tones became redundant as proto-examples in the teaching of counterpoint, and from this there inevitably followed a decline in their harmonic importance and a crystallization of their new role as a horizontal element within a vertical context.

35 Manuale sacrarum caeremoniarum iuxta ritum S. Romanae ecclesiae, quoted in James Moore, Vespers at St. Mark’s: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor, 1981), p. 175.

36 Stephen Bonta, ‘Liturgical Problems in Monteverdi’s Marian Vespers’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 20/1 (1967): 87–106, at pp. 94–100.


The tonus peregrinus clausulae as possible precursors of minor tonality

Theorists of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries evince a strong tendency towards regarding the octave species of D–d with the soft b as a minor-key model, something that is also reflected in music from this period. It is generally believed that this tendency is related to notational factors. In fugal writing, the standard combination of dux (D species) and comes (A species) permits a notation with a minimum of accidentals. As the theoretical Dorian mollis model gradually gave way to the Aeolian (with which it was functionally identical), it is important to realize that it was precisely the modality of the tonus peregrinus in a ‘low’ position (shared of course, as has already been noted, with chants in mode I depending on b for their phrasis), regardless of nomenclature, that supplied the first model of a minor key. It is also of great interest that this was a mode that was acknowledged alike by humanist theorists such as Glareanus, composers and choristers (as emerges not only from Zarlino’s reference to prattici but also from the far greater frequency of psalm-tone IX than of any of psalm-tones X–XII in liturgical indices of free polyphony) and modally conservative composers such as Lassus and Lechner.

Before the twelve-mode upheaval Gafurius, who viewed In exitu Israel, the tonus peregrinus and all antiphons of the Nos qui vivimus group as a psalmodia related to mode VII, perceived its quality of being sola voce in acutum diminuta: ‘diminished by a single tone [note] in the upper register’ as its essentially unique factor.37 That he is pointing here to the precise properties of Glareanus’s Aeolius in transposition is clear. In the discipline of logic we are taught the critical difference between ambiguity and vagueness. In most polyphonic examples categorized as Dorian by late-sixteenth-century theorists the sixth degree is not ambiguous but vague, which is to say: structurally unimportant. In the tonus peregrinus settings that we have examined so far, however, the b molle is a profound structural wedge, since it exists, significantly, as an equivalent also in the work by Lassus that Lechner regarded as being in peregrinus modus positioned A–a.38 Throughout this work the pitch degree f seems strangely avoided at plagal cadences, f standing in its stead. All f s occur in the context of notated musica ficta rather than as a part of the modal configuration. F, on the other hand, has a character strikingly similar to that of the tonus peregrinus flexa. There is no ‘vagueness’ about this scale-degree – rather, the natural and sharp variants are treated as pertaining to two different functions.

Christian Berger has discussed the intermediary role of the Aeolian mode in relation to the Dorian and Phrygian in his examination of the first Toccata

37 Gafurius, Practica musicae, fol. C iii v.38 Orlandus Lassus, Centum Magnificat … IV. V. VI. IIX et X vocibus (Munich, 1619,

RISM A/I/5: L 1031).


cromaticha per le levatione by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643).39 In the analysis of music from that period the definition ‘Dorian pentachord + Phrygian tetrachord’ takes on a relevance much more significant than one merely sufficient for practical musicians (as Zarlino expressed it), since in such works imitation at the fourth grows increasingly common. Once having noted that the species D–d cantus mollis permitted imitation at the fifth without transgressing the notes of that series and that the Aeolian mode shared this quality, it follows that a so-called real answer of the tonus peregrinus at the fourth requires the chromatic inflection of the second scale-degree. From this procedure the harmony will gain a Phrygian character, especially if the inflection occurs in a cadential situation.40 Berger’s study covers the coincident characteristics of the Hypophrygian and the Aeolian modes. We will now move on to discuss some connections between the Phrygian and Aeolian mode pairs in relation to the tonus peregrinus.

We have seen that many theorists opposed to twelve-mode theory perceived a connection between the Dorian and the Aeolian (‘transposed’ D–d) modes in the flexa mollis and the tenor, a, common to both. The same authors often made a strong connection between the Aeolian mode and the tonus peregrinus, even though they completely disregarded the second tonus peregrinus tenor degree: g. This omission arose from the divergence between the practical concept of a tenor as a recitation degree and the arithmetical concept of a tenor as a divider of the authentic and plagal species. Zarlino is not directly concerned with the former: to claim that the spatial quality of a mode has a ‘migrating division’ is nonsensical. If we now – considering tenor only as a recitation degree – focus on the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus, it becomes clear that it is related to the Phrygian species in exactly the same way as the first semi-verse is related to the Dorian. The Phrygian mode is regarded as atypical of the authentic types; it is believed that its tenor falls on the fourth degree on account of the imperfect fifth degree. Whereas the latter fact has no bearing on the tonus peregrinus (which indeed possesses its perfect fifth degree), one must allow that the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus does not readily fit into the Dorian mode.

A connection between the tonus peregrinus and Aeolian mode having been made by Glareanus and Zarlino, the former thereafter had, logically, to be notated in unpermutated position, which means ambitus A–a with e and d as recitation degrees. It is hard to assess to what extent this influenced notational usage in tonus peregrinus settings, since this was a period when transposition for practical purposes was growing increasingly common in any event.41 A clear distinction

39 Christian Berger, ‘Modalität und Kontrapunkt: Frescobaldis ‘Toccata chromatica’ (1635)’, Schütz-Jahrbuch, 22 (2000): 17–28. The work appears in Girolamo Frescobaldi, Fiori musicali di diverse compositioni (Venice, 1635, RISM A/I/3: F 1871).

40 As will be shown in Chapter 6, Carpentras used the tonus peregrinus in a way that can only be interpreted as Phrygian.

41 Many music theorists of this period treat the act of transposition as something to be carried out on the initiative of choristers, regardless of notational practice. In fact, this


must be made between modal transposition by adding flats and a genuine mode, or even key signature. The former became common notational practice during the lifetime of Zarlino, but predominantly in works with original themes (even if it is occasionally found also in works based on plainsong); the latter had been notational practice long before that, and continued also after this point: the archetypical tonus peregrinus modus is D–d with b, and modal transposition in any ‘direction’ (A–a with b natural or G–g with two flats) remained rather rare. We have not been able to find a tonus peregrinus setting in A–a before the publication of the Dodekachordon.42 Zarlino, nonetheless, seems to view transposition of the D–d species to A–a as an act of restoration on behalf of the suppressed mode IX. He regarded his pitch versions as a norm that had traditionally been sidestepped in practical music. Thus he claimed, for example, that through Josquin’s transposition of an antiphon in a certain Mass setting the work ritirò nelle sue chorde naturali: ‘reverted to its natural strings [notes]’.43

It seems as if Zarlino was here hinting at something that was later pronounced more openly by Cerone: the elemental distinction between the psalm-tone and the clausulae derived from it is connected with pitch position. In its conventional form, the tonus peregrinus remained for most of the time, as we shall see, in D position when used simply as a cantus firmus. Its archetypal clausulae, on the other hand, were ideally to be given in A position naturalis in the high chiavette staves. If for no other reason, this was done with the pedagogical aim of granting each psalm-tone its unique tenor and finalis and illustrating how all the modes could be derived from the same octave. Cerone observed that the clausulæ of primero and noueno tono was nearly identical and even furnished the latter with an initial ascent: c–d–e, evocative of the f–g–a in the first psalm-tone. In his original example of its clausulae, the mediatio and terminatio figures are deficient: not even the semitonal flexa that was structurally important in Lassus’s work is emphasized. It is clear that Cerone drew a distinction between the D and A Aeolian modalities, and that the tonus peregrinus melody belonged to the former.

The modal system of the later Renaissance had much in common with that of early tonality as regards cadence formation. Whereas the D species with b molle may be viewed as a Dorian permutation, there are other examples that point more specifically to the tonus peregrinus as a precursory pattern for minor tonality.44 In polyphony the Dorian mode is characterized by a high incidence of cadences on

seems to have been a common position. The Cistercian chant reform, which attempted to ‘purge’ the chant repertory of b molle through transposition, is a much earlier response to the same impulse. We mention it here, since its ideas had repercussions as late as Simon de Quercu (Opusculum Musices [1509], fol. C i v).

42 The earliest deviation from the D–d convention seems to be the In exitu Israel in Jena Choirbook MS 34 (see Chapter 8 below), where the position is G–g.

43 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, p. 331.44 Saul Novack takes the In exitu Israel by Josquin as an example of ‘tonal’ tendencies

in the style of that composer. (Tonal Tendencies in Josquin’s Use of Harmony’, in


the degree of g (with either b durum or b molle), whereas the tonus peregrinus, as is evident from the music examined so far, has a much stronger orientation towards cadences on the degree of f. The mediatio of the tonus peregrinus prevents the strong cadences on the fifth degree that are a prime characteristic of the Dorian mode and many polyphonic settings of the first psalm-tone. In that light, it is interesting that in the Aeolian mode, considered as a pure set of possible cadence degrees, strong dominant cadences become impossible by virtue of a lack of what we today would call a supertonic chord (this characteristic it shares with the Phrygian mode); the fifth of that chord would have to be imperfect on account of the mollis permutation. How, then, was minor tonality perceived in the early stages of tonal music theory? The cadential qualities of this new ‘mode’ were described by the English theorist and composer Thomas Campion (1567–1620). According to Campion, it had its main close in the key itself (tonic), the second at the fifth (dominant) and the third in ‘the upper note of the lowest third’ (relative major key).45

This is taken to pertain to all minor keys, but it does not really fit the Dorian mode, where a cadence on the ‘lowest third’ would require b molle, exactly as provided naturally in the tonus peregrinus modality and by permutation in the aforementioned Dorian Kyrie melodies with b molle (Werbeck noted a general tendency in German-speaking areas – the culture of Glareanus – to regard clavis b as systemic for modes V–VI and clavis b as systemic for all other modes). There is no perceived importance attached to cadences on the fourth degree, as occur in the Dorian mode. In fact, psalm-tone I, with its dwelling on the tenor degree for the mediatio (a trait that Cerone, as we saw, identified also with the clausulae noueno tono) rejects any strong harmonic shift in the direction of F. Thus the free movement between the tonic and relative major keys, that vital component of minor tonality, is not prefigured in any voice-leading characteristics of psalm-tone I, nor in the natural pitch classes of the Aeolian mode, but rather in the clausulae of the tonus peregrinus.

We are not concerned here with scoring points over the many eminent musicologists who uphold the traditional historiographical view that makes the Dorian mode an important precursor of minor tonality.46 However, in the light of the early tonal theory of Campion and others, we can no longer view mode I as an

Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference, ed. E. Lowinsky [Oxford, 1976], pp. 315–333, at p. 329).

45 Thomas Campion, A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counter-point, by a Most Familiar and Infallible Rule (London, 1613), p. 214. In England, later in the seventeenth century, the tonus peregrinus was occasionally given in A–a transposition; see e.g. Edward Lowe, A short direction for the Performance of Cathedrall Service, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1664).

46 See Delbert Beswick, ‘The Problem of Tonality in Seventeenth-Century Music’ (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1950); Thomas Rive: ‘The Dorian Origin of the Minor Scale in the Ecclesiastical Polyphony of the 16th Century’, Studies in Music, 2 (1968): 21–32.


exclusive tonal forerunner, something that has also been stressed by Dahlhaus.47 With the benefit of hindsight, we may legitimately continue to claim that the Dorian species was the one that lay closest to the minor key in the original system of eight modes (even if much minor-key polyphony of the eighteenth century bears strong traces of Phrygian elements); but in the period following Glareanus and Zarlino the Aeolian pitch-set and the Aeolian clausulae derived from the tonus peregrinus hold such a commanding position in music theory and in the liturgical repertory that one must be allowed at least to question the received opinion that ‘Dorian is obviously the ancestor of classical minor tonality’.48

Conclusion

Glareanus succeeded – most likely without any direct intention of so doing – in reinstating the tonus peregrinus within formal music theory at a historical point where the psalm-tones were gradually losing their traditionally strong influence over voice-leading rules in polyphonic music. Since his and, even more so, Zarlino’s aim was to show that the twelve species merely represented different subdivisions of the octave, there was no obvious scope for the marginalization of the tonus peregrinus either as a psalm-tone or as a modal category. Despite the scant attention paid to the new conceptions surrounding psalm-tones X–XII (which in some instances seem to have undermined by association the position of the tonus peregrinus), Christoph Praetorius (c.1535–1609; the uncle of Michael Praetorius) in Erotemata musices (1574), Cerone in El melopeo y maestro, Zacconi in the second volume of Prattica di musica utile et neccesaria (Venice, 1622) and Marin Mersenne in Harmonicorum libri XII (1635, 1648 and 1652) all continued to uphold the essential significance of psalm-tones in contrapuntal composition of every kind. Just as Glareanus had reinterpreted Berno of Reichenau for his own purposes, so this line of scholars reinterpreted Glareanus as a supporter of the idea that plainsong was the fount of all possible polyphony: just as mediaeval theorists had treated music theory from a liturgical perspective, so now Glareanus and Zarlino treated liturgy from the perspective of polyphonic music. Since liturgical scholars responded only tepidly to the new music theory, psalm-tones X–XII, predictably, never developed into staple elements of Western liturgy. Instead, many theorists used them, together with the tonus peregrinus, with which they logically became associated, to explain away ‘unclassifiable’ pieces of polyphony: Peregrini oder exotici werden sie genennet, weil sie abweichen und frembd seynd von den Regeln und Final Clausibus der acht regulierten Tonen: ‘Peregrini or

47 Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Die Termini Dur und Moll’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 12 (1955): 280–296; Carl Dahlhaus, Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität (Kassel, 1968).

48 Beswick, ‘The Problem of Tonality’, p. 309.


exotici they [certain pieces of polyphony] are called, because they depart from and are foreign to the rules and the final clausulae of the eight regulated psalm-tones.’49

Peregrini and misti toni were used as generic terms well into the eighteenth century. From the descriptions it is not always clear what the distinct characteristics of the modality were supposed to be, but it certainly lay closer to a minor than to a Dorian configuration, in keeping with Thomas Campion’s early definition of minor tonality.

Despite attempts to find a blend of Dorian and Phrygian elements in what had in earlier theory been called a commixtus, both Glareanus and Zarlino held that the mode associated with the tonus peregrinus was no such hybrid but represented a species in its own right, and they were able to demonstrate this with examples taken from the contemporary polyphonic repertory. In recent times, there has been some questioning of these same examples. Marco Mangani and Daniele Sabaino offer the following view of Zarlino’s modes on a:

Its modal meaning is not necessarily related to that of the d tonal type. On the contrary, we have the impression that the frequent recourse to b flat in Dorian compositions (D or G) could be a sign of a (rather late?) ‘Aeolization’ of the re-modes: but the impression clearly deserves further study.50

The present study of the polyphonic tonus peregrinus repertory may in some limited way address that need for further study. Since, in the tonus peregrinus repertory (and, as established, also in such works as Lassus’s Magnificat Deus in adiutorium) b molle appears as a distinctive trait of the Gregorian cantus firmus, we are certainly not dealing with any post facto ‘Aeolization’ of the compositions, even if this may well be the case for some of the works listed by sixteenth-century theorists as examples of the Aeolian species.

Over the course of the sixteenth century the concept of tone, already long connected with the concept of mode in varying ways, became divorced from modal theory, while the clausulae psalm-tones came to be applied not only to psalms and canticles but also to original themes. Thus the increasingly common term tuono ecclesiastico (‘church tone’) served its purpose very well by describing, as it does, principles pertinent to all church music, cantus figuratus no less than plainsong.

The modal characteristics of the tonus peregrinus, especially by way of polyphonic application, prepared in some vital respects for the systems of twelve modes – so much is obvious from the sixteenth-century discourse. Nonetheless, the extended modal system gave rise to a lack of congruity between the psalm-tones

49 Bernhard Scheyrer, Musica Choralis Theoro-Practica (Munich, 1663), p. 66.50 Marco Mangani and Daniele Sabaino, ‘Modo novo’ or ‘modo antichissimo’?

Some Remarks About the La-Modes in Zarlino’s Theoretical Thought, paper given at the Conference ‘Early Music: Context and Ideas’, Kraków, 19 September 2003: http://www.muzykologia.uj.edu.pl/conference/papers/Marco Mangani Daniele Sabaino.pdf (accessed 3.5.2005), p. 13.


(eight or nine in number) and the modes (twelve in number). The rationalistic humanist music theory was very sensitive to such exhibitions of incoherence. What we shall see in the remaining chapters of this book is that psalmody as a whole was to become an old-fashioned genre replete with conservative traits, even in the hands of progressive composers, and that the position of the tonus peregrinus came under threat more from liturgical neglect than from theoretical exclusion.


Chapter 5

The Rise of an Idiom: The Tonus Peregrinus in French Court Liturgies of the

Sixteenth Century

In this group of chapters (5–10) covering polyphonic applications of the tonus peregrinus during the sixteenth century, there are good reasons for dealing with French and Flemish music first of all: the major polyphonic tonus peregrinus settings from this region predate those from others and represent a distinct idiom that certainly came to influence composers of psalmody throughout the entire Western Christian world during the sixteenth century. Some special circumstances of French liturgies are mentioned in this chapter, but we do not really propose to discuss the tonus peregrinus here within any particular liturgical tradition. Because of the mobility of the composers involved and the wide dissemination of their music in print, the psalm motets in question were by no means confined geographically to France and Burgundy. It seems, however, that they were all originally conceived in some relationship to the French court, and this connection calls for the works to be discussed as a separate group.

This seminal stage of psalmodic tradition was represented by some of the most successful and esteemed composers active at the time. Josquin des Prez (c.1450–1521), Pierre de La Rue (c.1450–1518), Jean Mouton (c.1455–1522), Claudin de Sermisy (c.1490–1562) and Pierre Certon (?–1572) were all major figures whose activities and work are today often considered to belong to the so-called Franco-Flemish school of polyphony, a continuation of the late-mediaeval legacy of Dufay, Ockeghem and Binchois from the same region. This group of composers enlarged the musical repertory of psalmody, hitherto mainly confined to fauxbourdon and falsobordone to include a through-composed type of psalm motet. The historical consequences of this achievement can hardly be overestimated: it is the beginning of a long canon of such settings. Apart from the works to be discussed in this chapter, those of Ludwig Senfl (c.1485–1542/3) in Switzerland and Bavaria, Martin Agricola (c.1485–1556) in Saxony, Jachet of Mantua (1483–1559) and Adrian Willaert (c.1490–1562) in Italian-speaking areas, all responded to influences from the free psalm motet of the Franco-Flemish school. Although Willaert was born in the Low Countries, his music will be discussed in the context of Italian liturgies, since he was predominantly active in that milieu, as is the case also with Giaches de Wert (1535–1596). The works of the two highly adaptive Netherlanders Henricus Isaac (c.1450–1517) and the much later Orlandus Lassus (1532–1594) are considered in the chapter dealing with central and northern Europe for similar reasons.


Settings of Psalm 113

The In exitu Israel setting by Pierre Certon stands apart from the other motets to be discussed here, since it is a continuation of the (by that time) almost pan-European falsobordone tradition.1 The tonus peregrinus is strictly confined to the tenor part throughout the work and the stylistic variation is minuscule, with no harmonic modification or exchange of function between parts (both of which features were otherwise very common in ‘basic’ falsobordone around that time). In its apt and delicate word-setting and its conciseness, this In exitu Israel comes close – if to anything outside the falsobordone idiom – to the Parisian chansons of Certon himself and to those of his contemporary Pierre (Regnault) Sandrin (c.1490–c.1565). It is not a work likely to have attracted much notice in its day, but it certainly fulfilled its practical functions very well. Suggesting, in its text declamation, a certain humanist influence in Western liturgy, it is in many ways quite unlike most of Certon’s other sacred output. If we consider the contrapuntal writing displayed by the composer in his Masses and motets, one must however deplore the fact that he left no In exitu Israel setting in free motet style.

Several motets in free counterpoint based on the tonus peregrinus have, on the other hand, survived from earlier Franco-Flemish masters. Nos qui vivimus / In exitu Israel by Johannes (Jean) Mouton is a work on a large scale essentially in late-fifteenth-century style.2 Mouton was never really a forward-thinking composer and remained rather constant in style, a fact that makes it very difficult to reconstruct a chronology of his oeuvre. Nonetheless, this work seems most plausibly to have been composed around 1500, during his employment at the French court chapel, where music for Vespers would have been expected of him.3 By the time of its publication in 1539 Mouton had already been dead for 17 years, something that illustrates both the high esteem in which this composer was held and the perceived saleability of the work in the mind of the publisher.

Mouton’s motet is best described as intense. Note values span the full range from double longae to demisemiquavers, and there is an extraordinary preponderance of dotted scale figures. The composer manages to assimilate the clear-cut and distinctive tonus peregrinus into this style by spinning out melodic fragments derived from it in ornamentation and diminution. A good example of this can be seen in the three-part texture of the secunda pars of the motet (Example 5.1, bb. 61–67). Here, the tonus peregrinus is affixed, so to speak, to the surface

1 The work is found in Octo cantica divae Mariae virginis (Paris, 1564, 1567, RISM B/I: 15647). Certon also produced a lute setting of Ps. 113; however, this employed not the tonus peregrinus but a metrical psalm melody.

2 Tomus secundus psalmorum selectorum 4 et 5 vocum (Nuremberg, 1539, RISM B/I: 15399).

3 With support from the dissertation of Rolf Dammann, Erbacher suggests 1505 as an approximate date of composition, since the work resembles Mouton’s motets published in that year (Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 95).

The Rise of an Idiom 61

of the counterpoint: the terminatio does not govern the cadence, which instead occurs in b. 68, so that the entire tonus peregrinus statement gives the impression of belonging to a foreign mode. This apparent ‘bimodality’ is a relatively common compositional device in Franco-Flemish polyphony, but is rarely used with such ease and efficiency as demonstrated by Mouton here.

The Franco-Flemish settings of Psalm 113 all reflect a tradition that on the surface remains true to the liturgical function of the psalm, since one of the tonus peregrinus antiphons (Nos qui vivimus in all cases) frames the works, just as in the monastic and secular choraliter practices. In Mouton’s case, the antiphon is modally integrated into the motet. In a short passage in imitation the antiphon is stated most strictly in the tenor before the first verse of the psalm (bb. 1–6). The three lower parts reproduce only the initial ascent of the antiphon melody, whereas the ornamentation in the highest part at least alludes to the entire antiphon. Mouton’s procedure sheds light on how he perceived the connection between the antiphon and the psalm-tone. If we follow the tenor part (disregarding all its ornamentation) in the Nos qui vivimus intonation and the first verse of the tonus peregrinus (bb. 7–12), we can see how the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus functions as a continuation of the antiphon melody. This solution runs parallel to the plainsong practice of intoning the incipit before the psalm while having the entire antiphon sung after the last psalm verse. So far as practical liturgy is concerned, the antiphon is of course also an emblem or insignia here. This signals another change in musical outlook vis-à-vis earlier tonus peregrinus settings: the In exitu Israel settings of Mouton’s generation for the first time present the psalm text and its psalm-tone in the form of a musical work that substitutes itself for the plainsong alternative on its own terms rather than serving as an elaboration of it. This leaves the modern reader or listener with a peculiar impression: almost that of a concert-piece used in a liturgical context – although this is, of course, far removed from the actual circumstances of this music. In fact, it seems as if Mouton, especially, wished to adhere to the prevailing liturgical custom, since in his motet the antiphon returns after the doxology, thus expanding the borders of polyphony further than Binchois and Orihuela, who only substituted the psalm text itself. One might say that Mouton attached great importance to this aspect of liturgical tradition, while at the same time completely disregarding other, previously important liturgical factors, such as the formal (and traditionally approved exegetical) desire for a clear separation between the psalm verses.

Instead of respecting the verse structure of the psalm, Mouton’s In exitu Israel typifies the aspiration towards the formal structure adopted in motets of the Franco-Flemish composers. It is cast in three sections: the first section (antiphon and verses 1–10) attains its character from an equality of part-writing over fragments of the tonus peregrinus; the middle section (verses 11–19), set for three low parts, is quasi-canonic over free thematic material and uses the tonus peregrinus to open and round off sections; the third section (verses 20–26) has a climactic character, with long and clear statements of the entire psalm-tone over virtuoso florid counterpoint. To cite an example of the latter, we can look at the


Example 5.1 In exitu Israel, Jean Mouton


third part, bb. 14–27. Note the motivic repetition (used independently of textual repetition) in the middle parts in bb. 21–23. Arguably one of the most intense instances of its kind in any tonus peregrinus setting, it is as far removed as one could imagine from the regulated and genteel humanist word setting that was made famous by Mouton’s contemporary Josquin and later in the sixteenth century by, for example, Certon in his ad equales setting of the same psalm. Any reader tempted to interpret the slowly moving tonus peregrinus statement in contrast to the rapid movement in the parts beneath merely as a reflection of the words pusillis cum maioribus: ‘the small [or lowly] together with the great [or mighty]’, should remember that this ratio of speed between cantus firmus and parts in free


writing remains consistent throughout this section of the motet. A more pertinent observation concerns the lack of distinction between semi-verses in respect of the treatment of the tonus peregrinus – a precise mediatio cadence appears to have been considered undesirable in this florid style of writing. The semi-verses are effectively dovetailed in bb. 24 and 25, and the terminatio is cut short by a rest in the second tenor. Once again, the finalis note is used not as the root of the cadence degree but as the dominant penultimate note in a cadence.

In contrast to the ‘gothicisms’ of Mouton’s setting, a surviving In exitu Israel by Josquin is characterized by greater balance and placidity (the contrast should not be overstated, but there is certainly a difference in style).4 Bicinia and tricinia are interspersed artfully, and the part-writing displays remarkable equality as regards both note-values and thematic involvement. The word-setting is above reproach at all times and reveals a prosodic awareness that was at this time foreign to the Flemish tradition and remained relatively rare in works by northern Flemish (from the area of the Low Countries) composers throughout the sixteenth century. On the whole, the contrasting styles and techniques that were intermixed in Mouton are presented one at the time and in a much more structured and controlled form. For example, repetition, which is so ostentatiously exploited in Mouton, becomes, in the hands of Josquin, a way of reflecting the keyword simul in simul acra gentium argentum et aurum: ‘they have made idols of silver and gold’ in the second part (Example 5.2, bb. 74–86).5 The ideal for clear word-setting here comes into conflict with rhetorical reflections of the text, but the music nevertheless shows a marked awareness of both principles. This fact illustrates very clearly the difference in influence and ambition between Josquin, who had received much influence from Italian humanistic thought during his travels and appointments in southern Europe (especially, perhaps, through his contacts with patrons of the d’Este dynasty), and Mouton, who once having secured employment at the royal court, remained in Paris for the rest of his long life. In comparison with Mouton’s motet, Josquin’s demonstrates many of the perceived connections between music and oratory, his motet being a good example of what sixteenth-century commentators termed elegantia.6 Outwardly, it seems paradoxical that this ideal is exemplified to such a great extent in a work based on the tonus peregrinus, a psalm-tone that had earlier been perceived as an example of barbarism, a rhetorical quality antithetical to elegance.

4 Our transcription is prepared from MS 22 in the Archivo y Biblioteca Capitulares, Catedral de Toledo (E-Tc). The work also exists in five other sources, four of which are now in Germany.

5 Erbacher called this passage eine eintönig ‘taumelnde’ Motivwiederholung: ‘a monotonous “tumbling” motivic repetition’ (Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 95) – an apt description of the character, which has nothing of the accumulated energy generated by Mouton’s rapid repetition.

6 Adrian ‘Petit’ Coclico praised this quality of writing as an overriding desideratum in his Compendium musices, Documenta musicologica 1/9 (Kassel, 1954), fols B iii r, iv v.


There remain, however, in Josquin’s setting traces both of old-fashioned approaches and of the style of counterpoint that was cultivated in the northern Flemish regions. When the situation calls for it, he employs, for example, an octave leap in the lower part of a three-part texture to reach a fifth above the last note of the terminatio in a middle part, just as we saw that same gambit used in the music discussed in the previous chapter. Bars 92–96 in the first part, moreover, exemplify the kind of three-part parallel fauxbourdon writing that was a common element in free counterpoint of the generation of Ockeghem and Binchois – only that in Josquin’s case this is used in a very ‘modern’ way, with an overlapping of the two sub-choirs that entails exact repetition but reorganizes the part-writing to suit the vocal ranges. The many different polyphonic approaches in Josquin’s setting lend it almost the character of a set of variations. The firm basis for this diversity of style and compositional technique is always the tonus peregrinus itself, which is brought back in its full form at climactic points. Therefore, most readers and listeners will have to disagree with Jacquelyn Mattfeld’s statement that in none of Josquin’s Psalm settings does the composer use a psalm-tone as a structural cantus firmus, since that is incontrovertibly the case in certain sections of his expansive In exitu Israel.7 Mattfeld has, on the other hand, aptly noted that Josquin disregards the verse-bound structure of the psalm text in his setting, so one can say that the composer circumvents the outward signs of cantus firmus writing rather than disregarding the principles of cantus firmus variation technique. The tonus peregrinus is genuinely the structural basis of this work – not in the fifteenth-century manner of a governing tenor, but in that of a through-composed style, where all parts are equally involved in forming cadential movement and are thus not subordinate to the tenor to the same extent as seen in Mouton’s In exitu motet. To make this thematic involvement possible, Josquin sometimes amends the tonus peregrinus, as we can see in the opening of the last section of the motet (pt 3, bb. 1–6), where the recitation is broken up by a downward leap of a fifth, without which the canonic writing would have been rendered harmonically too static.

The latest in date of the In exitu Israel settings from the Franco-Flemish school is the already mentioned work by Claudin de Sermisy.8 Sermisy was a colleague of Certon in the Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, and later a sous-maître there. He does not interpret the psalm setting by recourse to rhetorical reflection to the same degree that Josquin did, nor does his work represent the dense and florid

7 Jacquelyn Mattfeld, ‘Some Relationships between Texts and Cantus Firmi in the Liturgical Motets of Josquin des Pres’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 14/2 (1961): 159–183, at p. 178. Mattfeld also stated, oddly, that the text Nos qui vivimus benedicimus Domino is ‘not from the psalm’ (p. 174). It is unclear exactly what she meant by this, but if this author wished to state that the antiphon was not part of the psalm she is certainly in error, for this text is identical with that of the matching verse within the psalm itself.

8 Tomus tertius Psalmorum selectorum 4 et plurimum vocum (Nuremberg, 1553, RISM B/I: 15536).


Example 5.2 In exitu Israel, Josquin des Prez


counterpoint witnessed in Mouton’s setting. In many ways, his setting reflects the general changes that had taken place in French sacred music during the period of Mouton’s and his own successes. From Example 5.3 we see that Nos qui vivimus is ‘intoned’ polyphonically, just as in Mouton, but the strict statement is allotted to the highest part rather than to the tenor. Just like Mouton, Sermisy supplies only half of the antiphon melody, which is dovetailed with the first verse of the tonus peregrinus, set in falsobordone style. This procedure is so strikingly similar to Mouton’s and so different from that in the majority of psalm-tone and antiphon motets from the period that it seems unlikely to have occurred independently to both composers. Given the close professional association of the two men and the consequent likelihood that Sermisy knew Mouton’s setting, it is possible that he deliberately followed the older composer in this respect.

Sermisy uses the falsobordone verse as a prelude to elaborate counterpoint (Example 5.3, bb. 4–11). It has the character of an emblem: a presentation of the tonus peregrinus, the phrases of which then occur in longer note-values against diminutions and free writing. In the mind of those composers who widened the function of polyphonic psalmody, the tonus peregrinus was, along with other tones for psalms and canticles, closely connected with the idiom of falsobordone. Sermisy here seems to have used falsobordone writing almost as a symbol for inherited convention, and the ensuing counterpoint in Moutonesque melismatic style comes as a great contrast to this opening. From b. 18 onwards there is an example of modal inconsistency in the motivic diminutions. Here, it seems that techniques for writing points of imitation have been used exactly as they would have been with melodic material of strictly Dorian (without b fa or molle) type; the close entries in bb. 21 and 22 resemble many such situations where normally no problem would arise. The two upper parts violate neither voice-leading rules nor the integrity of the tonus peregrinus. In the case of the tenor part, however, there is a conflict to resolve between allowing the undesirable tritone


melodic interval to stand and altering the psalm-tone. In the print from which our example was transcribed the latter option seems to have been favoured. This is in itself hardly surprising, since countless similar examples suggest that the alteration of the ‘quality’ of a note was regarded as an insignificant alteration, so long as it retained its function, which is here the degree of b, regardless of inflection. What is striking about this example, however, is that the compromise occurs in the tenor part – the strictest tonus peregrinus statement, which ends with the mediatio – while the other parts continue in freer florid writing. This gives the passage a somewhat odd character and makes it yet another example of the combination of adherence in part to traditional formal requirements (the

Example 5.3 In exitu Israel, Claudin de Sermisy


clear tenor function) with contravention of some crucial aspects of the same (the modal inconsistency caused by the b in the very part that in theory ought to give direction to the other three parts). Any knowledge of the fundamental character of the tonus peregrinus would certainly not permit a b incipit in plainsong and therefore, logically, neither one in a cantus firmus situation. In pervasive imitation, on the other hand, the quality of the degree may be more flexible. Ornithopharcus holds the singer responsible for knowing the psalm-tone of the work he sings well in order to know how to sing the part.9 This must mean that if the tonus peregrinus appeared in transposition in a plagal part (altus or bassus) it would have to be amended accordingly to fit the mode of the song: that is, the mode of the tenor and discantus.

As regards the modal character of the free part-writing whenever the psalm-tone appears, Josquin is much more modally consistent than any of the other composers discussed here. This may be due to the fact that many of his passages function as transposed Dorian (on g), while Mouton’s and Sermisy’s works are characterized by the ambiguity of the b (used as the modal ‘default’) and b (used as an accidental predominantly in tonus peregrinus statements). Since we cannot be sure to what extent Mouton and Sermisy or their publishers intended the b notes in their work to be adapted to a cantus mollis context (there are certain instances where it is palpable that a b was intended), the differences in modal quality between Josquin’s work and those of the other two may not be so great as they at first seem.10 In addition to this, Josquin uses two modal levels for psalm-tone recitation: the ‘common’ configuration d–a (with b flexa) and the transposed configuration g–d (with e flexa). In fact, the transposed level is used more frequently than the common: counting terminatio occurrences and strong terminatio-like cadences gives us 27 on g and only 6 on d.

Erbacher seems very firm in his conclusion that Josquin’s work predates Mouton’s, and he also presumes that on account of its many differences the latter work weicht … von Josquins Vorbild ab: ‘deviates … from Josquin’s model’,11 whereas these differences seem to be, rather, indications that Mouton did not use Josquin’s motet as a model at all and that the chronology might in fact even be

9 Andreas Ornithopharcus, Musice active micrologus [1517] (New York: Dover, 1973), p. 209.

10 It is interesting that Ugolino of Orvieto wrote about the b molle permutation: Hoc enim in plano cantu raro videtur contingere, licet in mensurato sæpenumero demonstrari contingat: ‘This seems to happen rarely in plainsong, although it can be demonstrated to happen on many occasions in measured music [polyphony]’, whereas these motets actually demonstrate the opposite relationship: the mollis quality is indigenous to the tonus peregrinus, but it is occasionally replaced by naturalis in the polyphonic process (Declaratio musicae disciplinae [c.1450], ed. A. Seay, Corpus scriptorum musica 7 [Rome, 1959], p. 226).

11 Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 95.


reversed.12 In any case, neither of the two composers has to any great extent drawn stylistically from the other in his psalm setting. Our reason for assuming Mouton’s work to be earlier is the fact that he was much more closely connected with the most credible liturgical application of the motets: the French court liturgy. There are indications that this psalm attracted Mouton’s interest in a special way and that he responded attentively to the political and personal affairs of his patrons: for example, he composed a motet that opens with a verse from Psalm 113, Non nobis Domine, to celebrate the birth of the second daughter of King Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne, while several other commissions and dedications also connect Mouton distinctly with Queen Anne. Josquin’s work, if indeed originally intended for the Paris court, must be a result of a shorter residence at the court around the same time. Josquin’s work does not fit stylistically into the period of his earlier employment in France (c.1475–83) by virtue of its strong resemblance to his motets from the later Italian period. Winfried Kirsch, in his contribution to the 1971 international Josquin symposium, assigned the work to the chronological category ‘late’ – a description implying that he thought that the work was written at Condé-sur-l’Escaut, where Josquin held his last position.13 That is of course one possible connection between the In exitu Israel and the French court chapel, geographically flexible as the members of that institution were, but we must, however, pause to consider the indirect evidence that Josquin lived in France around 1500 during a period when we do not know his whereabouts for certain.

Unlike Mouton and Sermisy, Josquin was never, to our present knowledge, on the permanent payroll of the French court. There are, however, some suggestions that he moved to France in the period of political upheaval in the Italian peninsula. Between 1490 and 1505 the French kings Charles VIII and Louis XII invaded and occupied several cities: Louis defeated and removed from power Josquin’s earlier patrons, the Milanese Sforza ducal dynasty. Glareanus, who personally knew several French court musicians (Mouton among them), relates an anecdote that connects one of Josquin’s psalm motets with Louis.14 If this story has

12 David Fallows also assumes that Josquin’s work is the earlier (Josquin [Turnhout, 2009], p. 103).

13 Winfried Kirsch, ‘Josquin’s Motets in the German Tradition’, in E. Lowinsky (ed.), Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference 1971 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 261–278, at p. 267.

14 Glareanus, Dodekachordon, p. 441: The composer is said sardonically to have reproached Louis for failing to fulfil a previous promise by composing a motet on sections of Ps. 118: Memor esto verbi tui servo tuo, in quo mihi spem dedisti: ‘Remember your words to your servant, in which I have put trust.’ According to the same anecdote, King Louis, after ultimately keeping his word, was thanked by Josquin in a setting of further verses from the same psalm: Bonitatem fecisti cum servo tuo Domine, secundum verbum tuum: ‘You have done good to your servant, Lord, according to your word.’ Although the sources of the latter motet, as pointed out by Patrick Macey (private correspondence, February 2006), favour an attribution to Genet Carpentras (c.1470–1548), the former work fits chronologically with Josquin’s possible residence in Paris. It is of liturgical significance


any substance, Josquin is likely to have been involved with the French court musicians around 1500, possibly hearing Mouton’s In exitu Israel setting there and composing his own around that time. We cannot draw definite conclusions from circumstantial evidence alone, but this latter chronology of the In exitu Israel settings seems more plausible than the one taken for granted by Erbacher. To that consideration we may add the exceptionality of the structure of this work: among Josquin’s much-celebrated psalm-settings no other composition uses a psalm-tone so comprehensively as this motet.15 The In exitu Israel attributed to Josquin uses not only the tonus peregrinus but also its concomitant antiphon. It seems that the chronology proposed by Erbacher is based (out of habit?) on the fact that Josquin is nowadays believed to have been the slightly older of the two composers. As we have concluded from Mouton’s earlier works, this is not a pertinent assumption in this instance.

It is of great significance that both composers employed a tonus peregrinus variant with different incipit figures for the semi-verses. We have previously established that this variant, which commences the second semi-verse directly on g, was rare in comparison with the variant with an a–b incipit for both semi-verses. This brings about a more distinct modal hiatus between the semi-verses – something that is exploited fully by Josquin, who often divides sections into a-based and g-based sonorities, even when no strict cantus firmus is in operation. Thus he respects, and even relies on, the parallelismus membrorum structure as regards modality, while for purposes of momentum and large-scale form, as was said, he carefully avoids allowing sections of music to coincide with the verse divisions of the psalm. An example of this structure based around fragments of the rare ‘direct’ second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus is found in b. 36 (Example 5.2, pt 1): the highest part here functions within a hexachord based on D, whereas the part below it has already commenced the second semi-verse on a G hexachord in b. 34. If this statement effects a motivic shift to the second semi-verse, it is worked into the modal framework of the first recitation until the entrance of g in b. 36 strikingly brings about a shift to a section based on the modal properties of the second recitation. This modal shift owes its effect to the direct tonus peregrinus variant; with a common a–b–g incipit on this semi-verse the change would have been delayed. One may say that Josquin has here moved the much-discussed modal shift of the tonus peregrinus from the entry of the second recitation to what is really the mid-point of the parallelismus membrorum. The effect of this is enhanced by the typical underlying structure of parallel motion in the outer parts, since these bring out the repeated terminatio formula in the altus (bb. 38–41).

that Pss 113 and 118 belong to the same group of festive psalms, which might once again suggest that Josquin composed his In exitu Israel in Paris.

15 De profundis and the doubtfully attributed Laudate pueri hint at psalm-tone intonations, and some other works use psalm-tone fragments as ostinati, but one cannot truthfully say that these works are centred around the psalm-tones in the same way as In exitu Israel.


The strange, additional flexa degree found in the quoted example is in fact something that recurs in all three motets under discussion. The three composers more or less consistently use a double flexa on the second semi-verse, rendering the second incipit a–b [first flexa] / g–a [second flexa]–g. This tonus peregrinus variant is so rare that its presence here seems to provide further evidence that the In exitu Israel motets of Mouton, Sermisy and Josquin belong to the same liturgical context. Depending on how frequently the composers themselves partook in that liturgy and how frequently the tonus peregrinus occurred therein, we may possibly make a further surmise: for this variant is indeed so untypical that it could be argued that Sermisy, if he was not familiar with it (and it does not seem over-represented in Parisian plainsong sources), may have received it directly from Josquin’s work rather than from his knowledge of plainsong.

The expressive musical gambits discussed here signal a change in psalm-setting composition from the earlier fifteenth-century settings. The changes could possibly be sought in that general shift from collective and doctrinal faith to individual and mystical faith that came about gradually during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries and which is often broadly labelled devotio moderna, although we must be careful not to draw any firm conclusions from this parallel development alone. It may still be suggested that the fifteenth-century In exitu Israel settings we have seen were ‘institutionalized’ in that they served a liturgical purpose by implementing or executing the psalm text polyphonically. The sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish settings are to a greater degree ‘individualized’ in that the text is interpreted by the composer, which thus superimposes (perhaps fortuitously) over his function as a liturgical musician additional exegetical consequences for the reception of the work. As we saw, this tendency was somewhat more evident in Josquin’s setting than in Mouton’s, but also Certon’s work, even if very dissimilar from the others in style and really rooted indirectly in the fifteenth-century fauxbourdon tradition, seems to follow more ‘modern’ ideals, since it observes the psalm text first and foremost as poetry (it could be fruitfully compared to the humanistic ode compositions cultivated in German-speaking areas all through the sixteenth century), and careful word-setting was of course regarded in some humanistic circles as the sine qua non of the true interpretation of a text. The individual meditations on psalm texts were noted by Osthoff, who ventured the proposition that it was the Ich-Charakter: ‘the personal character’ that made these texts popular for elaborate motet settings, such as Mouton’s, Josquin’s and Sermisy’s.16 It must then be noted that Psalm 113 differs somewhat from the pattern of the more individualistic poetry in the book of Psalms, since it is first and foremost the collective thanksgiving poetry of a people, rather than of the psalmist himself. This fact singles out this psalm for some special political interpretations that have been suggested by modern scholarship. These may possibly shed light on the backgrounds and origins of the In exitu Israel motets and will be discussed shortly.

16 Helmuth Osthoff, Josquin Desprez, vol. 2 (Tutzing, 1965), pp. 115–116.


The French kings as imitatio David regis – a political perspective on the French court liturgy

The composers who provided the Psalm 113 settings under discussion all had some kind of connection with the French court chapel and/or with the Sainte-Chapelle and the Notre-Dame choirs (throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries these institutions borrowed and exchanged temporary appointees to the extent that the borders between them became somewhat blurred). Patrick Macey has drawn attention to the fact that the French kings of the early sixteenth century seemed to have revived the importance of the title Novus David given to their forebear Pépin III (the Short) by the Holy See.17 Duke René I (Le bon roi) of Anjou, on the other hand, bore titular sovereignty over the kingdom of Jerusalem through the Neapolitan/Sicilian line (Charles I of Sicily had secured the title from Maria of Antioch in 1277). On his death in 1480, this title, too, passed to Louis XI, and Macey conjectures that this fact may have set off a new consciousness of the French monarchs as imitatio David regis. This is a very interesting hypothesis with clear consequences for our topic. If Charles Martel (686–741) celebrated the victory against Emir Rahman and the Moslems at Poiters, near Tours, in 732, with the theological interpretation of the Frankish kingdom as imitatio Israel, then the situation could indeed have been similar for Charles VIII, the Affable (1470–98), on his Florentine and Neapolitan campaigns in 1494 and 1495, especially seeing that the region had recently been threatened by Turkish forces.18 A heroic understanding of Psalm 113 may thus have inspired elaborate polyphonic settings of that text.19

17 Patrick Macey, ‘Josquin’s Misericordias Domini and Louis XI’, Early Music, 19/2 (1991): 163–177, at pp. 175–176. Macey suggests a link between how this term was used in a laudation for Charles VIII and the way in which François I was depicted with a harp in a Book of Hours belonging to the French royal house. It is important to note, however, that depictions of this kind represent a noble trend that was not unique to France or to this particular royal house.

18 There exists a pronosticatio – surviving as an appendix to a larger work, Opus Davidicum by the Franciscan Johannes Angelus – in which Charles VIII, notwithstanding his failure in the battle of Fornovo, is likened to David and the perfect vineyard (Isa. 5:7: Vinea enim Domino exercituum domus Israhel: ‘the vineyard of the Lord of hosts [an especially relevant concept in this context] is the house of Israel’). The reader is reminded that God elegit tribum Iuda montem Sion quem dilexit: ‘chose the tribe of Judah; the mount of Zion that he loved’ (Ps. 77:68) (Amnon Linder, ‘An Unpublished “Pronosticatio” on the Return of Charles VIII to Italy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 47 [1984]: 200–203).

19 Lewis Lockwood has assumed the presence in the Italian campaign of ‘a substantial portion of the Royal household, and at least some of its musicians’ (‘Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: New Evidence on French Music and Musicians in Italy 1505–1520’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 32/2 (1979): 191–246, at p. 195.


Helmuth Osthoff, in his important monograph on Josquin, seems to have been struck by a similar thought. He did not dwell on the conception or original function of the In exitu Israel motet, but in the course of discussing other Josquin psalm motets, Memor esto verbi tui (Ps. 118) and the canon-based De profundis (Ps. 129), he drew the following conclusion: Vielleicht darf man annehmen, daß Ludwig der damals unter Josquins Initiative sich entwickelnden Psalmenvertonung besonderes Interesse entgegenbrachte und dass unter den überlieferten Psalmen Josquins sich noch weitere einst für Ludwig bestimmt gewesene Arbeiten befinden: ‘Perhaps one may assume that Louis [XII] showed a special interest in Josquin’s initiative in setting psalms that was developing at the time and that among the surviving psalms of Josquin there may be still further works originally intended for Louis.’20

It is especially interesting that Osthoff arrived at this premise without being directly concerned with the In exitu Israel settings of Mouton and Sermisy. Thus he indirectly proposes the possibility of a link between the imitatio David concept, as discussed by Macey, and the particular In exitu Israel motet that has the least obvious connection with the French royal house (Mouton and Sermisy were, as we have seen, more directly connected with the royal family at the time when their works were most likely conceived). Mouton’s use of the text Non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo, a verse from Psalm 113, as the opening text to his motet with free text to celebrate the birth of Louis’s XII second daughter, is then another jig-saw piece in what seems a theologico-political concept of the kingdom of France as ‘Israel’ arising from a special interpretation of Psalm 113. The information available to us seems to indicate that the French royal chapel ascribed some special significance to Psalm 113, plausibly from nationalistic and geopolitical motives, and that this stimulated the composition of the three large-scale elaborate motets of Mouton, Josquin and Sermisy. The suggestion may, of course, amount to little more than speculation, but speculation is necessary if we wish to find out anything at all about the origins of these works – and for the topic of this book their origin is indeed highly pertinent, since the works in question seem to have initiated a polyphonic tradition that soon rose above all such theological connotations, attaining a different, more generally Eucharistic, character.

A Huguenot setting of the tonus peregrinus

In the late sixteenth century, as composers from all over Europe responded to the influence of the elaborate Franco-Flemish psalm motets, the tonus peregrinus was used in France under totally different circumstances. In the large number of metrical psalms by Claude le Jeune (c.1530–1600), a Huguenot humanist and composer, we find the psalm-tone set in syllabic homophony for six voices to a poetic translation-cum-paraphrase of Psalm 113, probably penned by the Catholic

20 Osthoff, Josquin Desprez, vol. 1 (Tutzing, 1962), p. 49.


humanist Jean Antoine de Baïf. It is divided into two settings, respectively numbered 114 and 115 in accordance with the usage of Protestant Bibles – Quand pour Egypte eloigner and Non, non à nous (including a paraphrased doxology) – and was published by the Académie de poésie et de musique, in which Le Jeune seems to have been an active participant. Le Jeune was in the service of the French court under King Henri IV of the Bourbon dynasty, himself by origin a Huguenot. The type of In exitu Israel motet written under the Valois kings had gone out of fashion in France at the peak of Le Jeune’s career and also probably lay outside the ambit of his compositional interest (even if his secular music reveals that he had learnt much from the composers discussed above). His musique mesurée setting of Psalm 113 is stylistically and culturally only of limited interest to our topic, which is liturgical music in the strict sense – Le Jeune’s psalm settings were essentially for the private sphere.21 One may incidentally surmise, however, that the In exitu Israel setting by Certon was known to Le Jeune. It is seemingly a rare instance of the employment of the tonus peregrinus in a Calvinist context, but this also means in effect that the psalm-tone has at some time or other been employed in polyphonic music belonging to all major branches of the Western Church. Its appearance here must be viewed against the background of the general suspicion of elements of traditional Roman Catholic liturgy among Calvinist theologians and is also a reflection of the religious tolerance among humanist composers and poets in the kingdom of France at this time.

Tonus peregrinus works with texts other than Psalm 113

An early-sixteenth-century four-part setting of Psalm 146, Lauda anima mea Dominum, bears a resemblance to both Mouton’s and Josquin’s motets.22 The reason for applying the tonus peregrinus to this psalm is unclear, as is also the attribution of this work. It is traditionally ascribed to Pierre de La Rue, but that attribution is not wholly without problems.23 First of all, the motet employs a Germanic tonus peregrinus variant throughout, which is unexpected for a work supposedly by a Flemish composer. Tim Steele questioned the attribution to de La Rue in a paper delivered in 1994, but ten years later he had changed his mind, seeing no stylistic reason not to credit the French composer with this

21 See Andreas Marti, ‘Calvinistische Musik’, in L. Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, section 2, 2nd edn (Kassel and Basel, 1995), coll. 333–336.

22 It appears in the same print as Sermisy’s In exitu Israel (Tomus tertius Psalmorum selectorum), where it is attributed to de La Rue.

23 It is ascribed to de La Rue in Nigel Davison (ed.), Das Chorwerk 91 (Wolfenbüttel, Möseler, 1964) and included in Pierre de La Rue, Opera omnia, vol. 9, ed. Nigel Davison, Evan Kreider and Herman Keahey, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 97 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1996), from which source the following examples have been transcribed.


work.24 Steele’s later opinion is more compelling: had the motet been a work by a composer from the German-speaking regions, one would have expected to see a clear dominance of the (tenor) cantus firmus over the three other parts and also a prevalence of imitation at the octave (on the contrary, we here frequently find the tonus peregrinus stated in a variety of transpositions). The scarcity of traits such as under-third cadences, persistent diminutions and strict cantus firmus writing means that if Lauda anima mea Dominum belonged to the German tradition, we would probably have to date it to well after the middle of the sixteenth century – which is impossible on account of its appearance in print in 1553. The Germanic chant dialect could instead be explained by de La Rue’s long-term employment at the Habsburg–Burgundian court chapel, where he was most certainly exposed to much northern European repertory, both in plainsong sources and in polyphonic practice; his own works were indeed posthumously circulated widely in German prints, and although he travelled extensively with the court, he, unlike many of his Franco-Flemish contemporaries, appears never to have held an appointment in Italian- or Spanish-speaking areas where the Roman tonus peregrinus dialect totally dominated. Thus there seems to be no strong reason to challenge the attribution of this work to de La Rue.

The mensurally notated intonation of Lauda anima mea Dominum gives promise of a tenor cantus firmus setting, but the setting is in fact much more varied than that, even if it is not a demonstration of different techniques such as provided by Josquin’s In exitu Israel. In passages that on the surface appear to be following the routines of through-imitation, one of the parts – in a traditional cantus firmus manner – always adheres to the tonus peregrinus to a somewhat greater degree than any of the others. This occasionally applies to parts other than the tenor – for example, in the bassus in bb. 129–134 (Example 5.4). Some bicinium passages resembling those in the previously discussed motets are found, but there is a strong preference for denser textures. There is some attention-grabbing semi-homophonic writing in three parts in order to set off the tonus peregrinus recitation (bb. 96–97). Unusually, the composer dwells on imitation applied to the tonus peregrinus terminatio figure, a section of the psalm-tone that is otherwise, on account of its strong cadential character, most often used merely to round off sections; the effortlessness of bb. 66–76 evidences the contrapuntal skill of the composer in this regard. The concentrated use of fragments derived from the tonus peregrinus is truly remarkable. The terminatio is removed entirely from its context and used as a building block for intensive stretti in bb. 66–76. This example shows how de La Rue, unlike so many of his contemporaries, always uses these artifices in a way that does not disturb the musical balance. The passage demonstrates a dynamic approach to writing that accumulates momentum on the way to a culminating

24 In Timothy Steele, Traces of Liturgical Psalmody in the Earliest Psalm Motets, paper delivered at the American Musicological Society, Southern Chapter, Florida State University, 4–5 March 1994 (quotation kindly provided by Prof. Steele) and in private correspondence, September 2004.


Example 5.4 Lauda anima mea Dominum, Pierre de La Rue


cadence. This sense of climax is achieved on the levels of texture, pitch, harmony and lastly (and most strikingly) through the distinctive effect of augmentation, here in the bassus part, bb. 75 and 76. The terminatio figure appears in free transposition within the same part, a procedure that is stylistically progressive. The equality of part-writing in the work is also rare for this early period; this feature comes across most strikingly in the bassus part, which operates on equal terms with the other parts – we have discussed this aspect of the work more specifically in an article on sixteenth-century voice-leading regulation.25

There is a tendency in Lauda anima mea Dominum to retain the tonus peregrinus recitation dynamic of note-duration and harmony. Sometimes, the composer wishes to keep the entire psalm-tone freely flowing with a minimum of the impediments to movement that might result from cadential voice leading (bb. 32–37), where the mediatio leads straight to the second recitation, or from accentual elaboration (b. 145), where the second semi-verse of the psalm-tone is made to commence on an unaccented tactus unit. The diversionary effect of changing the texture frequently sustains the momentum at the obligatory cadences. In other cases, the generic tonus peregrinus cadences are, in contrast, emphasized (bb. 89–91) in order to achieve a strong closing effect. This is a varied style of counterpoint that is every bit as sophisticated as that of the earlier Parisian court settings of Psalm 113. Lauda anima mea Dominum is an imposing work in both strategy and implementation. If it was not composed by Pierre de La Rue, it must be the work of another highly competent composer – and even if de La Rue was unquestionably an admired and popular figure, it is unlikely that Montanus and Neuber, knowingly or otherwise, would have misattributed a work by another major composer, thus overlooking a marketing possibility.

A Missa ad tonum peregrinum for six voices by Philippe de Monte (c.1520–1603) is listed in a collection that was previously held by the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka in Wrocław.26 The manuscript was mentioned by Emil Bohn in 1890 but during the Second World War it was moved to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and now appears to have been lost.27 Given the value and originality of de Monte’s extant Mass settings and the unusual (although not unique) case of an employment of the tonus peregrinus within the framework of the Ordinary of the Mass, the loss of this work may count as one of the most regrettable in the entire

25 Mattias Lundberg, ‘Tracing an Ontology of Voice-Leading in Fifteenth-Century Counterpoint Regulation’, Principles of Musical Composition, 3 (2004): 41–49, at pp. 43–45.

26 Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wrocław (P-WRu), MS 100.27 Emil Bohn, Die musikalischen Handschriften des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts in

der Stadtbibliothek zu Breslau (Breslau, 1890; repr. Hildesheim, 1970), p. 113. The absence of MS 100 has been confirmed by Richard Charteris (Newly Discovered Music Manuscripts from the Private Collection of Emil Bohn [Neuhausen, 1999], p. 268) and Marek Romanczuk, senior librarian of the Music Department of the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Wrocław (private correspondence).


history of the tonus peregrinus. In the light of de Monte’s penchant for parody, it is possible that this Mass referred not only to the psalm-tone itself, but also to some pre-existent tonus peregrinus motet.

Conclusion

The legacy of all the works discussed here, and especially of Mouton’s and Josquin’s Psalm 113 settings, will be traced through a number of important works in the following chapters. It is no coincidence that the tonus peregrinus was successfully employed in the through-composed motet idiom. The cantus firmus model suited the psalm-tone, which was associated with a specific liturgical purpose, very well. These works correspond to a natural way of highlighting the tonus peregrinus in its proper festive function. This fact also set the tonus peregrinus somewhat aside from the eight officially acknowledged psalm-tones: it was, for example, not included it in the collection of Magnificat settings in all (eight) psalm-tones by Sermisy and Certon, published by Roy and Ballard in 1564.28 Its very exclusion from collections such as this naturally served to reinforce the identity of the tonus peregrinus motet idiom. Osthoff demonstrated great insight into the kind of liturgical highlighting effect demonstrated in the Franco-Flemish In exitu Israel settings when he described the cantus firmus technique of Josquin as being primarily a spiritual exercise that used the cantus firmus as a symbol, the effect of the symbol on the entire work being more important than its perceptibility.29

During the course of the early sixteenth century the Franco-Flemish composers established the In exitu Israel motet as a symbolic idiom. Even if this idiom was to undergo extensive stylistic alteration in the hands of later generations, it retained its symbolic value through the unbroken use of the tonus peregrinus. When Zarlino, writing in the late sixteenth century, could refer his readers to the modal characteristics of the tonus peregrinus, without further discussion, as an old and venerable species acknowledged by practical musicians, he assumed a knowledge of exemplary works, among which this series of In exitu Israel settings was surely paramount.30 His statement, together with the abundant reprints and manuscript copies, testifies to their historical and liturgical importance. It is in a way ironic that an idiom that may have been shaped to a significant degree by rather specific political and cultural circumstances – the French court liturgy – came to influence the entire Western Christian world. That possibility only serves to remind us that cultural and artistic concepts are rarely disseminated in ways we would expect and that in music, specifically, there is always a clear separation between the work and any original idea underlying it (rather than being inherent in it). Moreover, it

28 Octo cantica divae Mariae Virginis. 29 Helmuth Osthoff, ‘Besetzung und Klangstruktur in den Werken von Josquin des

Prez’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 9 (1952): 177–194.30 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, p. 329.


gives us an indication of the degree to which the liturgical and musical role of the tonus peregrinus was shaped by these works. Therefore, the music that will be covered in the ensuing chapters owes its existence to a great degree to the settings discussed here.

Chapter 6

Ambitious Obbligo or Lack of Invention: The Tonus Peregrinus in Italian-speaking

Areas in the Sixteenth Century

An increased prominence of what may loosely be termed humanist thought led to some unexpected developments in musical traditions on the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth century. While this idealistic movement, which originated much earlier, has primarily come to be associated with the Tuscan cities of Florence and Siena, it had equally important, although different, effects on learning and music throughout the entire region and also in Rome. The neo-classical surge was one of two main factors that shaped the psalmody of this region in the sixteenth century, the other being the liturgical reforms of a multiplicity of special chant traditions. At a stage when the liturgies of Italian states diverged considerably and the city of Milan continued to uphold the tradition of the Ambrosian Officium, a swift and authoritative reform of the chant was utterly to change the situation of the tonus peregrinus.

The Breviarium romanum of 1568 and its consequences for liturgical applications of the tonus peregrinus

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries several authorities had began to seriously question the state of the breviarium.1 As regards psalmody, the liturgy had undergone changes so great that the late-mediaeval Officium bore little resemblance to that prescribed in old-Roman and Benedictine breviaria. The mediaeval propensity to observe many special feast days, each with its own proper psalms, undercut not only the original idea according to which the entire book of Psalms could be recited within a week (originally, within a day) but also the uniformity of the Church, whose liturgy could vary considerably from one region to another. The sixteenth-century Roman calendar reforms brought about a liturgy of the hours that was more uniform and easier to practise. At the nineteenth ecumenical council, the famed Council of Trent (1545–63), the issue of breviarium reforms was discussed, but no conclusion was reached. Importantly, however, the council postponed the problem by rescinding the right of each diocese to

1 Most notably, the mediaeval alterations were criticized by Radulphus of Rivo in the late fourteenth century (Observantia canonum liber [Cologne, 1568]).


authorize its own local breviarium.2 Soon after the council had ended, Pope Pius V (pontificate 1566–72) personally took the initiative to have the breviarium revised. The new Breviarium romanum appeared, in conjunction with the bull Quod a nobis, in 1568. Psalms 109–113 remained as before in the Sunday Vespers – some of these psalms also doubled in the Vespers of feast days, but this was not normally the case with Psalm 113.3 This reform had far-reaching consequences for the role of the tonus peregrinus in psalmody throughout all Catholic lands, but it is covered in the present chapter because its effects were felt earliest and most strongly in Italian music.

The Breviarium romanum of 1568 was preceded by the important alternative breviarium by Cardinal Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones (c.1480–1540) issued during the pontificates of Clement VII and Paul III, and also by that prepared by Paul IV (1476–1559) and the Theatines, a religious order that took its name from the city of Theate (modern Chiete in southern Italy), the original see of Pope Paul. These attempts, however, combined the attempt at restoration with the injection of a large dose of Ciceronianism.4 The official liturgical prescription of 1568 was not altogether free from these tendencies either, but was nevertheless characterized by a greater confidence in the central meaning of the liturgical tradition than in its eloquent presentation.5 The bull Quod a nobis states the intention to remove elements that are foreign (aliena) or of unreliable authority (incerta) without taking away anything deemed to belong to the ancient divine heritage.6 Stating a prohibition, somewhat reminiscent of that found in Revelation 22:18, against adding anything unidiomatic or dubious to the new Roman breviarium thus steered the liturgy clear of two distinct ‘deviations’ in Western tradition: (1) the observance of many special duplex and semi-duplex feasts, accumulated throughout the Middle Ages (often to such a degree that the Officium ferialis, supposedly the mainstay of the canonical hours, paradoxically became the least common form of liturgy) on the one hand, and (2) the

2 These matters were addressed only at the final session in December 1563, at which point a majority of the assembly was eager to close the council (Concilium Tridentinum [Sessions XXII–XXV: 1562–1563], vol. 13/2, ed. K. Ganzer [Freiburg, 2001]).

3 See Harper, Forms and Orders, pp. 159–161, 258–260.4 Pierre Salmon, Office divin au moyen âge: histoire de la formation du bréviaire du

IXe au XVIe siècle, Lex Orandi 43 (Paris, 1967), pp. 179–182; Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in the East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, 1986), pp. 310–311; see also Pierre Battifol, Histoire du Bréviaire Romain (Paris, 1893) for an older outline and comparison of Humanistic breviarium reforms.

5 At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries writers such as Battifol (Histoire du Bréviaire Romain) did not find much positive to say of the humanistic tendencies in the sixteenth-century breviarium reforms; in relation to the ensuing century, however, and especially in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, these reforms must be regarded as comparatively cautious.

6 Pius V [Antonio Michele Ghislieri], Quod a nobis [Papal bull, 9 July 1568], in Prosper L.P. Guéranger (ed.), Institutions liturgiques, vol. 3, 2nd edn (Paris, 1878).

Ambitious Obbligo or Lack of Invention 83

humanist tendency to paraphrase liturgical texts with polished Ciceronian Latin.7 In many locations both tendencies most certainly survived despite all prohibitions, but the proposed mandatory use, in Sunday Vespers, of Psalm 113 in its wording from the traditional Psalter resulted, as one sees clearly in the polyphonic repertory, in a greater frequency, and thus a greater salience, of the tonus peregrinus in most major ecclesiastical centres of the Roman Catholic Church.

As regards the selection and order of texts, the 1568 reform ranks among the most scrupulous ever undertaken in the history of Western liturgy, but the papal curia also had a responsibility for matters of practical liturgy – that is, for how these texts were presented. It is therefore of no small significance that the tonus peregrinus was apparently not perceived as connected with the loathed and superfluous mediaeval additions. The earliest liturgical accounts and patristic writings were taken as a benchmark of what was appropriate and what was not – in sixteenth-century Rome, the practical introduction of Psalm 113, along with the tonus peregrinus, into Vespers fell into the former category: otherwise, one would expect the matter to have been discussed. Whether this was due to its inclusion in early sources, its functionality in connection with antiphons of the Nos qui vivimus group, its attraction on aesthetical level or its general archaic character cannot be deduced with any certainty. It is clear, however, that practical plainsong considerations did not suffice in themselves to earn it a place in the reformed liturgy, since the use of antiphons, or groups of antiphons, could also be called into question. In principle, the entire psalmodic tradition of singing Psalm 113 could easily have been dispensed with. The preservation and onward transmission of the distinct psalmodic tradition traced in the present study was ensured, if for no better reasons, by the lack of any recognized alternative practices and by virtue of the theological importance of Psalm 113. This seems to have been the combination of events that led to a major increase of figuraliter settings of In exitu Israel with the tonus peregrinus treated in alternatim manner, principally within the falsobordone tradition, with its emerging polychoral tendencies, but also, as we shall see, in other polyphonic idioms.

A Milanese variant of the tonus peregrinus?

There was within the Italian-speaking region one liturgical tradition so revered that to some extent it could withstand the reforms brought about centrally in 1568: the Milanese rite, called Ambrosian after its alleged founder and instigator, St Ambrose (c.340–397, bishop of Milan from 374). Whereas St Ambrose’s authorship of some very important liturgical text items (such as Deus creator omnium and the Te Deum) is generally accepted, the age and origins of a particular

7 There were some elements of conflict between these tendencies, since the Old-Roman and Benedictine orders could be conceived as a link to antiquity, especially among the Theatines.


Milanese use would be very difficult to establish. If we leave general liturgical considerations aside, we can see that Psalm 113 and the antiphons connected with it remained central in discussions of practical Gregorian psalmody during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While the Ambrosian liturgy was seldom drawn at all into these discussions, Franchinus Gafurius, who held the Chair of Music at the University of Milan, took an exceptional view of the antiphon Nos qui vivimus: Hanc tamen primitus antiphonam a divo Ambrosio propriis septimi toni clauibus ductam … vetustissimus antiphonarum liber mihi propalavit: ‘But this antiphon was originally composed by the holy [St] Ambrose in accordance with terminations of mode VII … the most ancient book of antiphons has made this clear to me.’8

We do not know which sources were available to Gafurius and which antiphonale he refers to here. Possibly, the theorist had merely found an early occurrence of the antiphon in a Milanese source and therefore assumed that it had an Ambrosian origin, especially if it had been excluded from some Roman antiphonale that he assumed to date from the same period. His ability to evaluate sources according to chronological and taxonomical considerations can of course be questioned; the scholarly methods of his era were not generally concerned with such goals. Saint Ambrose was at this time legendary in the strictest sense of the word, perhaps most of all as regards music; antiphonal psalmody as a whole, as well as many individual hymn and antiphon melodies (not only the texts), was attributed to him by the time of the later Middle Ages. Gafurius, significantly, connects Nos qui vivimus with a special Ambrosian psalm-tone that he perceives as a variant of the tonus peregrinus – except that the Ambrosians alteram … huius psalmodiæ modulationem celebrant: ‘practise a different psalmodic modulation’.9 He then cites a simple recitation formula centred on g in both semi-verses, lacking an incipit and with a terminatio ending on f (Example 6.1). This is fully in accordance with other known Ambrosian psalm-tones but bears very little resemblance indeed to the tonus peregrinus. Milanese sources from later periods often assign to these psalm-tones a structure approaching that of Gregorian chant, but fourteenth- and fifteenth-century commentators (Gafurius himself among them) universally noted that there were – or should be – no mediatio and flexa in Ambrosian recitation and that the recitation degree was not abandoned until the final.

Why, then, did Gafurius regard this unadorned recitation formula as connected with the Gregorian tonus peregrinus and its antiphons? The key might be his understanding of the tonus peregrinus as a sub-variety of psalm-tone VII, since it was this classification that gave rise to his discussion of Ambrosian chant in the first instance. He cites one of the common terminatio figures for psalm-tone VII: d′–e′–d′–c′–b–a, a configuration that could be seen as a transposed version of a common terminatio for psalm-tone I and, by way of exception, also for the tonus peregrinus. The main problem with classifying the tonus peregrinus within psalm-

8 Gafurius, Practica musicae, vol. 1, fol. C iv r.9 Ibid., fol. C iii v.


tones I or VII has always been its double recitation. If we transpose the three psalm-tones under discussion to a pitch where this terminatio closes on d, psalm-tone I is recited on a and psalm-tone VII on g, whereas the tonus peregrinus, using one of these degrees for its first semi-verse and the other for the second, is problematic in relation to both. Whereas many theorists regarded the lower pitch of the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus as the problem, Gafurius seems to have held the opposite view – if the tonus peregrinus is interpreted as psalm-tone VII, it is its first semi-verse that is deviant. The ‘solution’ to the problem is then provided by the old Ambrosian psalm-tone, in which the entire verse is recited on the lower pitch. It may have been for this reason that Gafurius considered the Gregorian tonus peregrinus and the Ambrosian g recitation formula as equivalent and alike – assuming that both pertain to the antiphon Nos qui vivimus – something that also received support from earlier Gregorian classifications of the tonus peregrinus as a mode VII differentia. In proposing an Ambrosian origin for Nos qui vivimus and therefore ultimately also for the psalm-tone, Gafurius stands alone in the history of music theory: in the light of the investigation undertaken earlier, his hypothesis lacks weight in comparison with the others.10 The tonus peregrinus, in any of its older forms, was strictly speaking neither Gregorian nor Ambrosian; and if the Milanese variant cited by Gafurius is indeed connected musically (as opposed to liturgically) with any Gregorian equivalent, this is with the common form of psalm-tone VII (in transposition) rather than with the tonus peregrinus.11 Gafurius writes that ‘the Gregorians’ (Gregoriani) use the intonation a–g–a–b–a–g–f for the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus. This is in fact not a very common variant in extant plainsong sources from any region, but may possibly have been current in Milan at the time when Gafurius was writing. Another possibility is that

10 Nevertheless, it is an intriguing thought that the Gregorian and Ambrosian traditions should have preserved different elements of the earliest Christian liturgies. Consider the following statement on the Milanese liturgy by St Augustine: Tunc hymni et psalmi ut canerentur secundum morem orientalium partium, ne populus mæroris tædio contabesceret, institutum est: ‘At that time it was decided that hymns and psalms should be sung according to the oriental manner, so that the people should not be worn out by sorrowful tediousness’ (Confessiones [c.400], ed. J. O’ Donnell [Oxford, 1992], IX 7:15). In relation to the discussion in Lundberg, ‘The Tonus Peregrinus’, Chapter 6, it can also be noted that the term psallentio is often used as a synonym for processio in sources of Milanese provenance (even if the noun psallenda seems to refer to the processional antiphons rather than to the psalm recitation itself).

11 Unless, of course, the modal shift is particularly significant: Atkinson has considered the possibility that the paraptere formulas may have originated in non-Roman sources and mentions Milanese liturgy as one possibility (Charles M. Atkinson, ‘The Parapteres: Nothi or Not?’, The Musical Quarterly, 68 [1982]: 32–59, at pp. 50–51).

Example 6.1 Recitation formula for Psalm 113


he drew this conclusion not directly from plainsong but from notated sources of Franco-Flemish polyphony. Mouton used g as a structural degree in the first semi-verse, and we shall soon find cause to return to a similar variant in our discussion of Italian polyphony: the form a–g–b–a–g–f.

Alternatim polyphony

By the early sixteenth century all major European vernaculars employed their own terms for the musical device of fauxbourdon, and in Italian this had early become falsobordone. By the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this appellation denoted an idiom somewhat different from the Western European type of fauxbourdon. Instead of basing itself on the parallel movement of six-three chords as in earlier forms, it was founded on a bassus part of strongly functional character, proceeding through a series of harmonies in what we would call ‘root position’. Embryonic elements of this tendency are encountered in the fifteenth century, and it is certainly not coincidental that the first tonus peregrinus falsobordone setting to possess these characteristics was a work of Neapolitan provenance – Pedro Orihuela’s In exitu Israel. This work, discussed more fully in Chapter 3, was written down at a time when French, Flemish (and, to some extent, English) falsobordone still retained, as it would continue to do for a long time, a penchant for conjunct parallel progression in three parts, as is indeed exemplified by Josquin’s tonus peregrinus setting.

Starting around the middle of the sixteenth-century, many works in more elaborate alternatim style were produced by Italian composers. These works obviously owe their existence to the sectional psalm motets of both Franco-Flemish and native composers of the preceding generation. The In exitu Israel settings of Mouton, Josquin and Sermisy and that of Lauda anima mea Dominum by de La Rue were motets in the sense of being primarily organized not according to the verses of the psalm text but rather according to the dictates of musical form, and typically cast in two or three separate sections. In contrast, the major polyphonic works composed for sixteenth-century Italian liturgies are to a great degree ordered strictly according to the verses of the psalm text. They can thus be seen as a synthesis of the freer works in the falsobordone tradition and the sectional motet. This is true also of psalm settings in other areas of Europe from the later sixteenth century, but it appears that composers in Italian-speaking areas were among the earliest to cultivate this new ‘combined’ style, as evidenced by an influential publication containing works of this kind based on psalm-tones in which tonus peregrinus settings also appear: I salmi appertinenti alli vesperi … a uno et a duoi chori by Adrianus Willaert (c.1490–1562) and Jachet de Mantua (1483–1559).12

12 Willaert, Adrianus, and Jachet de Mantua, I salmi appertinenti alli vesperi … a uno et a duoi chori (Venice, 1550, RISM B/I: 15501). Three younger composers were also


Willaert and Jachet shared a Franco-Flemish background (Willaert was probably born in the area of Bruges in present-day Belgium, while Jachet was a native of Vitré in the kingdom of France). Both were internationally respected composers in their time and made their careers in Italian cities (Willaert from 1520 as chapel master at the ducal church of San Marco in Venice, and Jachet under the private patronage of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in Mantua, hence his somewhat misleading toponym). Willaert had in his youth been employed at the Paris court chapel and had studied under Mouton.13 He was therefore bound to be closely acquainted with the tradition of Franco-Flemish sectional psalm motets – maybe even specifically with those based on Psalm 113. Aside from the influence of plainsong and falsobordone antiphony, the evolving musical style of Willaert’s and Jachet’s period was undoubtedly linked to the general propensity in northern Italian choral institutions for having different sections of the choir sing alternate verses, sometimes with spatial separation, a polyphonic antiphonal practice that would later culminate in music featuring the idiom often described as cori spezzati: ‘split [or separated] choirs’ or the ‘polychoral’ style.14 The role of Willaert and the San Marco chapel in this development has unquestionably been exaggerated, but the Fleming was nevertheless an early and illustrious exponent of this type of psalmody.15

I salmi appertinenti alli vesperi contains an antiphonally conceived setting of Psalm 113, jointly composed by Jachet (the odd-numbered verses) and Willaert (the even-numbered ones). It is a rare example of a planned co-operation to produce an entire volume of jointly composed works. Each of the composers effectively wrote for ‘his’ own choir ‘a 4’, but the work is not polychoral in the way that term is

represented in this publication: Dominique Phinot (c.1510–55), Giovanni (Jan) Nasco (c.1510–61) and Henricus Schaffen (fl. 1550).

13 According to Zarlino, who was a pupil of Willaert, the latter originally went to Paris with the intention of studying imperial law (Dimostrationi harmoniche, vol. 1, pp. 8, 12).

14 The term spezzato, however, as used in connection with psalms (salmi spezzati) refers in the first instance not to the antiphonal layout (though this may well be present) but to the division (spezzatura) of verses between polyphony and plainsong.

15 The exaggerations probably result from attempts to trace the tradition of the Gabrieli family of composers back to Willaert, but they are also based on a tendentious interpretation of Zarlino’s comments on Willaert’s importance. Zarlino was himself chapel master at San Marco in the period between Willaert and the Gabrielis. Speaking of I salmi appertinenti alli vesperi, Hermann Zenck wrote that the polychoral idiom in a stricter sense offenbar als eine besondere Errungenschaft des venezianischen Meisters gelten müssen: ‘obviously must be regarded as a special achievement of the Venetian Master’ (Hermann Zenck, ‘Adrian Willaerts “Salmi Spezzati”’, Die Musikforschung, 2 [1949]: 97–107, at p. 98). Anthony Carver has in recent times given a more balanced account of the early development of cori spezzati in northern Italian cities and elsewhere (Anthony Carver, ‘The Psalms of Willaert and his North Italian Contemporaries’, Acta Musicologica, 47 [1975]: 270–283; Anthony Carver, Cori spezzati, vol. 1: The Development of Sacred Polychoral Music to the Time of Schütz [Cambridge, 1988]; see also David Bryant, ‘The cori spezzati of St Mark’s: Myth and Reality’, Early Music History, 1 [1981]: 165–186).


presently understood, since the two choirs are never used simultaneously, with all the possibilities of overlapping entries, varying rate of interchange between choirs, echo effects and eight-part tutti sections that this would entail. The publication includes the setting in a section of the collection called salmi a versi con le sue risposte: ‘psalms with answering verses’. If Willaert used the work himself in San Marco, it is not likely, according to Anthony Carver, that he used the two raised choir galleries there.16 Mention of a uno et a duoi chori in the title implies an adaptability to different choral forces: since the In exitu Israel composition never exceeds four-part scoring, it is performable also by a single choir – a formula well adapted to printed music, since it broadens the possibilities for performance (thereby broadening also the market) significantly. The two answering choirs are not contrasted as regards scoring or pitch, but, just as one might expect, it is possible to discern differences in treatment arising from the different styles and approaches of the two collaborating composers.

The tonus peregrinus variant used by Jachet and Willaert is not the most common encountered in liturgical sources from this period; nor does the preference for this variant seem to reflect a local tradition. It presents the same incipit figure, a–g–b–a, that was consistently used also by Josquin and Sermisy in their settings of Psalm 113 (and regarded by Gafurius, as we saw, as the standard ‘Gregorian’ model). Willaert always showed an interest in music theory and in the wider polyphonic repertory, and it is quite likely that he, or Jachet for that matter, used this tonus peregrinus variant with the Franco-Flemish works in mind, either through force of habit or – one may tentatively suggest – because of its expanded polyphonic possibilities. It provides, in short, a perfect head-motif for points of imitation – something that is highly desirable in the kind of polyphonic writing that pervades this psalm setting. Although there are some examples of rhetorical devices in Jachet’s and Willaert’s In exitu Israel, the composition is characterized overall by an austerity and formality discouraging the presence of such features.17 This pragmatic approach was all the more relevant to psalms with an especially long text, such as this one. As Pietro Pontio (1532–96) advises the composition student:

Non farà caso, se ben lasciate la imitatione del salmo di tutte le parti, per esser il versetto breve; perche imitando il canto fermo con tutte le parti sarebbe il verso longo; Il che non conviene nelli salmissima … Con viene ancora osservare di far la medietà del versetto con la cadenza propria della medietà del Tuono. … & se pur farete qualche invuentione p entro quelli versetti, vuole esser breve, & questa brevità

16 Carver, Cori spezzati, p. 35: ‘In St Mark’s double-choir psalm performance did not require large numbers of singers, one choir was one-to-a-part, and the choirs were not spaced.’

17 Carver wrote about Willaert’s larger-scale polychoral psalm settings: ‘Sensitive as Willaert the madrigalist is to the text, Willaert the composer for the liturgy must observe the strong element of objectivity inherent in the system of psalm-tones’ (Cori spezzati, p. 36), something that applies equally to a setting such as In exitu Israel.


si può intendere in due modi; prima, che sia breve in effetto fatta con poche figure; secondo che le parti cominciano l’una doppò l’altra p pausa di Semibreve, over di Breve, e non di più; & questo p far il versetto breve, & ancora p non cadere nel stile del Motetto, & anco, perche così ricerca il Salmo.18

You will not be able to compose brief verses if you imitate the psalm-tone through all the parts. This will make long verses, inappropriate to psalms … And so that the middle of the psalm verse is apparent you must also mark it with the cadence on the mediation of the psalm-tone. … And if you put some imitation in the psalm-verses it must be brief. This brevity may be achieved in two ways: first the theme may be short, with few notes; second the parts may follow one another a semibreve or breve apart, but no more. All this in order to make the verses brief and avoid falling into the motet style, and because such is required by psalms.19

To exemplify this manner of psalmody Pontio lists ‘Adriano’ as well as ‘Iachetto’, so the style of their jointly composed In exitu Israel must be examined closely. Whereas Franco-Flemish psalm motets seem to have served as an important model for polyphonic technique and structure within the verses, antiphonal falsobordone accounts for the overall structure of the work. The nature of the second technique made it a perfect vehicle for liturgical texts. Ignace Bossuyt speaks of a kernachtige zeggingskracht ‘concise power of expression/communication’, a concept often used in discussing rhetoric in Dutch writings.20 The prescribed use of the cantus firmus, coupled with a drive for concision, appears to have been a stimulating obbligo (a self-imposed ‘obligation’ to be overcome with elegance, an artistic concept related to that of sprezzatura). This is exemplified by the virtuoso canonic writing by Jachet in the doxology: in Example 6.2, the upper voices execute the tonus peregrinus in strict canon, while the lower present a motif from its second semi-verse in freer canonic writing. The voice pair formed by superius and tenor opens the verse, while altus and bassus follow so closely in mensuration that the canonic structure is barely audible. This exemplifies the inherent potential of this tonus peregrinus variant: the incipit with the auxiliary g increases greatly the possibilities for canonic writing, which is favoured by the prevalence of conjunct motion.

A friar from the Franciscan monastery of Bologna, Bonifacio Pasquale (?–1585), has left an In exitu Israel setting that demonstrates another type of synthesis between the falsobordone and motet traditions. It was included in his collection I salmi che si cantano tutto l’anno al Vespro (Venice, 1576), but our present example

18 Pietro Pontio, Ragionamento di musica [1588], Documenta musicologica (Kassel, 1959), pp. 156–157.

19 Trans. O. Strunk, in Source Readings in Music History, ed. L. Treitler, revd edn (New York and London, 1998), pp. 471–478, at p. 475.

20 Ignace Bossuyt, Adriaan Willaert: leven en werk, stijl en genres (Leuven, 1985), p. 117.


is prepared from a verse cited in Giovanni Battista (Padre) Martini’s Esemplare o sia saggio fondamentale pratico di contrappunto sopra il canto fermo.21 Pasquale was chapel master of his monastery, the kind of position later held by Martini himself. The work serves as an example for Martini’s explanation of a type of upper-part cantus firmus writing in which the lower parts show no sign of thematic involvement or imitation (Example 6.3).

21 Giovanni Battista (Padre) Martini, Esemplare o sia saggio fondamentale pratico di contrappunto sopra il canto fermo [1774], vol. 1 (Ridgewood, 1965).

Example 6.2 In exitu Israel, Jachet of Mantua and Adrian Willaert


This type of figuration was later to give rise to the term salmo passeggiato. In the seventeenth century passaggi, consisting of rapid scalar movement intended to ‘fill in’ melodic leaps, became associated with the rise of monody, but at this stage they constituted a mannerism within polyphonic part-writing employed in connection with counterpoint and in conformity with older ideals such as the principle of maximally smooth motion in part-writing, where conjunct motion was favoured over leaps.22 Such passaggi were an important factor in the growth of ornamentation in Italian virtuosic singing in early dramatic and semi-dramatic music, but they seem to have had a relatively small effect on the development of psalmodic falsobordone, at any rate in relation to written practice. That

22 The presence of this ideal is obvious in music from the early sixteenth century, and it is advocated already in many late-fifteenth-century writers (Johannes Tinctoris, Liber de arte contrapuncti [1477], in E. de Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, vol. 4 [Paris, 1876; repr. Hildesheim, 1963], pp. 76–153, at p. 149; Bartolomeo Ramis de Pareia, Musica practica [1482], in J. Wolf (ed.), Publikationen der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, supp. 2 [Leipzig, 1901], pp. 1–112, at p. 65; Nicolaus Burtius, Musices opusculum [1487] [Bologna, 1969], fol. 4 v). A complete method for this kind of singing and writing was later penned by Giovanni Battista Bovicelli (fl. 1590): Regole, passaggi di musica, madrigali et motetti passeggiati (Venice, 1594).

Example 6.3 In exitu Israel, Bonifacio Pasquale


passaggi were sometimes expected from performers of falsobordone psalmody is known from, among other instances, the Roman example of the Miserere mei of Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652), to be discussed later. In Pasquale’s work, the tonus peregrinus does not, as was otherwise common, transfer to the tenor at the final cadence. Nevertheless, the functions of each part remain, as we see in the example, archetypical for psalm-tone works.

A lute intabulation

The tonus peregrinus makes an unexpected appearance in a lute manual by Vincenzo Galilei (c.1525–91), father of the famous Pisan astronomer Galileo Galilei.23 The treatise takes the form of a dialogue between Fronimo (master) and Eumatio (pupil) and is today regarded as one of the most important documents of sixteenth-century lute practice. When the topic of intabulation of polyphonic pieces is addressed, a setting of Psalm 113 is chosen as an example:

[Fronimo] Voglio prima che passiamo piu oltre, intavolare in vostra presentia una mia canzone a tre, & alquanti rossi di uno In exitu che gia composi a quattro voci, per cantare sul liuto la parte piu grave, i quali essempi vi faciliteranno maggiormente la strada del cominciato viaggio, però oservate diligentemente il tutto.24

[Fronimo] I want, before we go further, to intabulate in your presence one of my canzonas in three voices and some rough sketches of an In exitu for four parts, with the bass part to be sung to the lute. These examples will help you greatly along the way you have begun, therefore observe them carefully.25

It is unclear what Galilei means by ‘rough sketches’ – the work is a full psalm setting for four parts with some degree of passaggio movement in all parts. Example 6.4 gives the transcription of one of the verses. The bassus part is here that which responds most directly to the text (which is clearly visible from the lute part, containing the entire four-part texture); this is either a very well chosen example or a vocal work made specifically to exemplify the matters addressed. Does the mention of ‘sketches’ refer to the lack of a clear cantus firmus? This interpretation is theoretically possible, but in the second half of the sixteenth century the falsobordone tradition had already began to lose its strict link to the psalm-tones, so one cannot easily imagine that this kind of writing was so rare as to deserve the word ‘sketch’. Moreover, the milieu of

23 Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo: Dialogo [1568] (Venice, 1584, RISM A/I/3: G 146).24 Galilei, Fronimo, p. 14. Rossi appears to be dialect for rozzi, meaning ‘rough,

uncouth’.25 Trans. Carol MacClintock, in Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo: Dialogo, Musicological

Studies and Documents (Stuttgart, 1985). p. 44.


the Florentine camerata, in which Galilei was active, would have been more concerned with its own ideas of harmony in relation to the Greek tonoi than with the Gregorian psalm-tones. It seems most likely that the alleged ‘roughness’ is merely a manifestation of sham modesty on the part of the theorist. It is at any rate very interesting that a genre previously so determined by strict cantus firmus writing could be reinterpreted so as to serve as an harmonic framework for free melodic writing and that the lowest part of a polyphonic work was seen as perfectly suitable for a solo passaggio. Intabulations such as this also let us know that there was (at least not to the extent that many twentieth-century musicologists argued) no great divide between the musical ideals and tastes of the camerata circle and those of ecclesiastical institutions. In fact, the purpose of this example may well originally have been to instruct the student in how to adapt four-part counterpoint to the philosophical and artistic values of classical antiquity. When, in Galilei’s treatise, the pupil Eumatio praises the works that has been intabulated, he receives an interesting reply:

[Eumatio] Le quali mi sono oltre a modo grate, per cantarle al liuto, & in particolare quello In exitu.

[Fronimo] Avvertite adunque nel cantarlo, che quando il basso fa pausa, d’entrare in quel mente nella parte del tenore, accio venghino cantate tutte le parole insieme con l’intero senso di esse secondo che le vedete scritte.26

[Eumatio] They are, in addition, extremely graceful to sing to the lute, particularly that In exitu.

26 Galilei, Fronimo, p. 23.

Example 6.4 In exitu Israel, Vincenzo Galilei


[Fronimo] You must take care then, in singing it, that when the bass pauses you enter at that time with the tenor part, so that all the words are sung in their complete sense as you see them written.27

In no portion of the work has any text been left out of the bassus part, so it seems that Galilei means ‘enter with the tenor part in the lute’, assuming that the singer accompanies himself.28 His instructions for converting such a work into a form where only one sung voice sounds at any given time (another allegedly recovered Hellenistic ideal to which Tuscan humanists often returned) may have been an answer to a general popularity such as that expressed by the character Eumatio.

A peculiar psalm motet

The tonus peregrinus was also used in a setting of Psalm 97, Cantate Domino, by Elzéar Genet (c.1470–1548, commonly known by his toponym ‘Carpentras’).29 Both musical and historical sources connect Carpentras’s work with the Franco-Flemish In exitu Israel settings. We know that he was active in Rome, Avignon and, it appears, the French royal chapel until the mid 1520s, when he had to retire in France on account of some mental instability.30 His use of the psalm-tone is unique both liturgically (there seems never to have been any connection between this psalm and antiphons of the Nos qui vivimus group) and technically, for it presents the psalm-tone permutated in a way that would at first render it hard to detect, were it not for the stricter statements in the doxology (Example 6.5,

27 Trans. MacClintock, Fronimo, p. 53.28 The concept of the self-accompanying singer was also a fashionable symbol of

antiquity; in Il libro de cortegiano, Count Baldassare Castiglione of Novellata (1478–1529) illustrates this ideal even more clearly: Bella musica, – rispose messer Federico, – parmi il cantar bene a libro sicuramente e con bella maniera; ma ancor molto piú il cantare alla viola perché tutta la dolcezza consiste quasi in un solo e con molto maggior attenzion si nota ed intende il bel modo e l’aria non essendo occupate le orecchie in piú che in una sol voce, e meglio ancor vi si discerne ogni piccolo errore; il che non accade cantando in compagnia perché l’uno aiuta l’altro: ‘Fine music – replied Messer Federico – arises, in my opinion, from singing well from a book with accuracy and attractive ornamentation; but it is much finer still to sing [only] to the viol, because sweetness becomes concentrated in one [line] only, and one pays greater attention to, and understands better, the beautiful manner and the air if the ears are not involved with more than one voice, and, what is even better, one [then] picks out every small error: which does not happen when one sings in company, since one performer aids the other’ (Baldassare Castiglione, Il libro de cortegiano [Venice, 1528], 2:XIII; translation kindly provided by Michael Talbot).

29 Timothy Steele, private correspondence, October 2004, May 2006.30 The scientist Girolamo Cardano (1501–76) warned against engaging so fully with

creative work that one loses one’s mind, taking Carpentras as a cautionary example of such a fate (Opera omnia, vol. 1 [Lyons, 1663], p. 575).


Example 6.5 In exitu Israel, Elzéar Genet Carpentras


bb. 241–257).31 Moreover, it is the earliest known notated transposition of the tonus peregrinus in a polyphonic context: the tenor degrees are here b and a, respectively, and since the possibility of an implicit sharp key signature is out of the question at this time, the terminatio is rendered a–e–g–f–e. The entire work consequently has all the characteristics of a work normally to be assigned to mode III. Traditions in liturgical theory and practice are very rarely affected by isolated works, but it is just possible that this Cantate Domine is in some way related to the later Italian falsobordone tradition of notating the tonus peregrinus within the pitch-range e–c’ and assigning it to the deuterus species, even when the Phrygian second is not present.

Steele has discussed fully how the various paraphrases of the psalm-tone function in this work.32 For the purposes of the present discussion, we may observe the passage quoted in Example 6.5, bb. 120–128. Here we find thematic material in the highest part with a clear mediatio in bb. 121–122 and the terminatio figure in bb. 126–129. The latter is especially interesting, since it features the modally problematic f degree. Just as we saw in some instances of the Franco-Flemish In exitu Israel motets, the psalm-tone is here removed from its harmonic function, appearing as a melodic entity that overrides the cadential structure of the work. Unlike those other motets, however, Carpentras’s Cantate Domine does not make use of the tonus peregrinus in chains of imitation. The passages cited in our example are typical in that the psalm-tone largely appears in conjunction with homophonic writing, revealing a legacy of Psalms in falsobordone that is at the same time fundamentally subverted by the above-mentioned modal permutations and the consequent eschewal of the archetypical harmony of psalm-tones. The strong progression that is normally achieved by supporting the penultimate note of the terminatio with a strong full cadence is in Carpentras’s case replaced by a more ambiguous voice-leading (see bb. 254–255 of the example), so that the tonus peregrinus does not really participate in the archetypical clausula that closes the work.

A setting of the Ordinary of the Mass

One of the very few extant settings of the Ordinary of the Mass based on the tonus peregrinus is the Missa In exitu Israel by Annibale Zoilo (c.1537–92). Zoilo served as an alto in the Sistine Chapel choir, and it is in the archive of that institution that his Masses have been preserved.33 In 1577 he and G.P. Palestrina

31 Examples are transcribed from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome (I-Rvat), Cappella Sistina MS 46, kindly made available to the present author on microfilm by Timothy Steele.

32 Timothy Steele, ‘The Latin Psalm Motet, ca. 1460–1520: Aspects of the Emergence of a New Motet Type’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1993), pp. 105–118.

33 Incidentally, a madrigal by Zoilo, Chi per voi non sospira, appears in Galilei’s Fronimo, discussed above.


(c.1525–94) received a commission from Pope Gregory XIII to prepare a post-Tridentine edition of the Vatican Graduale. Unfortunately, the only source for the four-part Missa In exitu Israel is in a poor physical condition that renders the notation only partially legible.34 Nevertheless, it is possible to deduce that in the Kyrie the tonus peregrinus is spun out to make a longer theme that functions as a canon between tenor and cantus. Canonic devices were used also in the other two surviving Masses by Zoilo, and indeed by composers in the papal choir in general. The psalmodic title Missa In exitu Israel implies imitation (or ‘parody’) rather than a Mass based directly on a psalm-tone cantus firmus. Candidates for possible ‘model’ psalm settings are however yet to be identified. The tonus peregrinus occurs in all sections of Zoilo’s Mass, always with a distinctive dotted figure directly on the first tenor: that is, without any ligature on the first syllable. This gives the tonus peregrinus incipit – normally set with a ligature that results in a–b–a in even note-values on the first syllable – an unusual form. Zoilo’s work shows that the flexa is not readily adaptable to syllabic configurations such as ‘Ky-ri-e’ and ‘Glo-ri-a’. The source material is in all likelihood more readily legible in its orginal form than in the copies made available to me. However, going by the microfilm copies, the work genuinely deserves a performing edition.

Conclusion

We have seen that the salmi a versi con le sue risposte – that is, the alternatim psalm settings with two similar choirs – written by composers active in Italian cities around the middle of the sixteenth century amalgamated the earlier styles of falsobordone and motet psalmody in the way that it used elements of compositional technique previously found in psalm motets within the alternatim tradition. This process meant that the psalm motet, as inherited from the earlier generation of composers (and by older contemporaries like as Carpentras), ultimately gave way to a variety of alternatim styles throughout this region. To what extent this occurred on account of its inherent incompatibility with the ancient antiphonal tradition of Officium psalmody, or to the predilections of such influential composers as Willaert and Jachet, whose music was circulated via large-scale printed editions, remains uncertain. Motets based on psalm texts were composed in Italy after 1550, but then more often than not in free writing without direct reference to psalm-tones. The swiftness of this change, as well as the contrast of the two genres, is striking if one looks at the printed repertory alone, and also received comment from Zarlino, who revered the psalm motet tradition:

Ma quando haurà da comporre altre cantilene, come sono Motetti; ouero altre cose simili, non debbe seguitare il canto, o Tenore de tali Salmodie: percioche non è obligato a questo: anzi quando ciò facesse, se li potrebbe attribuire a uitio, et che non

34 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome (I-Rvat), VatS MS 62.


hauesse inuentione. Ne dè per cosa alcuna far quello, che fanno alcuni compositori, i quali componendo (per dare vno essempio) alcuna lor cantilena sotto l’Ottauo modo, non sanno partirsi dal fine della sua Salmodia; il che fanno ancho ne gli altri Modi; di maniera che pare, che voglino, che sempre si canti il SEVOVAE posto ne gli Antifonarij nel fine di ciascuna Antifona. Quando adunque vorrà comporre alcuna cantilena fuori delle Salmodie, allora sarà libero, et potrà ritrouare quella inuentione, che li tornerà più commoda.35

But when he has to compose other [kinds of] composition such as motets, or similar pieces, he should not follow the cantus or tenor of such psalmodies because this is not obligatory; in fact, if he does this, he may be found at fault and lacking in invention. Nor should he on any account do as some composers do, who in composing (for instance) a piece in mode VIII do not know how to keep themselves away from the end of its psalmody, something that they do also in the other modes, so that it appears that they wish that the SEVOVAE [seculorum amen: the terminatio of the psalm-tone] placed at the end of each antiphon in the antiphon books should always be sung. Thus when a composer wishes to write a composition independently of the psalmody, he should be free and able to choose whatever invention seems most proper to him.

This kind of reliance on psalm-tones is clearly discernible in all relevant works by Jachet and Willaert (not merely those with psalm and canticle texts) – except that to these composers it does not seem to constitute a problem. Nor is there any impression of restriction or lack of creativity in their collaborative In exitu Israel; rather, it seems that they were in fact stimulated to apply their skill to this convention, as shown, for example, by their strict use of canon. It seems that Zarlino is trying to combat the same concept that Carver called ‘the strong element of objectivity inherent in the system of psalm-tones’.36 For a sixteenth-century scholar upholding humanist ideals of free composition as well as a religious orientation typical of the so-called devotio moderna, this obligation was obviously irksome.

It is clear that in the area covered by present-day Italy the sixteenth century saw an almost explosive interest in two concepts pertaining to psalmodic music: first, the concept of contrast, or answer (risposta), whereby the inherent antiphony of the psalm-tones could be maintained; second, the supporting ideal of musical variation. Considering the elaborate psalm motets of the early sixteenth century and the fact that these more or less ceased to be cultivated in relation to Psalm 113, one may consider the alternatim genre exemplified in this chapter an unpredictable step in the development of the psalm repertory (especially as regards the principle of musical variation found in contemporary motet styles). It is likely that the ‘element of objectivity’ was needed for liturgical order (the Franco-Flemish motets

35 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, p. 316.36 Passage cited in full in n. 17 above.


discussed earlier must, truth to tell, generally have been ill-suited to the liturgical celebration of Vespers, and we have already argued that they may have had a very specific function and background). ‘Answer’ and ‘contrast’ constitute an apt description of the tonus peregrinus itself, and far from being a contradiction, these ideals are exemplified above all in a work in which the two antiphonal choirs have even had their music supplied by two different composers (Jachet and Willaert). The double recitation of the tonus peregrinus, with its ‘micro-risposte’ within the verses, here held an advantage over the other psalm-tones, since it provided harmonic variation that was not otherwise possible. Another concept that attracted the interest of sixteenth-century composers in Italian lands was that of ornamentation. This took shape in the way showcased by Pasquale’s psalm setting, where the tonus peregrinus is set against a ‘functional’ bass line, which opens the door to rich ornamentation in the middle parts. The opposing poles of ‘objectivity’ (cantus prius factus) and ‘free invention’ were cultivated side by side, and their conjunction was much later to reach a high point in the works of northern Italian composers of the seventeenth century, perhaps most notably Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) – here, these concepts readily acquired the respective symbolic values of ‘old’ and ‘new’.37 Highly ornamented writing in cantus firmus works sets the psalm-tone in unparalleled focus and can undoubtedly be viewed as an important precursor to that copious array of structural and stylistic traits called stile antico in the centuries that followed.

37 Monteverdi’s Sonata sopra Santa Maria from the Vespers of 1610 is a supreme example of the combination of the two approaches.


Chapter 7

Liberty with Rigour: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century Iberian Music

The style of prominent Spanish and Portuguese sixteenth-century composers has often been described as austere and technically strict. The chief exponent of this culture, Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500–1553), was praised by Andrea Adami da Bolsena (1663–1742) for his ‘learned contrivance’, while his music was called streng (‘strict’) and unruhig (‘unsettled’) by Higinio Anglès.1 In the preface to a posthumous publication of Juan Navarro (the Elder), to be discussed later, Francisco Soto avows his admiration for the ‘supreme erudition’ of Navarro.2 To the extent that an Iberian regional style has been proposed, this has generally been viewed as a logical continuation of, or retention of, previous Roman practices. Liturgically and musically, the Iberian peninsula in the later sixteenth century has, for the modern scholar, come to represent everything associated with the austere and pious ideals of the counter-Reformation.3 In actual fact, such a notion probably has less to do with technical artifice than with an urge towards the expressive projection of the text. What we certainly find in sixteenth-century Iberian music is an abundance of Gregorian elements, and the tonus peregrinus is no exception. On the contrary, our psalm-tone is surprisingly often found as a ‘chief representative’ of plainsong. There are several Portuguese and Spanish

1 Da Bolsena quoted in Robert Stevenson, ‘Cristóbal de Morales’, in S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 12 (London, 1980), pp. 553–558, at p. 556; Higinio Anglès, ‘Francisco Guerrerro’, in F. Blume (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 5 (Kassel and Basel, 1956), coll. 1031–1042. According to Paul Henry Lang, Morales represented, more than any Spaniard, ‘the noble austerity of Spanish art’ (Music in Western Civilization [London, 1942], pp. 266–267). He also held that all Spanish composers ‘shared the same ecstatic mysticism, the same sobriety and austerity, the same emotional fantasy of Spanish Catholicism that characterizes Spanish painters of the period’ (ibid., p. 265).

2 Juan Navarro, Psalmi, hymni ac magnificat totius anni (Rome, 1590, RISM A/I/6: N 283).

3 Lang, Music in Western Civilization, p. 260: ‘Spanish nationalism became dissolved in the universalism of Rome and produced the ideals of the counter-Reformation. It is for this reason that Spanish culture cannot be detached from the Church; the sole approach to the arts and letters of Spain leads through the doors of her churches’. See also Miguel Querol Gavaldá, ‘Die spanische Musik im 16 Jh.’, in F. Blume (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 12 (Kassel and Basel, 1965), coll. 986–991, at col. 986.


composers with a very small extant oeuvre from which works based on our psalm-tone have survived.4

Regional plainsong traditions

The so-called ‘Iberian dialect’ of the tonus peregrinus (Example 2.13) has already been discussed briefly. This seems to have been the dominant variant in the Spanish and Portuguese liturgies. As these traditions became established in the New World of Latin America, the Iberian dialect very probably developed into the customary intonation there as well. What must strike any investigator into Iberian sixteenth-century plainsong sources is the consistency of the local tonus peregrinus dialect. In other parts of Europe we have previously observed a multitude of deviations from the two main dialects (the Roman and the Germanic); not only do the Hispanic sources retain intact the Iberian first semi-verse, but it also appears that the terminatio never swerved from the prototypical g–d–f–e–d. Many sixteenth-century Spanish theorists and composers followed Gafurius in regarding the tonus peregrinus as a sub-variant of psalm-tone and mode VII, whereas it was to gain a designation of its own, tono irregulár, only in the next century.5

The liturgical function of the tonus peregrinus in Spain and Portugal was, as everywhere in the Roman Catholic world, first and foremost linked to Psalm 113. Even though, as noted, the tonus peregrinus remained in wide use among a large proportion of the more productive composers, its status as a ‘poor relation’ of psalm-tones I–VIII held true also here – something that becomes clearer when one studies the use of the regular psalm-tones. Sebastián de Vivanco (c.1550–1622) and Pedro Vaz Rego (1673–1736), for instance, excluded the tonus peregrinus when they based Masses on themes built on combinations of psalm-tone terminatio figures.6 Similarly, the tonus peregrinus does not seem to occur, as one might initially have expected, in the rich sixteenth-century Spanish organ repertory, where chant elements are otherwise abundant.

In the 1515 Intonarium Toletanum we find the tonus peregrinus proposed also for the intonation of the Magnificat. Whether the use of the tonus peregrinus with

4 e.g. In exitu Israel setting by Pedro Thalesio (c.1565–c.1630), discussed in Chapter 11, and two by Ginés de Boluda (1545–1604), which are mentioned in inventories but appear to be lost.

5 See Breve instruc[c]ión de canto llano: ‘modo vij commixto’ and the Cancionera de Gandia setting discussed below. Even as late as the final edition of Ignacio Ramoneda, Arte de canto-llano en compendio breve (Madrid, 1827) it is called ‘octavo Tono irregular’ (p. 71).

6 Sebastián de Vivanco, Missa super octo tonos in Libro de misas (Salamanca, 1608, RISM A/I/9: V 2250); Pedro Vaz Rego, Missa ad omnem tonum (MS 8:1731, Arquiro da Se, Museo Regional, Évora).

Liberty with Rigour 103

canticles was a liturgical custom that had sprung up locally or reflects an older, pan-Christian practice will not detain us here, but since it is not found widely disseminated in the liturgies used elsewhere before that time, it is probably mere coincidence that the Lutheran Church made the tonus peregrinus its official Magnificat psalm-tone later in that century. This use is, after all, merely a sign that the tonus peregrinus for once was being treated in the same way as all the other psalm-tones, which were also employed (in their maioris versions) for the canticles of the New Testament.

Psalm 113 in fabordón and other alternatim idioms

Across Europe the singing of psalms had, during the fifteenth century, become almost synonymous with the compositional technique of falsobordone, and also in the context covered by this chapter the tonus peregrinus is most frequently found in that idiom. Samuel Rubio has attempted to draw a stylistic distinction between the falsobordone of the sixteenth-century Roman school and the remarkably widespread Spanish fabordón.7 He notes that the latter tends to have the tenor part in measured notes, whereas the Roman sources often give it in some type of unmeasured plainsong. It deserves mention that this would solely be a question of notation: it is highly unlikely that a freely recited psalm-tone would ever have been the rhythmic guide for Italian falsobordone. The notational practice could, rather, be seen as a symptom of Roman conservatism and a relic of a living extempore tradition; we have already seen that older sources did not copy out the psalm-tone at all. Another distinction made by Rubio can be interpreted, however, as a logical consequence of Spanish notational practice: in fabordón settings the tenor is sometimes ornamented with passing notes and other products of free counterpoint. Such figuration was not possible in a straightforward extempore performance, as would be the case in settings such as those discussed in Chapter 3. So, if we can speak of fabordón as a distinct sixteenth-century Hispanic falsobordone style, this would, as we shall now see, be one with an established equality between the cantus firmus and the other parts.

Three brief sections of In exitu Israel in fabordón are contained in the Cancionera de Gandia, dated by Josep María Llorens to the middle of the sixteenth century.8 In one of these (fols 58 v–59 r) the highest part is, typically, labelled septimus tonus – a confirmation that the tonus peregrinus was far from being acknowledged as a separate psalm-tone on the theoretical level; even though this music possibly postdates the printing of Glareanus’s Dodekachordon (1547), it is unlikely that the twelve-species modal system would have had any impact on this local liturgical

7 Samuel Rubio, Classical Polyphony, trans. T. Rive (Oxford, 1972), pp. 127–128.8 Biblioteca de Catalunya (E-Bbc) MS 1967; see Maria Josep Llorens, ‘El Cançoner

de Gandia’, Recerca Musicològica, 1 (1981): 71–94.


culture.9 Fabordón music is given in dual versions for vv. 1 and 15, respectively. It would at first sight seem probable that the music provided for the first verse was intended to be used up to v. 15, after which point the music for the other verse was employed – we shall see, however, that another form of apportionment is much more likely. This setting constitutes a fine example of a fabordón in which an elaborated flexa figure has shaped the entirety of the piece (Example 7.1).

Viewed in isolation, the first three bars appear to function as the first semi-verse, albeit slightly oddly on account of the f that distorts the cantus firmus. What follows, however, is a complete first and second semi-verse, meaning that the f itself divides the two sections in the first semi-verse, the middle of the verse occurring in b. 30. This music has clearly been crafted for the sake of this very verse, since it (and similar longer and/or tripartite psalm verses) was normally sung with a flexa providing a temporary break before the main caesura. What is untypical here is that f , rather than g, is used for the purpose. It must be stressed that this is not merely a syllabic tripartite structure such as that described by Kunz: rather, it is a tripartite structure responding to textual meaning.10 In addition to the fact that the music was obviously fitted specifically to the text of this verse, one

9 The general humanistic approach of Glareanus and others was far from alien to this regional culture.

10 Lukas Kunz, ‘Untersuchungen zur Textstruktur solistischer Psalmen’, Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, 45 (1961): 1–37, at p. 16.



is encouraged, in the light of its tripartite structure, to speculate whether it might have been used also for the doxology, since this similarly expresses three topics rather than two.

Unfortunately, the poor condition of the Catalonian source prevents a complete reading of the tenor part in the tripartite verse. The reconstruction provided here on the ossia staves of Example 7.1 is naturally only speculative. Some factors point, however, towards a semi-imitative treatment of the tonus peregrinus in this lost passage. The uppermost part, which in the source bears the inscription septimus tonus and is clearly intended to constitute the main cantus firmus part, and the tenor part both ‘feign’ the tonus peregrinus. Within this loosened fabordón structure the composer has attempted, in the bipartite verse, a double terminatio in these two parts, the tenor making a more literal statement once the top part begins its drive towards the cadence. The reconstruction strives for a similar effect in the tripartite verse. By this means, the tonus peregrinus can be reproduced more or less strictly without transgressing the customary stylistic boundaries. The prerequisite of this procedure is, of course, the permitting of unrestricted migration of the tonus peregrinus from part to part.

The most notable Spanish setting of Psalm 113 is probably that by the Seville composer Francisco Guerrero (1528–1599), a one-time pupil of Morales. Guerrero’s setting is a monumental alternatim composition that still owes much to over fifty years of fabordón practice. The abundance of manuscript copies of this printed work testifies to its popularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, Guerrero must have been a much-esteemed composer during his lifetime, since a whole chapter is devoted to him in Francisco Pacheco’s Libre de descripción de retratos de ilustres y memorables varores, an illustrated biography of some distinguished individuals in the Spanish-speaking world. In it appears the following mention of this very psalm setting: Compuso muchas missas, magníficas i psalmos; i entre ellos, ‘in exitu Isrrael de Aegypto’, de quien los que mejor sienten juzgan que estava entonces arrebatado en alta contemplación: ‘He composed many Masses, Magnificats and Psalms; among them in exitu Israel de Aegypto, which those who are best informed declare he must have composed while in a state of supreme contemplation.’11

When reading this, one needs to be aware how rarely specific works of music are discussed prior to the middle of the seventeenth century. Pacheco’s comment not only demonstrates an appreciation of Guerrero’s setting but also says something about the way in which Psalm 113 was venerated in general. Once again, the spiritual tradition of sixteenth-century Iberian culture shines through.

In exitu Israel is the fifth of seven large-scale psalm settings in the Liber vesperarum (Rome, 1584).12 What makes this work so important for the present study

11 Pacheco, Libro de descripción, p. 338; translation kindly provided by Nabil Aho.12 In the series Portugaliae Musica the editor Miguel Querol Gavaldá has included

this setting, taken from a Portuguese source, in a volume with music by Estêuãu de Brito (c.1575–1641) – a questionable attribution, since the work appeared in print in Guerrero’s


is that it derives so much of its character from the duality of the tonus peregrinus – perhaps the properties of the psalm-tone were never more fully exploited than here. In its homophonic or semi-homophonic verses the individuality of the two reciting notes is emphasized to a far greater extent than in similar passages from the other works discussed here. Guerrero makes the most of the duality when he employs it as a ‘topic divider’. Examples of this antithesis occur in v. 3 (Example 7.2), with the cantus firmus in the cantus. In b. 12 the second recitation degree is efficiently marked by the return to homophonic declamation and then confirmed by a cadence before the psalm-tone statement concludes, the topics thus divided (in b. 4) being mare (‘sea’) and Iordanis (‘river Jordan’). An almost identical – and thus contextually related – approach is taken to these same two topics in v. 5, on that occasion with the cantus firmus in the tenor part. In both instances, the third of the dominant chord introducing an emphatic cadence arrives simultaneously with the phrase conversus est (‘was turned back’). This combination of technical control over the modal structure that results from the two recitation degrees of the tonus peregrinus and of surface reflection of the text reveals not only great technical mastery on the composer’s part but also his awareness of the latent possibilities of connection between the text of Psalm 113 and the tonus peregrinus.

The stylistic variation displayed in the 15 polyphonic verses of Guerrero’s In exitu Israel implies an exegetical responsiveness and a wish to realize this through dramatic effect, though always within the framework of the psalmodic alternatim structure.13 The compositional method is worked out according to the psalm text with suitable illustration. Virtually every verse of Guerrero’s setting can be interpreted as a reflection of a common theological framework, and the method employed is mainly the gesture called hypotyposis in later music theory. The two opening verses are basically narrative in a quasi-fabordón style. The third starts similarly but breaks up the texture at the phrase Iordanis conversus est, possibly as an intentional reflection of the phrase. Verse 15, vain and impotent in its musical character, also seems to be an apt characterization of the text (Example 7.2, bb. 71–102). The clearly intentional highlighting of clamabant (‘they cry out’) is produced by here giving three out of the four parts their highest notes in the entire setting. As is common in music from this period (and up to the end of the Baroque), this characterization, which focuses on a single word, contradicts the meaning of the full phrase, which is

name when de Brito was around ten years old. In the doxology, the fifth part, the carrier of the tonus peregrinus, is lacking – the editors do not seem to have been surprised by the absence of the cantus firmus in the doxology of an otherwise thoroughly thematic work (see Miguel Querol Gavaldá [ed.], Obras Diverso de Brito, vol. 2, Portugaliae Musica 30 [Lisbon, 1976]).

13 A historical-theological examination of Ps. 113 by Artur Weiser shows that the understanding of this psalm has been surprisingly uniform throughout the history of the Western Church (Die Psalmen übersetzt und erklärt, Das alte Testament deutsch, 14/15 [Göttingen, 1973]).


Example 7.2 In exitu Israel, Francisco Guerrero


Example 7.2 continued



non clamabant: (the same approach is encountered also in a work by Pedro de Cristo that will be examined shortly). Pitch characterization is employed additionally in v. 25, here with a ‘topical’ opposition between caelum (‘heaven’) and terram (‘earth’). Treating points of imitation as an analogue of proliferation constituted a common, therefore also well-understood, practice in the sixteenth century. Guerrero uses this metaphorical device with great effect and subtlety in v. 23. The realization of rhetorical figures in music has, among modern scholars, become associated primarily with composers of northern Europe.14 Several examples, however, point towards humanistic learning as an important contributor to the Iberian polyphonic style as well, especially in the works of Portuguese composers: Damião de Goes (1502–74), a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, is represented by an example in Glareanus’s Dodekachordon. The Portuguese Vicente Lusitano (?–c.1565) was a groundbreaking theorist as well as a composer: in a celebrated dispute on diatonic and chromatic genera with the Italian humanist Nicola Vicentino, Lusitano emerged the victor. Such composers bear witness to the presence of humanistic currents on the Iberian peninsula during the period covered by this chapter. Indeed, a poetic understanding of the Scriptures is virtually presupposed by the intense and sensitive manner of text declamation achieved by the leading Iberian composers. It must be evident to anyone that this close coordination of psalm text and musical setting accounted, at least partly, for the recognition of the ‘state of supreme contemplation’ so admired by Guerrero’s contemporaries and mentioned by Pacheco. The fact that many of the effects were achieved by an absolutely faithful treatment of the tonus peregrinus argues against a false dichotomy that would pit a rhetorical awareness against an adherence to a firmly rooted liturgical tradition with the cantus prius factus as its focal point.

The way in which Guerrero deals with the structure of the text in v. 15 is remarkably similar to that evidenced in the Cancionera de Gandia setting discussed above. The use of chromatic alteration as a tonus flexio that brings the music to a halt half-way through the first semi-verse – not encountered elsewhere in any of

14 Above all, the German Lateinschule context has been identified as a prime cultural milieu for humanism by, among others, Brian Vickers (‘Figures of Rhetoric/Figures of Music?’, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 2/1 [1984]: 1–44).



those settings and rare as a whole in sixteenth-century Iberian music – seems a strange coincidence. Did Guerrero know the Catalonian setting, made some time during the first half of the sixteenth century – or is it because of some intrinsic logic or similarity in musical training that two different composers happened to use this device in an identical manner for this single psalm-verse? One reasonable assumption would be that, for these composers, chromatic inflection represented a familiar way of achieving the temporary ‘deferment’ of a cantus firmus in alternatim works. No comparable treatment of other psalm-tones is extant, so the possibility that Guerrero took the device directly from the Catalonian setting should not be discounted completely.

Alongside the so-called Iberian variant we find in this setting Roman variants. Different forms of the tonus peregrinus are frequently intermingled, possibly reflecting the cosmopolitan and educated background of Guerrero. The most striking instance occurs in v. 27, where the lower parts employ, unlikely as this may seem, a second recitation figure in Germanic form (although this is considerably less distinct than if the a–c had appeared in the incipit), while the psalm-tone is in the Roman dialect (See Example 7.2, bb. 156–170). The antiphon appears, in accordance with traditional usage, separately, rather than in its place within the psalm text – for in conjunction with this psalm Guerrero composed a setting of the accompanying Nos qui vivimus ‘a 5’: a short motet in imitative style presenting the antiphon melody in a middle part that was certainly intended to frame the psalm setting.

The University of Coimbra holds two settings of Psalm 113 copied, and most likely also composed, by Pedro de Cristo (c.1550–1618). A majority of the verses of this alternatim setting in the manuscript MM36 are cast, by and large, in fabordón style, although some interesting deviations from this idiom will be discussed shortly.15 Factors supporting de Cristo’s authorship of this work are the narrow overall compass (a stylistic trait traceable back to de Cristo’s teacher and predecessor as chapel master of the Augustinian monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, Francisco de Santa Maria [?–1597]), the syllabic declamation and the coincidence of a cambiata figure in one part with passing notes in another.16 The treatment of the tonus peregrinus is remarkably free: the psalm-tone occurs in all four voices and is frequently shared between voices. In such instances, the composer tends towards very clear-cut migration rather than fragmentary writing. Example 7.3, where the top part and the tenor (although the part is actually named altus) each take a semi-verse, provides a good example of this.

Even when the shape of the tonus peregrinus is retained, the two tenor degrees, together with the segregation of semi-verses as just described, lend these verses a less strict character quite alien to the traditional fabordón style. The modal shift

15 Universidade de Coimbra, Biblioteca Geral, Impressos e Manuscritos Musicais (P-Cug), MM36, fol.14v ff. A microfilm of this MS was kindly lent to me by Bruno Turner.

16 See Owen Rees, ‘Pedro de Cristo’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 6, 2nd edn (London, 2001), pp. 667–669.


in the second semi-verse seems to arise from the new cantus firmus centre: the pitch g. De Cristo does not seem at all concerned with the theoretical imperatives of polyphonic composition – the consistent mollis quality of e in the second semi-verse and the resultant Phrygian cadence formula are in keeping, rather, with principles that focus exclusively on the tenor as a modal guide. In psalm-tones I–VIII such action would never contradict the modal scaffolding of the one tenor: here it does – not because the composer takes liberties but because he applies principles that in other situations need not be stated, since they follow automatically. Here, the tonus peregrinus proves to be a very interesting indicator of the theoretical decisions taken by the composer.

One In exitu Israel in MM33 also appears in Coimbra’s MM44 under the heading ‘D. Petrus C°’, confirming that de Cristo is the composer also of this composition (Example 7.4).17 It is a work in many ways more advanced than its counterpart in MM36. Imitation, employed in the MM36 setting primarily as a casual, isolated feature wherever the cantus firmus writing permits it, here assumes the status of a structural device. Imitative entries over a free counter-melody often accompany fairly strict presentations of the psalm-tone. After the first semi-verse has been stated in the altus (bb. 78–79) the three lower parts form a rather sophisticated counterpoint over which the tonus peregrinus appears in the upper part. This procedure implies that the composer regarded a psalm-tone statement as complete only when stated in the upper part or the tenor, just as we have found in other Iberian works.

17 Universidade de Coimbra, Biblioteca Geral, Impressos e Manuscritos Musicais (P-Cug), MM33, fol.67v ff; MM44 58v–65.

Example 7.3 In exitu Israel, Pedro de Cristo


The writing is astonishingly learned, and the way in which the tonus peregrinus appears in relief reminds one of northern Flemish composers of the previous generation. In our attempt to understand such an effortless contrapuntal method in its own context, we may turn to a most fascinating statement of polyphonic improvisation relating not to de Cristo himself but to Guerrero. Stevenson quotes a passage from a Sevillan capitular act that must be taken as representative for Hispanic Cathedral situations as a whole, since it was laid down principally by clergymen who were not themselves specialists in liturgy. Formalizing the particulars of Guerrero’s duties, the consistorium noted that he should teach the boys both plainsong and composition: ‘his instruction in counterpoint to include both the art of adding a melody to a plainsong and to an already existing piece of

Example 7.4 In exitu Israel, Pedro de Cristo


polyphonic music’.18 This passage, together with de Cristo’s psalm verse, reminds us that there are more possible methods of composition than those commonly termed ‘simultaneous’ and ‘successive’: de Cristo’s writing in the lower parts presupposes simultaneous conception, while the cantus firmus appears ‘tacked on’, just as if a cantus prius factus had been used in the way described in the Sevillan document.

Andrés Torrentes set Psalm 113 on two occasions. His first setting provides another good example of a very strict conception of psalm-tone cantus firmus writing. In Example 7.5 the terminatio formula has been altered to conform to a Phrygian cadential structure – seemingly a way of dealing with problems arising from cadences in which the tonus peregrinus inhabits the lowest part. In freer falsobordone styles such as this, such problems are often sidestepped either by completely abandoning the psalm-tone at this point or by having it migrate to another part (examples of both these practices have already been discussed). Torrentes, however, persists with his cantus firmus and alters the quality of the penultimate note of the terminatio, while its function remains intact. In his still

18 Quoted and translated in Robert Stevenson, Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age (Berkeley, 1961), p. 143.

Example 7.5 In exitu Israel, Andrés Torrentes


unpublished edition of this fabordón Michael Noone elects to leave this cadence as it stands in the source.19

Leaving aside any discussion concerning compositional intentions (about which there is really no ambiguity here) or the parallels with similar passages elsewhere in Torrentes’s work (encountered even in earlier verses of this same setting), the cadence could be interpreted – or, rather, could easily have been constructed – in an alternative way, the outcome of which is shown in ossia staves above the bassus and altus parts. Ignoring the flat before the e in the bassus, expressly demanded by the composer, this hypothetical interpretation accords well with our understanding of musica ficta and finds support in Torrentes’s otherwise marked inclination towards a strict treatment of the psalm-tone. In fact, the sole departure from a literal statement in this setting is an instance where the tonus peregrinus is transposed in such a way that its logical finalis would be g – something that would of course violate the modal framework and be unimaginable within the restrictive fabordón idiom (not so much on account of modal considerations, since a plagal ending, as encountered both in Torrentes’s and in de Cristo’s fabordón psalms, could have made a literal statement of the tonus peregrinus possible also with a transposed terminatio, but rather in adherence to the established principle of employing the terminatio as a cue for the plainsong verses in an alternatim performance). So this terminatio variant cannot really provide a valid parallel to the one appearing in v. 5. This is, it must be repeated, not to argue that the cadence was actually intended as shown (editorially) here: our object was merely to point out how one particular approach – that of maintaining an unaltered cantus firmus – could have been retained also for this verse. In the light of this brief scrutiny, Torrentes appears to be less unyielding in his treatment of the tonus peregrinus than some of the other composers discussed here. Instead, in this verse, as indeed in his entire setting, he has clearly been more concerned with the tone’s shape than with its modality; conceivably, an altered terminatio represented much less of a problem to him than an incomplete transposed terminatio. The musical result is a marriage of strictness (the function of the terminatio is never challenged) and liberty (the flexibility of the quality of pitch degrees).

Torrentes’s fabordón writing differs stylistically from that of other Iberian composers in one further respect: in his second In exitu Israel setting, where the tonus peregrinus is transposed throughout, the chant melody is abandoned in the fifth verse. This does not seem to relate to matters of transposition or inganno, and the modality is not in any way altered in relation to the first semi-verse. The conjunct motion of all four parts does not point towards any other form of transformation of the cantus firmus. This practice reminds one of certain seventeenth-century Italian falsobordoni in which modal (that is, spatial) considerations have preceded – and completely supplanted – melodic ones. In both of Torrentes’s settings the altus part receives the tonus peregrinus in transposed form. This shows that his

19 I am deeply indebted to Michael Noone for granting access to his material prior to its publication.


understanding of modes was the same as that of contemporary theorists: the altus part was not merely a mid-range compromise between cantus and tenor but was assumed to be written in the plagal equivalent of the mode of those parts. This view, in combination with a practice such as that demonstrated by Torrentes, effectively removes the possibility of assigning psalm-tones unequivocally to a single mode or to a single hexachord: when the psalm-tone occurs in all parts of a work, a conflict between psalm-tone and mode unavoidably comes into play. Torrentes tipped the balance in favour of the mode when he inflected the quality of the terminatio figure.

Melchor Robledo (c.1510–86) probably set Psalm 113 once to psalm-tone III and twice to the tonus peregrinus.20 The two works based on the tonus peregrinus are found in the same manuscript but different verses are set polyphonically. None of the two adhere to a strict odd- or even-numbered alternatim practice and they do not appear to be complementary, since some verses appear in both settings. Interestingly, one of the settings more or less consistently presents the conjunct closing figure g–f–e–d instead of the customary terminatio.21

A verse from an In exitu Israel setting by Juan Navarro the Elder (c.1530–80) exemplifies a tendency found occasionally in Spanish fabordón but rarely in other falsobordone styles: a wide spacing of the vocal parts, so that, in this instance, holding a dominant function in relation to the first recitation degree, the bassus commences on A, while the tenor (with the tonus peregrinus) proceeds from a, the altus from e’ and the cantus from c’’. The effect of this layout is strikingly different from the compressed voicing of the three upper parts normally associated with falsobordone. Writing in parallel fourths is notably less successful in this texture, since this consonance does not ‘blend’ as effectively when presented in the compound form of an undicesima (the sum of an octave and a fourth) as in the simple interval, and this characteristic manner of writing is accordingly avoided by Navarro. His posthumous collection of Psalmi, hymni ac magnificat totius anni has already been mentioned. It follows the papal Breviarum of 1568 and is thus very similar to Guerrero’s Liber vesperarum. The continued use of music by Navarro and others in Spanish cathedrals means that the discussion here pertains not only to the late sixteenth century but at least as much, if not more, to the whole of the seventeenth century. Ginés de Boluda (c.1545–c.1605), Torrentes’s successor as choirmaster at Toledo Cathedral, produced two In exitu Israel settings based on the tonus peregrinus, the popularity of which seem to have outlived the composer by several generations. The fact that one of these works, probably dating

20 The three works in question are attributed to Robledo by Pedro Calahorra, the editor of Melchor Robledo, Opera polyfonica, vol. 2 (Zaragoza, 1986). MS 13 SXVIII in the Archivo Musical de la Catedral, Zaragoza (E-Zac) comprises both tonus peregrinus works but offers no attribution. One of the works is found also in the library of Abadia de Montserrat (E-MO: MS 2991 Siglo XVII) and is attributed there to Robledo.

21 This applies to the setting found in MS 13 SXVIII fols 21v–24r and Robledo, Opera polyfonica, vol. 2, pp. 226–230.


from the last decade of the sixteenth century, was copied in Toledo as late as 1696 testifies both to the popularity of the fabordón style and to its unchanging nature over more than a hundred years.22 The surviving works of these composers suggest a very direct response to the 1568 Breviarum: Navarro and Boluda are indeed Vespers composers par excellence, their oeuvres comprising almost exclusively psalm and Magnificat settings.

Conclusion

The effect of the 1568 Breviarum on the choice of texts set by Iberian composers may account for the relatively large amount of polyphonic In exitu Israel settings. Stylistically, on the other hand, the Roman influence on this repertory seems to have been less strong than is usually assumed. If anything, regional usages were given preferential treatment to a much greater degree than in other areas at the time. An examination of the choral libraries of Spanish and Portuguese cathedrals shows that collections of music by native composers were favoured over the Franco-Flemish collections that were so popular all over Europe.

This chapter has shown the diversity of compositional approaches to the treatment of the tonus peregrinus. Particularly in the freer sections, local and individual characteristics shine through: the tonus peregrinus and its peculiar properties have not to any extent modified the nature of such a self-absorbed style. All apparent exceptions to this tendency are associated with a clever use (rather than an adoption) of those properties, as one finds, for example, in the work of Guerrero. The less free sections of the settings, on the other hand, often reveal traits that are common to the entire group of composers, all schooled in the living reality of the fabordón tradition. The similarities are surprising, since the idiom is not as schematic as some other falsobordone styles. In the Cancionera de Gandia setting we find an elaborated flexa and free migration of the tonus peregrinus in order to release parts for embellishment at cadences. Here, an essentially Iberian style, as identified by Rubio, is in evidence: in no other sixteenth-century falsobordone idiom are such liberties in relation to the fundamental psalm-tone characteristics tolerated. This concession goes hand in hand, however, with a pervading sense of strictness; in the handling of the cantus firmus these liberties never serve to accommodate it more easily (we have seen that de Cristo and Torrentes in no way compromised with the essential shape of the psalm-tone), and the Catalonian setting illustrates the vast difference between cantus firmus migration and the suspension of the cantus firmus. Rather, this liberty stems from a drive for liturgical elation achieved through ornamentation and diminution. This in turn fosters equality between the voices, a tendency that came to characterize much Iberian and Latin-American music during the seventeenth century. The process reminds one of the judicious observations of Miguel Querol, who in the

22 Stevenson, Spanish Cathedral Music, p. 302.


writings on musical aesthetics by Spanish authors (principally Pedro Ciruelo and Gonzalo Martínez de Bizcargui) discerned three fundamental thoughts: the idea of music as an ars rather than a scientia; its status as an autonomous discipline entirely separated from any other purpose than its own existence; and the idea that sensibility rather than reason is (or should be) its governing principle.23

The dichotomic pair expression–suppression does not seem to make any sense when applied to the compositional techniques found in sixteenth-century Iberian psalmody. The concepts of liberty and rigour do not stand in opposition to one another: a conservative strictness in the presentation of the tonus peregrinus goes hand in hand with a progressive urge to embed the qualities of the psalm-tone in the composition as a whole. Nor can any easy categorizations of form and procedure (as have been attempted by some) be made within this repertory, for there are many variants that defy classification, the most striking being the type of writing encountered in Guerrero’s homophonic sections.24 Rubio’s categories probably make better sense when they are applied to Spanish keyboard fabordón, where a distinction is observed between llamos, featuring plain block chords, and glossados, which employ figuration in the form of scale passages. But in this specifically instrumental idiom ornamentation chiefly occurs in non-cantus firmus parts. In those settings, or the passages within settings, of In exitu Israel that depart most radically from generic fabordón writing, the increased equality of part-writing can be seen in its own right both as an arch-Roman attribute and as an evolution from earlier models quite opposed in its nature to the prevailing cantus firmus techniques adopted in the coeval psalmody of central and northern Europe. The liberties that are taken are not really compromises with, but actually attempted enhancements of, inherited compositional techniques.

23 Querol Gavaldá, ‘Die spanische Musik im 16 Jh’, p. 991.24 Rubio, Classical Polyphony, p. 127: ‘In the study of psalmody two forms must be

distinguished; (a) simple psalm settings, known as fabordones; (b) more florid settings.’

Chapter 8

Total Thematicism and Multi-texted Motets: The Tonus Peregrinus in

Sixteenth-century Roman Catholic Liturgies of Northern and Central Europe

For the purposes of this chapter, ‘northern and central Europe’ is demarcated to the south by the Alps, to the west by France, Belgium and the Netherlands, to the east by Romania, Ukraine and Belarus, and to the north by the Baltic Sea. This area includes present-day Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania as well as parts of Switzerland, Austria and Slovakia. By and large, it also demarcates the area characterized by the common use of the Germanic tonus peregrinus variant, and this is one of the reasons for discussing the region in a separate chapter. The same region loosely corresponds to the areas that were subject to the dissemination of Lutheran thought, but this fact did not in itself have any great practical effect on Catholic liturgies in this area during the sixteenth century. On the other hand, many composers with Protestant sympathies also composed music for the Roman rite; some of them will be mentioned here. Lastly, sixteenth-century tonus peregrinus settings from this area present idiosyncratic features to the extent that a separate chapter for them was unavoidable. Although several of the composers mentioned here arguably reveal Lutheran sympathies, the musical settings under discussion stand unambiguously in a Catholic tradition, bearing in mind that most such music was valid for Lutheran services as well. The main reason for the separate coverage of the works in the present chapter rather than in Chapter 9 is their distinct and manifest deviation from exclusively Lutheran idioms.1

No regional adaptation of the universal Roman Catholic culture reserved Psalm 113 exclusively for the tonus peregrinus, and in the case of sixteenth-century northern Europe there are occasions when a more deliberate separation of the psalm text and the psalm-tone seem to have occurred. An In exitu Israel falsobordone by Thomas Stoltzer (c.1480–1526) is in psalm-tone VIII, as is also

1 To take Othmayr as a case in point, one has only to compare his motets with German texts (also those with no original chorale cantus firmi) with those with Latin texts to observe the marked distinctions of style.


the setting in German by Sixtus Dietrich (c.1490–1548).2 The fact that these works were published by Rhau in volumes containing music clearly intended for both Roman Catholic and Lutheran services may be significant for the choice of psalm-tone. Since the tonus peregrinus was closely associated with the German Magnificat in Protestant areas, these composers may have broken with the tradition of employing it in In exitu Israel settings by design.

Falsobordone

The common convention of notating the first verse of Psalm 113 to the tonus peregrinus in simple falsobordone with fixed word underlay, omitting the rest of the text, suggests a model to be imitated rather than a distinctive musical work. In Example 8.1 we have given such a setting from Enchiridion utriusque musicae practicae, published by Georg Rhau (1488–1548) at Wittenberg in 1538.3 The barlines in our example correspond to slashes provided by Rhau to separate the words of the text underlay. This type of work is in equal measure a practical direction for choristers, a model for composers and a functional liturgical item.

The example is noteworthy for its modal consistency: as a result, it would seem, of its brevity and simplicity, it never even feints at the F major cadence. The supplementary plagal cadence is very much in the style of contemporary ad equales settings of Lutheran chorales; the inclusion of this device in such a minuscule piece of polyphony is indicative of the cultural sphere in which Rhau lived and worked. The harmonic simplicity and the prescriptive word-underlay directions remind one of the humanist ode style as cultivated at this time by the Wittenberg Philippists (followers of Philipp Melanchthon).

The Jena choirbooks, today celebrated as an important source of German and Flemish polyphony, include a tonus peregrinus setting in falsobordone style, setting

2 Vesperarum precum Officia (Wittenberg, 1540. RISM B/I: 15405); Novum ac insigne opus musicum (Wittenberg, 1541, RISM A/I/2: D 3017).

3 Rhau, Enchiridion, fols F viii v–G i r.

Example 8.1 In exitu Israel, Georg Rhau

Total Thematicism and Multi-texted Motets 121

only four of the first eight verses of the psalm in alternatim.4 This appears to reflect the Hebrew numbering, according to which these verses constituted Psalm 114 and the remaining verses Psalm 115. Dating from the first decades of the sixteenth century, it evidences one of the earliest transpositions of the tonus peregrinus.5 In all four verses the composer suspends the main recitation harmonic sonority (G with b molle). In the second verse of our example the auxiliary mediatio cadence is abandoned, exactly as in the setting published by Rhau. In Rhau’s case, that procedure appeared to be an effect of concision; here, on the contrary, it is clearly used for the dual purpose of harmonic variation and unification. The composer of the Jena setting clearly attempted to bridge the tonus peregrinus semi-verses harmonically by circumventing the B cadence. The source gives discantus, altus and bassus in mensural notation, whereas the tonus peregrinus is presented in an older form of black notation. This In exitu Israel stands apart from the other falsobordone psalms in the source, which are otherwise presented in the same Gothic notation in all parts. The greater rhythmic activity of the three outer parts, as compared with the other psalm settings, certainly accounts for the use of mensural notation here. The fact that Psalm 113 alone was granted a more elaborate setting testifies once again to its central role in solemn Vespers.

As has been shown in earlier chapters, psalmodic falsobordone gradually lost its melodic connection with the psalm-tones during the sixteenth century. In the

4 Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Jena (D-Ju), MS 34, fols 67 v, 68 r.5 Erbacher believes that MS 34 was compiled some time between 1510 and 1520

(Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 100).




second half of that century it had become first and foremost a modal framework, sometimes with only perfunctory allusion to the melodic formula itself. Such a setting of In exitu Israel has survived in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Example 8.2). Apart from the all-pervading modal characteristics of the tonus peregrinus – the archetypical cadential pattern – the melodic traces of the psalm-tone in settings like this are normally limited to the incipit figure and the drive to the final f of the mediatio. Here, however, that f is discarded in favour of its third (a) in the tenor part, as is the final note of what seems to be an allusion to the terminatio in the altus part (bb. 7–10). In more extreme cases, the tonus peregrinus mode was altogether discarded, as in Example 8.3. Apart from the flat inflection in b. 8, the mode is Dorian with a mediatio cadence on A altogether foreign to the tonus peregrinus. We shall subsequently see this deviation from the typical tonus peregrinus cadences occur more consistently in later settings of Psalm 113.

In some cases of freer falsobordone there are perceptible remnants of the melodic contour of the tonus peregrinus, enabling us to place the setting in a context relating to the tonus peregrinus dialect. The setting shown in Example 8.4 is complicated in this respect. The music for the psalm verses (bb. 1–8) seems to presuppose a Germanic incipit – the Roman variant would not be consonant here – whereas that variant is ruled out by the given voices in the doxology (bb. 9–16). In the psalm verses an incipit-like figure is given in the altus, and the terminatio appears accurately in the tenor (bb. 5–8). In the doxology the melodic tonus peregrinus references become less marked. Unlike in the two other settings from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the climax of this doxology is achieved not through ornamentation but through harmony. The harmonic shift to the


mediant in bb. 9–10 is subtle but highly effective (in a falsobordone based more strictly on the tonus peregrinus, this would support the b flexa). A more striking mediant-ward progression is that occurring in b. 14. Even if the terminatio is not present here, this setting points forward to the greater harmonic latitude of seventeenth-century tonus peregrinus settings. The choirbook from which the last two examples have been drawn was copied in 1622. The music itself must date to the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or shortly after that, on account of not only its harmonic scope but also the rhythmically balanced writing at cadences – something that is rarely encountered in sixteenth-century falsobordone-based music. Nevertheless, this example has been included in the present chapter, since it relates to the sixteenth-century development under discussion.



Orlandus Lassus (1532–94), chapel master at the Munich court and composer extraordinaire, set the tonus peregrinus in In exitu Israel falsobordone several times. One six-part setting shows effectively how much detail could be applied to the word-setting.6 All verses are given, essentially to the same music, with meticulous attention to syllabic length and word stress in each individual situation. The cadential flourishes in some of the parts sound rather forced in a performance at a normal pace of declamation. This extreme diminution suggests a much slower performance tempo than that which one would otherwise deem natural.7 In another Bavarian source we find a small four-part falsobordone setting of Psalm 113, likewise by Lassus.8 Here, the composer uses the Roman tonus peregrinus intonation. It is emblematic that Lassus, the globetrotter who never let either his Flemish background or the German environment in which he was mostly active dictate the prevalence of any particular style or genre, should use two plainsong dialects from two widely different traditions. Similarly, one finds that the Italian-born and -educated Gregorio Turini (c.1555–96) used the Germanic incipit in his falsobordone setting from Cantiones admodem devotae cum aliquot Psalmis, which is in keeping with his working at the Habsburg courts in Vienna and Prague.9

Liturgical, instructional and eulogizing figuraliter works

The sixteenth century saw the gradual development of distinct regional styles, and it has been noted that composers of northern Europe favoured a type of polyphony based on strict thematicism at a time when other cultural environments sought liberation from cantus firmus techniques.10 A work typifying this tendency is found in Ein kurtz deutsche Musica by Martin Agricola (c.1485–1556).11 Rather than being works directly intended for liturgical purposes, the polyphonic items in Agricola’s treatise are academic examples of polyphonic composition and modal doctrine. His In exitu Israel is labelled Vom frembden Tono, a translation that provides insight into Agricola’s understanding of the peregrinus concept,

6 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (D-Mbs), Mus. MS 2748, fols 2–17: In exitu Israel de Aegypto – 6 – vocum – Anno – 1581– die – 15 – Julij – Orl– .de Lasso – Autore.

7 The flourishes are not, as one might be led to think, reflections of, for example, words like ambulabunt (‘they walk’); they appear similarly in all verses, regardless of text.

8 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS 12/2 fol. 17 r. This setting is very simple in style and scope and uses the same notation for all verses without separate text underlay. Yet another setting is found in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mus. MS 55.

9 Gregorio Turini Cantiones admodem devotae cum aliquot Psalmis (Venice, 1589).10 Lowinsky, ‘Canon Technique’.11 Martin Agricola, Ein kurtz deutsche Musica (Wittenberg, 1528, RISM A/I/1: A

436). Agricola was a Lutheran, holding the position of cantor and Lateinschule teacher in Magdeburg. Since his In exitu Israel stands in the mainstream tradition of the Western Church, it has been included here rather than in Chapter 9.


which was probably shared by other composers and choristers in his German-speaking milieu.

Even if In exitu Israel von frembden Tono epitomizes equality of part-writing to a significant degree, the tenor part has an overriding cantus firmus function; this part does not contain any free material and is the only one to include the terminatio figure (Example 8.5). Throughout the work, the mediatio has been altered by a final ascent to g (see b. 7, tenor part), seemingly in order to dovetail the two pitch levels of imitation (it could possibly be interpreted as a link between mediatio and second tenor: note how the two semi-verses are linked in the altus part). This permits the brief and condensed configuration desirable in a short ‘academic’ example such as this. As a result of this mediatio overlap, the work never reduces beyond a three-part texture once all parts have entered. Bars 1–9 cover the first

Example 8.5 In exitu Israel, Martin Agricola


semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus in canon for paired voices. It is likely that the composer would have structured this work in canon throughout, had not brevity been a prerequisite in a didactic example of this kind (canon at the fifth in the second semi-verse would not permit interlocking cadences such as those in the first half). As it stands, the technique could be described as ‘total thematicism’, using the cantus prius factus in all parts and introducing free part-writing only when this is necessitated by a final cadence.12

12 This term is of course not to be connected to similar concepts in twentieth-century music.

Example 8.6 In exitu Israel, Georgius Libanus


Agricola’s work can be fruitfully compared with a remarkable In exitu Israel setting found in De musicae laudibus oratio (1540) by the Polish theorist Georgius Libanus (1464–c.1550). It is significant that both settings have a pedagogical, rather than liturgical, raison d’être. Libanus devoted an entire chapter to the tonus peregrinus, and his In exitu Israel is one of only two polyphonic examples in his entire treatise. As can be seen from Example 8.6, the short piece is based exclusively on the tonus peregrinus, with an absolute minimum of free material, taking the principle of total thematicism even further than Agricola.

The work is most ingeniously crafted, using rests of varying length to fit the four separate tonus peregrinus statements together. Unlike Agricola, who altered the mediatio in order to dovetail the entries, Libanus finishes the first semi-verse in traditional fashion on f, leaving a more open texture and a rather static rhythm and harmony in bb. 5–10. The effect of this is striking, and the eccentricity of this style makes one regret that no further works by Libanus have survived. It is impossible to identify any single one of the parts as the cantus firmus: leaving aside the cadence in the last four bars of our example, they exhibit an absolute equality of thematic content. Nor could the work be described as a canon pure and simple, since the meticulous and varied use of rests does not interconnect any two or three parts more closely than the other part(s); there is thus no canonic ‘core’ to the work.

Libanus is an able contrapuntalist (a lesser composer would not have managed to introduce the terminatio figure to all four parts – albeit in modified form in the bassus, bb. 11–12 – with such facility), but the difference between Libanus and Agricola in respect of their two settings of Psalm 113 is not one of contrapuntal skill (judging from Agricola’s oeuvre, he follows faithfully the older Flemish tradition and in technique is second to none of his German contemporaries) but rather one of compositional strategy. Libanus chooses to perfect the total thematicism rather than to adapt the tonus peregrinus through free writing or the outward emulation of better-established contemporary genres. His is an artistic ideal that was already outmoded by his time: the scholastic notion of ‘mechanistic’ composition from pre-existent material.13 The veneration of plainsong, as emanating from divine inspiration and passed on by the pious, and the markedly ‘structuralist’ approach to composition conform to the immensely influential views of St Thomas Aquinas, who stated that only God could create, because what is itself created (man) cannot

13 This mediaeval conception is best exemplified in the writings of Johannes de Grocheio: In componendo partes prædictas debet artifex dictamen vel materiam ab alio, puta theologo vel legista, recipere, et post hoc formam ei debitam debet musicus applicare. Sic enim ad invicem se iuvant artes mechanicæ, ut in sutoria et corii præparatura sensui fit apertum: ‘In composing the mentioned sections [of the Mass] the artist must receive the text or subject matter from another person, the theologian or the theorist, after which the musician should apply to it the appropriate form. Thus the lines of craft support one another, as is clear to see in the workshop of the shoemaker or the skin tanner’ (De musica [c.1300], in E. Rohloff (ed.), Media latinitas musica, vol. 2 [Leipzig, 1943], pp. 41–67, at p. 66).


itself create.14 The total thematicism can in this way be viewed as conservative on a philosophical level – but this manner of composing is in reality also innovative, fusing as it does the principles of cantus firmus writing with the ‘modern’ technique of structural imitation dispensing with the obbligo of precisely canonic structure. In the case of Libanus, the result might seem to border on not being true composition at all, but we shall analyse the ways that the composer employs the tonus peregrinus in his method.

Under normal circumstances, the tonus peregrinus terminatio is problematic for purposes of imitation on account of the clash that arises between the descending fourths at two simultaneous pitch levels. In order to include that melodic figure at two pitch levels, composers normally have one cadence with the terminatio in the part that operates at the fifth, and conclude with the ‘original’ pitch cadence only after this. Libanus, however, manages to include the terminatio in a four-part stretto (bb. 11–16; only the varied use of rests prevents it from being a canon). He rather deviously employs a special differentia variant in the tenor part only (this is in reality a rather common variant of the terminatio, and has thus nothing in common with Agricola’s altered mediatio) to support the terminatio of the altus part (see vv. 15–16, tenor part) – almost as if he wished to shun free material of any kind. This differentia takes on the function of free writing but also acts, de facto, as the first tonus peregrinus semi-verse at original pitch (only the f is omitted). It is otherwise the mediatio that is the key to Libanus’s effective treatment of the tonus peregrinus. Whereas Agricola modified this figure, Libanus is able to assimilate this descending tetrachord at two simultaneous pitch levels. The texture is consequently bare and transparent, with a static rhythm – even if the result fortunately never resembles the wooden imitation at the octave found in the works of so many lesser composers in northern Europe from this period. Hexachordal transposition and permutation is evident in bb. 14–18, where the material in the two middle parts observes a common series of solmization syllables without having a common interval pattern: the tenor changes from natural to hard hexachord between the g in b. 14 and the a in b. 15, then to soft hexachord at the ensuing b. The altus changes from hard to soft hexachord between d and c and then to natural at the following d in b. 16. This gives both parts the hexachord syllables sol–re–fa–ri–me in this passage.15 So it seems that even those elements which at first sight appear non-thematic, certainly do relate to the psalm-tone.

In comparing the two items of Agricola and Libanus, one must take into consideration the possibility of the former exerting influence on the latter. It is far from impossible that Libanus was familiar with Ein kurz deudsche Musica,

14 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I: 45.5.15 This manner of permutation was later to be termed inganno and is not infrequently

found in early-seventeenth-century instrumental music (see John Harper, ‘Frescobaldi’s Early “Inganni” and Their Background’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 105 (1978–1979): 1–12; John Harper, ‘Inganno’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 12, 2nd edn (London, 2001), p. 379.


which appeared in print on three occasions and was in all probability disseminated throughout all German-speaking regions.16 It is ironic that the ‘hyperthematic’ style of composition showcased by Agricola and Libanus should be cultivated in a region where composers were otherwise renowned for producing alluring and intensive middle parts of free invention – something that is to some extent evident in German Roman Catholic motets of this time, but perhaps most of all in the secular Tenorlied tradition and the Torgau chorale tradition following Johann Walter (1496–1570).17 Once again, the didactic purpose of the two treatises provides the key to understanding the condensed and technical method of the two psalm settings.18 Total thematicism could be taught from such examples, whereas the free part-writing described by Walter was expected to result from compositional spontaneity.

Significant traces of the Tenorlied legacy emerge in a three-part In exitu Israel by the Königsberg court trumpeter and composer Johann Kugelmann (c.1495–1542), who, just as in the anonymous Jena setting, set only verses from the first half of the psalm, thus once again suggesting an influence from the Hebrew numbering.19 Kugelmann follows in a strict cantus firmus tradition, the tonus peregrinus being shared in different verses between tenor and bassus. The cantus part features the type of octave leap that we recognise from the Tenorlied repertory. Kugelmann’s consistent use of the terminatio variant d–f–g–e–d, producing very strong progressions at cadences, and his crossing of parts also add to the ‘old German’ character of this work. In most instances, this part-crossing is only indistinctly conservative – for instance, in the terminatio cadences of bb. 11–12

16 The second edition appeared in 1529 and the third in 1533 (on the latter occasion with the title Musica choralis deudsch). All editions were printed and published in Wittenberg.

17 Walter described the altus part poetically: Im halse hab ich wenig Ruh, / scharf ist mein Stimm und snell dazu: ‘I have little stillness in my throat, my voice is sharp and fast at that.’ Similarly, the vagantus (a fifth middle part) describes itself: Mein Stimm sucht alle Winkel um, / Vagant ich heiße billig drum. / Schön künstlich mein Stimm sich verdreht / in Örter, da es ledig steht: ‘My voice seeks out every corner, therefore I am rightly called Vagant [wandering scholar], all artificially my voice twists, into places which are unfilled’ (Lob und Preis der himmlischen Kunst Musica [Wittenberg, 1564], p. 55). The last line could refer either to complementary figuration (indeed common in the vagantus parts of Walter) or to harmonic reinforcement, producing notes that could not be reached by the four other parts.

18 It is believed that falsobordone settings in manuscript served primarily as instructional pieces. While this could be doubted in the case of these In exitu Israel settings – first and foremost on account of their inclusion in the liturgical sources Mus. MS 55 and Mus. MS 2748 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (D-Mbs), and second by considering how individual verses are treated separately – this would otherwise constitute one more instance of singling out the tonus peregrinus as an exemplary case (see Chapter 3).

19 Johann Kugelmann, Concentus Novi trium vocum (Augsburg, 1540, RISM A/I/5: K 2967).


(see Example 8.7), where it seems to be a remnant of the practice whereby the bassus would ascend by octave to the a in high position (with the tenor in a low position providing the cadential progression; here, it is unusually high, operating in the same register as the discantus). The bassus has a limited harmonic function, the part-writing basically being 2 + 1, so far as voice-leading is concerned. This would result – for example, in the first verse (b. 6) – in a characteristically strong terminatio cadence with its resolution on F, but the bassus is employed in order to thwart that cadential procedure. In b. 41 this harmonic procedure is combined with increased motion of the bassus, merging the two semi-verses very effectively.

Example 8.7 In exitu Israel, Johann Kugelmann


When Kugelmann uses the two semi-verses as a divider for migratory cantus firmus writing (for example, between bassus and cantus in the verse A facie Domine), both parts retain the second incipit figure. In cases such as this, he is still prone to conclude with his preferred terminatio variant in the tenor (bb. 35–36). This conforms to the contemporary tenor-centred German music theory, according to which it was generally held that the cantus firmus alone defined the mode of a work.20 It is noticeable that the characteristic cadence in F is replaced by a terminatio in a D minor sonority in three verses out of four, just as in the German falsobordone settings discussed earlier. It is possible that this trait, occurring so strangely often in sources from central and northern Europe, is connected with the theoretical tradition from the same area.

The In exitu Israel of Ludwig Senfl (c.1485–1542/3) is a work in free style but containing elements reminiscent of the falsobordone framework.21 Here, there is no reflection of the Hebrew division of the psalm, nor a case of a straightforward alternatim work: vv. 1, 3, 7, 9, 12, 14, 17, 19, 26 and the lesser doxology are set polyphonically. Each of the four parts can in many instances be traced to one main function in a substructure of 6/3 chords following the psalm-tone. The fullest statements of the tonus peregrinus occur in the tenor part. The composer is stylistically much more ‘Germanic’ here than in his motets in freely imitative style or even in his cantus firmus works. In this In exitu Israel there is a marked predominance of imitation at the octave. It seems as if Senfl wished to reject the clear bipartite structure within psalm verses so characteristic of falsobordone-based motets. Again, clear F major terminatio cadences are avoided, creating a strong momentum – something that is often enhanced rhythmically by overlapping entries in parts not involved in the cadence (see Example 8.8, b. 11). There are also occurrences of strict cantus firmus treatment, a style of writing in which Senfl was a natural master; bb. 38–45 exemplify this: the tonus peregrinus lies in the tenor, while the outer parts engage in imitation based on diminuted fragments. The repetitions of the incipit of the second semi-verse are in all probability intended to illustrate the word omnia (‘everything’). In the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus the bassus proceeds momentarily in canon at the lower fifth, only one beat behind the tenor. What is interesting here is the employment of the Roman tonus peregrinus incipit (bb. 38–39). This is found in this verse only and provides a clear indication that Senfl was aware of the existence of different plainsong traditions.

20 See Werbeck, Studien zur deutschen Tonartenlehre, and Mattias Lundberg, ‘Canon and Cantus Firmus for the Edification of the Laity in Early Lutheran Music’, in B. Blackburn and K. Schiltz (eds), Canons and Canonic Techniques 14th–16th Centuries: Theory, Practice and Reception History (Leuven, 2007), pp. 221–234, for further discussion of this tendency in treatises by Martin Agricola, Hermann Finck (1527–58) and Gallus Dressler (1533–c.1585).

21 Officia Paschalia: De Resurrectione et ascensione Domini (Wittenberg, 1539, RISM B/I: 153914).


Example 8.8 In exitu Israel, Ludwig Senfl



Senfl allows the tonus peregrinus truly to ‘peregrinate’ in relation to both the text underlay and the polyphonic structure as a whole. The verse A facie Domine starts, as usual, with the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus; after a shift to triple metre the text of the verse concludes with the second semi-verse (see bb. 23–26). After this, the text of the second semi-verse is repeated with the tonus peregrinus terminatio transposed (tenor part, bb. 27–30), resulting in a cadence that gives the impression of a return to the first semi-verse (note also the treatment of facie as a word of two rather than three syllables: this prosody is occasionally encountered in sixteenth-century sources, especially in triple metre). There seems to be no possibility of explaining this in terms of Figurenlehre; nor is it necessitated by the structure of the text (unlike some other verses of Psalm 113, A facie Domine is not tripartite in configuration). In the ensuing verse, Non nobis Domine, the incipit has been altered in the tenor (b. 31). This was no modal necessity arising from the preceding F major cadence. So why Senfl chose this form of incipit precisely here remains similarly obscure. The effect of this is modal change with unexpected emphasis on g in the first semi-verse. Another oddity in modal treatment is the cadence on C in bb. 87–89, something that implies either modal transposition or an allusion to the antiphon ending (with the g in the tenor), since it occurs in the verse Nos qui vivimus.

Taking into consideration these sophisticated solutions and care for detail, one must disagree with Walter Gerstenberg, who described this work as a Gebrauchskomposition eines binnendeutschen Kleinmeisters ohne höheren künstlerischen Anspruch: ‘functional composition by a native German minor master without higher artistic ambition’.22 Gerstenberg questioned Senfl’s authorship on the grounds of this perceived lack of sophistication, taking as his source a Zwickau manuscript where this In exitu Israel appears as an anonymous work. The 1539 print from which we have transcribed the work does not mention Senfl, but a later manuscript replacement for the lost tenor part book of the copy held by the British Library is headed Psalmus In enim Israel L. Senfel. As has been made clear, we see no reason to challenge the attribution to Senfl on specifically musical grounds.

22 Quoted in Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, pp. 103–104.



The single psalm verse Non nobis Domine also plays an independent role by triggering an unexpected appearance of the tonus peregrinus in a work by Caspar Othmayr (1515–53). Othmayr was a leading cultivator of the strange Symbola genre comprising works that performed the function of honouring celebrated individuals, often in the form of quodlibet compositions connecting the dedicatee of the work with cultural ‘tags’ in the form of their own poetry, passages of Scripture, quotations from Greek and Roman literature and so on. In his Symbola illustrissimorum … præstantium virorum Musicis numeris explicata, tomus primus,23 Othmayr offered ‘tribute’ works of this kind in praise of, among others, Prince Frederick II of the Palatinate, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. Throughout the collection the tenor part is used as the bearer of an (alleged) motto proper to the dedicatee. The recipient of the work Summe opifex rerum (secunda pars: omnis namque tibi) is Rochus Schofer, prebendary vicar of Ansbach. Schofer is portrayed by the motto Non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam (‘Not we, Lord, but your name shall be honoured’) from Psalm 113.24 For this reason, Othmayr presents the tonus peregrinus as the cantus firmus in Summe opifex rerum. This is not really a liturgical work in the strict sense, but since the tonus peregrinus has been included in the composition by virtue of its theological, and possibly also liturgical, connotations, it is appropriate briefly to discuss it at this point.

In this Symbola the tonus peregrinus is repeated five times in the tenor part, always in the same form and always separated by the same amount of mensuration. It is thus clear that the compositional procedure was in essence ‘successive’, even if the other parts may have been conceived simultaneously. Given this passacaglia-like cantus firmus method, one would expect the tonus peregrinus to dominate the polyphonic flow, dividing the piece into sections according to the harmonic plan of its archetypical cadence pattern. The effect of the work, however, is rather the opposite. Othmayr employs a terminatio that does not close on d but rises to a (see Example 8.9, bb. 105–107). This is no documented liturgical tonus peregrinus variant and is most likely an amendment made for polyphonic-technical reasons; it widens the choice of cadence degrees and prevents the tonus peregrinus from inhibiting the dense and harmonically varied activity of the four other parts. The tonus peregrinus is set apart musically from these in the same way that its text remains distinct from that sung by the other voices.25 This does not mean that the components are disconnected, but

23 Caspar Othmayr, Symbola illustrissimorum … præstantium virorum Musicis numeris explicata, tomus primus (Nuremberg, 1547, RISM A/I/6: O 261). Montanus himself is eulogized by a work in the publication.

24 It is hard to determine with any certainty to what extent the mottoes in Symbola illustrissimorum represent bona fide maxims of the dedicatees, and to what extent they are Othmayr’s original representations of each dedicatee.

25 The very notion that this psalm verse should occur as a motto in an eulogy such as this is almost ironic: Schofer is lauded as a model of piety, diligence and learning, while the tenor part states: ‘Not we, Lord, but your name shall be honoured’.


Example 8.9 Summe opifex rerum, Caspar Othmayr


only that the tonus peregrinus is integrated rather than showcased in the work. The free parts with eulogistic text frequently take up material directly derived from the tonus peregrinus. The first imitative motif in bb. 1–7, for example, originates from the incipit of the second semi-verse.

Conventional psalm motets generally reflect the customs of plainsong in polyphonic terms, as regards the treatment of the psalm-tone elements. These are principles that Othmayr disregards totally in Summe opifex rerum. The initial note of the mediatio, in plainsong normally only a light, unaccented inflexion of the recitation, is used here to support a strong harmonic shift (b. 97). This becomes possible in the given instance only because the tonus peregrinus is functioning primarily not as a liturgical method of recitation but as a theological motto.

Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig holds a manuscript In exitu Israel by Martin Agricola,26 which surprisingly has been little discussed and never published in a modern edition, nor does it seem to have been much disseminated in the sixteenth-century.27 Agricola uses an odd mixture of white mensuration and older forms of notation – something that ostensibly points to an early date of composition, although one should be wary of drawing any chronological conclusions from

26 Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig (D-LEu), MS 49/50, previously in the Thomasschule archives, Leipzig (D-LEt).

27 This work is analysed in Heinz Funck, ‘Martin Agricola: Ein frühprotestantischer Schulmusiker’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Freiburg, 1933).


Example 8.10 In exitu Israel, Martin Agricola


notation alone, especially in the case of a provincial autodidact such as Agricola.28 Throughout the sixteenth century there is a marked tendency towards using half-coloured ligatures in manuscripts and dotted notes in prints – we have many examples of this in the shape of works appearing in both forms. In the case of Agricola’s In exitu Israel, we find no such correlation. We have nevertheless interpreted his use of half-colouration to signify a quadruple rather than triple subdivision. The work is a polyphonic tour-de-force with much variation not only throughout the odd-numbered verses set but also within separate verses.

In this In exitu Israel Agricola takes a unique approach to the tonus peregrinus and the antiphon Nos qui vivimus. Instead of framing the psalm with the antiphon, as his Flemish contemporaries customarily did, he builds the antiphon melody with its text into the motet – not in its appropriate place, as Senfl did, but embedded in the verse Quid est tibi mare quod fugisti? In consequence of this, the texts of two psalm-verses occur simultaneously: one with the antiphon melody and one with the tonus peregrinus.29 As is seen in Example 8.10, four voices are involved in a

28 The notations of manuscripts and of prints represent two partially separate practices, as is clearly observable in composers with many works extant in both types of source, such as Lassus.

29 Curiously, Agricola uses a Roman dialect of the antiphon, and not the version with Spitztöne of Germanic type. He was certainly aware of at least some of the Flemish


self-contained piece of polyphony on the tonus peregrinus employing the Quid est mare tibi text, while a second discantus devotes itself to Nos qui vivimus in a cantus firmus-like manner. Over the last plagal cadence the altus, too, participates in the antiphon (bb. 34–38).

The way in which this is done highlights how Agricola conceived the relationship between psalm-tone and antiphon; the antiphon ‘spills over’ more in respect of text than of music, since the short antiphon phrase occurring in the altus is a passage that is indistinguishable from the psalm-tone material. The two verses joined in this manner are not conspicuously related theologically; nor do the verses follow each other in the psalm. It seems plausible that Agricola envisaged the antiphon text as some kind of rejoinder to the rhetorical question posed by the Quid est tibi mare verse. Unlike many other German-born composers, and particularly those of the Lutheran confession, Agricola is remarkably free in his conception of the (once) inherent connection of the cantus firmus and tenor part.30 With surprising frequency, the cantus firmus is assigned to the discantus rather than to the tenor.

Agricola is clearly concerned by the desirability of variation in contrapuntal patterns, but musical texture is not involved in this variation. There are no bicinium passages similar to those encountered in the music of contemporary Flemish composers. Instead, the overall texture is dense and the number of voices used for a verse is governed by thematic considerations: strict cantus firmus verses are cast in four parts; quasi-canonic verses in five, as is also the case when two different cantus firmi (psalm-tone and antiphon) are employed. This is in keeping with the main corpus of German polyphony in the first half of the sixteenth century (and, in the case of music for the Lutheran service, right through the century).

Conclusion

The works discussed in this chapter, although different among themselves as regards idiom, function and compositional pattern, have many stylistic features in common, and it is highly interesting that several of these are directly connected

In exitu Israel settings, all of which very obviously employ the Roman Nos qui vivimus. Being active in Lutheran surroundings, he may have been more familiar with the psalm-tone than with the antiphon – so the latter may well have been appropriated directly from a polyphonic work.

30 Compare the view of Johann Walter: Mittelstimme, Tenor ich heiß / Vorzug für andern hab im Kreis. / Steh fest und halt die andern an, / Im Gesang hört man meinen Ton. / Choral, mein Richtschnur, ist das Ziel, / Auf welchs sieht, was nicht irren will: ‘Middle part, tenor, is my name. I have pride of place over the others in the group. I stand firm and hold the others together. In singing one can hear my psalm-tone [cantus firmus]. Choral [cantus firmus], my foundation, is the goal that all seek who do not wish to err’ (Lob und Preis, p. 54).


with the tonus peregrinus. First, one is struck by the very consistent use of the Germanic incipit figure; in this respect, the works are valuable complements to plainsong sources for research into chant dialects. Second, the tonus peregrinus is over-represented in pedagogical sources. This fact testifies to its perceived importance in polyphonic applications and evidences the persistence of a tendency already discussed in Chapter 3. The third palpable observation is that sixteenth-century composers from central and northern Europe remarkably often forsook the traditional tonus peregrinus harmonization (especially with the mediatio cadence) for a modally consistent cadential structure. The chief factor behind this procedure appears to have been a highly tenor-centred tradition of modal theory, but since the ‘tonic’ mediatio cadence is frequently combined with merging devices in non-cantus firmus parts, it seems also to have served as a means of amalgamating the two psalm-tone semi-verses. The fourth and most striking idiosyncrasy of central and northern In exitu Israel settings, however, is that the texts and melodies of Psalm 113 and the antiphon Nos qui vivimus appear to have been regarded as much more closely linked in a liturgical sense than was true for other areas of Europe. This led composers to absorb the antiphon into the psalm setting in various ways, two of which are demonstrated by Agricola and Senfl.

Lastly, it has been noted that Catholic composers of German-speaking lands distinguished between two parts of the Vulgate Psalm 113 – exactly according to the Hebrew numbering (Pss 114, 115) that had been re-established in Protestant Bibles. It seems, accordingly, as if this way of thinking of the Psalms in central and northern Europe was not restricted to Lutherans or to German Bible translations but also influenced some Catholics, such as Senfl.


Chapter 9

Mit Szonderlicher Ziemlicher Weisz: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century

Lutheranism

Leaving aside the sporadic use of the tonus peregrinus in different psalm settings, canticles and devotional works, we have so far covered only one strictly ‘fixed’ polyphonic application of the tonus peregrinus – that of Psalm 113: In exitu Israel. In consequence of the Lutheran Reformation the psalm-tone was to gain two other recurrent liturgical uses: firstly in connection with the vernacular Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), which in Western liturgy was otherwise normally sung to one of psalm-tones I–VIII (depending on de tempore antiphons) in the special canticle variants, and secondly as responses to the Benediction at the Mass and Vespers, with verses from Psalm 67 (Gott sei uns gnädig). Exceptionally, but sufficiently often to represent an essential tradition, mediaeval Western liturgies proposed the tonus peregrinus (which in the vast majority of sources does not possess a canticle form), for the Magnificat. The reason why a new, Protestant, branch of the Western Church chose such a peculiar recitation formula as the sole ‘official’ melody of the vernacular Magnificat has not been convincingly established. In attempting to understand why this came to pass, there are several points that need to be considered. A pre-existent local tradition is a possibility, although there are doubts about this.1 Even if it one day becomes possible to establish how the tonus peregrinus came to be used with the New Testament canticle in the fifteenth century, an explanation of why this connection became codified by the Lutheran reformers may remain elusive.

Robin Leaver has drawn attention to the fact that the order of vernacular psalms and canticles in Klug’s Gesangbuch of 1533 initially follow (with a hiatus of four items for which no notation is given) the order of the psalm-tones.2 After the first seven regular tones have been used, and psalm-tone III having been repeated, follows the Magnificat (to the tonus peregrinus), Benedictus (to psalm-tone VII) and the Nunc dimittis (to psalm-tone VIII). The tonus peregrinus thus follows in order, intercalated between psalm-tones VII and VIII. It is possible that the Magnificat was either placed there on account of its previously allocated psalm-tone, or (less likely) that the psalm-tone was allocated to the canticle due

1 Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 33–34.2 Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications

(Cambridge, 2007), p. 254.


to the previously decided position of the latter. In any event Leaver has argued that it was Luther himself that allocated these melodies to the canticles, and also that he was responsible for the simplified forms in which some of them are given.3

The early Lutheran enchiridia typically included a body of vernacular songs along with the orders of worship for Vespers, Compline, Matins and Mass. If we take the Magdeburg Enchiridion of 1536 as our model, we find a Vespers order readily recognizable from the Roman Catholic tradition:

1. Antiphon: Kum hillige geist Here Godt2. Collect: O Barmhertige Godt3. Psalm 114 (Vulg. 113): Do Israel vth Egypten töch4. Magnificat: Min Seele erheuet den Heren5. Paternoster6. Collect: O Almechtige Godt7. Collect: O Güdige Godt 4

The ‘juxtaposition theory’ – that the Magnificat should have been connected with the tonus peregrinus due to its proximity to Psalm 113 in Vespers – and the fact that the tonus peregrinus had occasionally been used with the Magnificat throughout the Middle Ages are by themselves incapable of explaining why no psalm-tone other than the tonus peregrinus attained such a prominent position, seeing that the Magnificat in the Roman Vespers appeared together with a variety of other psalms. In view of the centralized nature of the Lutheran Mass orders, it is certainly a possibility that the new Vespers use was instigated, just like that of the Mass, by central authority. Henrik Glahn, in tracing the occurrence of the tonus peregrinus in Danish liturgies of the late sixteenth century, believed that it reached Danish prints via the northern German liturgies prepared by Johann Bugenhagen (1485–1558) and that it came originally from the centre of the Reformation itself.5 What reasons could there be for the Wittenberg reformers to deliberately choose a collateral psalm-tone for the canticle of Mary, in order to set it apart from the other canticles? A letter from Luther addressed to Duke Johann Friedrich, Duke of

3 Ibid.4 Enchiridion Geistliker leder vnde Psalmen [1536], ed. S.A. Christ, Emory Texts and

Studies of Ecclesiastical Life 2 (Atlanta, 1994), pp. lxxxii–lxxxvi. This volume was almost certainly prepared with significant input of Martin Agricola, whose tonus peregrinus settings were discussed in Chapter 8. In numerous other instances, for example in the Wittenberg order of 1533, the German Magnificat was connected with the antiphon Christum unsern Heiland.

5 Henrik Glahn, Melodistudier til den lutherske salmesangs historie fra 1524 til ca. 1600 (Copenhagen, 1954), vol. 1, p. 61. Glahn draws attention to the fact that a manuscript predating most of the northern German prints states that this melody should be used with the Magnificat on Sundays, according to the use of Wittenberg.

The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century Lutheranism 145

Saxony reads: Es ist auch nit ein unbillicher brauch, das inn allen kirchen diesz lied teglich unn der Vesper, dazu mit szonderlicher ziemlicher weisz fur [vor?] anderm gesang gesungen wirt. ‘Neither is it an inappropriate practice, that we sing this song [the Magnificat] daily at Vespers in all churches, or that it is even sung in a special, particular way [or ‘with a special particular melody’] in preference to other songs.’6

This was written already in March 1521, from which time we have no extant source evidence that Meine Seele erhebt den Herren was sung to the tonus peregrinus in Saxony.7 It is therefore highly unlikely that Weisz (regardless of whether the word refers to ‘way’ or ‘melody’) should here refer to the practice of singing the Magnificat to the tonus peregrinus. It remains, however, a passage that is pertinent to our topic, since it evidences a desire to set the canticle apart from items of lesser liturgical and theological importance. If one were to adapt it to a vernacular service such as the Sunday Vespergottesdienst, a szonderlicher ziemlicher Weisz would be desirable, but it would have to be standardized and possibly simplified. What must have been obvious to every Protestant chorister is the peculiar musical construction of the tonus peregrinus and its analogy with the textual meaning of the Magnificat. Unlike the majority of psalms and canticles, the text of the Magnificat is not based primarily on a parallelismus membrorum of agreement, since the canticles of the New Testament differ from the older poetic tradition both syllabically and in significance – something that remains evident in Latin and German translations.8 The alternating tenor degree, problematic when expressing this parallelismus in psalms, proved in fact an advantage for the portrayal of the contrasted meaning of the Magnificat semi-verses (with, for example, chastisement of the mighty represented by the higher recitation degree and empowerment of the weak by the lower). We shall

6 Martin Luther, Werke, vol. 8 (Weimar, 1897), pp. 33–34.7 Germanist and Luther scholar Birgit Stolt has in private correspondence remarked

on Luther’s lack of distinction between vor and für. Regarding Luther’s use of the word sonderlich, one is reminded of his preface to Johann Walter’s Geistliches Gesangbuchlein (published in Wittenberg in several large editions from 1524 onwards), where he wishes to see all the arts in the service of their creator, sonderlich die Musica (‘especially music’). The state of the sources does not permit a reliable estimate of when the tonus peregrinus was first applied in its new function. The 1520s were, of course, very chaotic for the reformers, and it was not until late in that decade that they could begin to consolidate the practical details of school and Church.

8 Ulrike Mittman-Richert: So erweist sich für beide Hymnen, Magnifikat wie Benediktus, eine äußere Struktur als charakteristisch, die der Auflösung der strengen formalen Kriterien in der zeitgenössischen jüdischen Poesie entspricht: ‘Thus both canticles, Magnificat as well as Benedictus, reveal a characteristic external surface that corresponds to the liberation from strict and formal principles in contemporary Jewish poetry’ (Magnifikat und Benediktus: Die ältesten Zeugnisse der judenchristlichen Tradition von der Geburt des Messias [Tübingen, 1996], p. 161).


see, in due course, that Lutheran composers responded well musically to this substructure of the text in its German translation.

Since the tonus peregrinus possessed no festive maioris form, its suitability for canticles could be rightly questioned.9 In the light of this, it is possible that the Lutheran reformers approached this issue from the opposing viewpoint. With original texts, they could rely on original music in the form of mensural chorale melodies. For strophic translations, either melodies could be adapted from a concomitant Roman model (for example: Victimae paschali laudes, a sequence from Roman liturgy to Christ ist erstanden, a pre-Reformation text and melody to Christ lag in Todesbanden, Luther’s adaptation of text and melody) or, once again, original melodies (for example, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, a paraphrase of Psalm 46) could be created. The Magnificat was, as we have seen, theologically central to the Lutheran Vespers, and this is most certainly the reason behind the decision to translate it literally rather than to create a strophic paraphrase on the pattern of Ein feste Burg and many other psalm texts that, in comparison with the Magnificat, were liturgically peripheral. How could such a literal text, requiring recitation, be applied to a liturgy with elements of lay participation? One way would be to use the only psalm-tone that had no festive, but only a cursus form, and thus to reap advantage from the ‘problem’ of unsuitable simplicity, previously discussed in the Tractatus de musica plana. Moreover, unlike all other psalm-tones, the tonus peregrinus did not come with an elaborate system of differentiae that needed to be carefully and eruditely adjusted to the prevailing liturgical circumstances. It was, after all, connected with only a small, uniform group of antiphons, and its unvarying terminatio made it at the same time easy for the chorister to sing and distinctly recognizable by the laity. It is likely that at least some authorities in the Reformation circle – Walter, Bugenhagen, Melanchthon, Speratus, Cruciger, Justus Jonas the Elder or yet another person – knew the Tractatus de musica plana et mensurabili, which links the tonus peregrinus with the Magnificat, from their earlier schooling. The treatise is consistent in favouring the Germanic chant dialect and was therefore most likely written within the German Sprachgebiet). It is even more likely that the reformers, being choristers and liturgical practitioners, had experienced at first hand the comfort of uniformity in the tonus peregrinus cursus form, as opposed to the – at times rather forbiddingly intricate – practice of unison singing of psalms in their maiores versions on festive occasions.

9 Later, in the sixteenth century, some innovative scholars from Germanic lands presented the tonus peregrinus in previously unknown canticle forms, but at this stage the tonus peregrinus was already too well known in the minores form and, significantly, too well connected with the German translation of the Magnificat for these versions to become established. See, for example, the intonation suggested by Glareanus (Dodekachordon, vol. 2, p. 9).


Psalm 67 and other uses of the tonus peregrinus in Lutheran liturgies

To make a full survey of the occurrences of the German Magnificat in the extensive quantity of sixteenth-century Lutheran hymnals would be a demanding task, and one that lies outside the scope of this book.10 Several Protestant sources connect the tonus peregrinus with psalms other than 113 (114). In the hymnal published by Valentin Babst in Leipzig (but only from the 1547 edition onwards) it was used for Psalm 67 (in Protestant numbering), an officially sanctioned use which we have already mentioned and which is incidentally also found in one of the Bohemian Brethren (1566).11 Through the German Magnificat the tonus peregrinus had a strong connection with Lutheran Vespers, but through Psalm 67 the melody earned its place also in the Mass. The practical use of the tonus peregrinus to Psalm 67 is in the form of a paraphrased congregational response to the Benediction at the close of both the Mass and Vespers.12 It reads as follows:

Gott sei uns gnädig und barmherzigund geb uns seinen göttlichen Segen. Er lasse uns sein Antlitz leuchten,dass wir auf Erden erkennen seine Wege.Es segne uns Gott, unser Gott,es segne uns Gott und geb uns seinen Frieden. Amen.

In spite of the fact that the tonus peregrinus melody was often referred to as Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, revealing its special connection between the psalm-tone and the Magnificat, Gott sei uns gnädig must have been heard much more often, concluding as it did what were generally perceived as the two most important services. The reason behind this use of the tonus peregrinus being comparatively little known today is certainly that the polyphonic settings are much fewer and more modest than what later became the case with Meine Seele erhebt den Herren. Historically important and widely disseminated settings include those for four parts by Johann Hermann Schein and Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 323).13

10 A thorough search is made difficult by the fact that it falls in between the research fields of psalmody and Protestant hymnody: it is, for example, excluded from Johannes Zahn, Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder aus den Quellen geschöpft und mitgeteilt (Gütersloh, 1888–1893), which would otherwise be a logical place to start the search.

11 The latter publication also used the tonus peregrinus for the Beatitudes.12 Settings of Gott sei uns gnädig are not to be confused with those of Psalm 51

(Protestant numbering: Gott sey mir Gnedig nach deiner Güte) or with literal renditions of Psalm 67 (Gott sey uns gnedig und segene uns). The latter was used for concerted psalm settings by, among others, Johann Pachelbel and Johann Ludwig Bach.

13 The Schein setting is found in Cantional oder Gesangbuch Augspurgischer Confession (Leipzig, 1627, RISM A/I S 1397) a collection that was reprinted and enlarged by Schuste in Leipzig in 1645 (RISM A/I S 1398).


The tonus peregrinus was also occasionally applied to Officium services other than Vespers: the liturgical order for Wittenberg (1533) recommends the use of the tonus peregrinus with an antiphon for the Athanasian Creed in the morning service. A melody first appearing to the text of Psalm 111 in the hymnbooks published by Joseph Klug in Wittenberg (several editions from 1529 onwards) has been connected to the tonus peregrinus by some authors.14 In a liturgical order from Neuenrade (1564) the tonus peregrinus is used with a text from Isaiah.15 This is interesting, since it (along with the Mass connection of Psalm 67) is connected with what seems an isolated practice of singing the text Jesaja dem Propheten, a Wittenberg-approved Sanctus equivalent, to a group of melodies that may be derived from the tonus peregrinus.16 It would be an interesting to follow up such popular chant traditions, of which there are certainly several, but since they are very unlikely to have crossed over to polyphonic settings, they lie outside the scope of the present book.

Within Vespers the German Magnificat seems to have formed part of a larger unit of what in the Augsburgian confession was termed doceant imperitos (‘for instruction of the uneducated’), a concept which will be interpreted in its own context below. The canticle needed to be presented in the vernacular, because of its prominent place within Vespers and the participation of the laity in singing it: Nach dem verleβnen capitel singe man das teutsche Magnificat oder ein ander christlich gsang und beschliesse es mit einem gemeinem gebet und segen: ‘After the reading of the chapter [of the Gospel] one sings the German Magnificat or another Christian song and finishes it with a collective prayer [by the laity] and the blessing.’17 Just as the tonus peregrinus may possibly have been transferred from Psalm 113 to the Magnificat because these texts were liturgically adjacent, so some of the occasional uses of the tonus peregrinus for other psalms may have originated in the substitution for the canticle of andere Christliche gesänge.

In addition to these deviant applications of the tonus peregrinus, it should be noted that the vernacular Magnificat was connected only with the literal translation of the text. There was an original chorale with a melody unrelated to the tonus peregrinus. This version featured, importantly, a strophic translation: Mein Seel erhebt den Herren mein, mein Geist thut sich erspringen, in Teutsch Kirchenampt

14 Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 37.15 Isa. 12:1–6.16 These melodic variants were collected by Swedish ethnomusicologists on the (now

Estonian) islands of Ruhnu and Pakri saared and are discussed in Carl-Allan Moberg, ‘De folkliga koralvarianterna på Runö’, Svensk Tidskrift för Musikforskning, 21 (1939): 9–47. Folke Bohlin has discussed how a similar group of melodies from popular psalmody in mainland Sweden (used well into the nineteenth century) may have been derived from the tonus peregrinus (Melodier för julepisteln i svensk tradition [Lund, 1970], pp. 86–90).

17 Kirchenordnung [Pfalz, Neuburg, Thunau, 1556], in Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, ed. E. Sehling (Tübingen, 1969), pp. 113–244, at p. 164.


mit Lobgesengen und götlichen Psalmen.18 Also Psalm 113 existed with a different strophic melody, which is found in Psalmen gebett und kirchenübung.19

Monophonic singing of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren in relation to falsobordone and ad equales works

The Lutheran Church initially produced very few polyphonic settings of the German Magnificat.20 The principal reason for this may lie in the pedagogical aim conceived for the vernacular Vespers by Phillipp Melanchthon and others. The Confessio Augustana, formulated by Melanchthon, confirmed the already encountered view that unum opus est ceremoniis, ut doceant imperitos: ‘the sole purpose of ceremonies is to instruct the uneducated’.21 The implication of this for our present topic seems to have been that the uneducated should have the New Testament (the Magnificat) presented in the vernacular and in a comprehensible manner. As is made perfectly clear by the rich and elaborate repertory of chorale settings, there is no contradiction between figuraliter music and the use of a vernacular text (given Luther’s high regard for polyphony, the former was certainly viewed as an important vehicle for edification in itself). What seems, on the other hand, to have happened is that the edification principle at some point came into conflict with itself, as eager reformers stressed that schoolboys had to be given every opportunity to practise their Latin and that the most efficient and longest established way of assimilating that language was by active participation in the Latin liturgy.22 The Wittenberg Kirchenordnung of 1533, which was later followed and copied for Church orders elsewhere, clearly stipulates that when the Latin Magnificat is used, it should be sung by the choir alone while the German Magnificat is to be sung by the congregation rather than the choir.23 This is no doubt the main reason behind the scarcity of polyphonic settings of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren from the first generations of Lutheran composers.

18 Teutsch Kirchenampt mit Lobgesengen und götlichen Psalmen (Strassbourg, 1524/1525).

19 Johann Hermann Schein, Psalmen gebett und kirchenübung (Strassbourg, 1530).20 This, rather than Luther’s 1521 translation (Mein Seel erhebt Gott den Herrn),

became the normative text.21 Phillipp Melanchthon, Confessio Augustana [1530], in Opera quae supersunt

omnia, ed. K.G. Bretschneider, Corpus reformatorum 26 (Braunschweig, 1858), art XXIV:3.22 This is a matter of concern often raised in the prefaces of German printed motet

collections from this time.23 Kirchenordnung [Wittenberg, 1553], in E. Sehling (ed.), Die evangelischen

Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1902); Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Weimar, 1846; repr. Nieuwkoop, 1967); see also Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Cambridge, 2007), p. 260.


This conflict between two strong Reformation ideals has been remarkably little discussed. It has bearings in how the surviving falsobordone settings, ad equales as they were often called, were used in the liturgy – certainly with a great number of variations depending on local circumstances for choir and laity.24 Two of the earliest preserved falsobordone settings seem to have been produced in Grimma in Saxony.25 The majority of the Lutheran Churches of Erfurt (it was a confessionally divided city) must have embraced the vernacular service that was presented item by item in the Enchiridion published in and for that city from 1524 onwards. According to a liturgical order for Heilbronn, a Reichstadt, singe der theutsch schulmeister mit seinen schullern und dem volck das Magnificat oder nur Dimmittis oder Benedictus theutsch: ‘the German schoolmaster should sing the Magnificat or only the [Nunc] dimittis or Benedictus in German with his pupils and the people.’26

It is emblematic of the Lutheran way of assimilating ancient traditions through novel and individual applications that the Meine Seele erhebt den Herren with the tonus peregrinus – a Gregorian melody with a canonical text in literal translation – was intended for lay participation, while strophic chorales, sometimes newly composed both as regards text and melody and made to order for congregational singing, were much more frequently applied to the traditionally Catholic models of polyphonic composition.27 Christopher Boyd Brown takes Jacobsthal in Bohemia, which in the sixteenth century was a major city demographically similar to Erfurt and Heilbronn, as a case study for different aspects of the Reformation movement. He has shown that the city’s cantor, Nicolaus Hermann (c.1500–1561), was in contact with the Wittenberg circle and that he used his position gradually to alter the liturgy of the Church and the curricula of the schools.28 Of particular interest is a description of how, in Jacobsthal, the laity responded – either according to a liturgical plan or acting with unprompted spontaneity – to the music sung by the choir, by singing alternatim the vernacular equivalent to the Latin items performed. While this was in itself far from new or unique, it is

24 Johann Walter intermittently used two terms, both common in sixteenth-century Saxony: ad equales – a term that describes the syllabic and rhythmic equality of the voices, not as in the later use of the same term, where it denotes voices of equal pitch – and Bergreihenweise (‘In the manner of a mountain country folksong’, probably suggesting a manner of singing cultivated by the Bohemian Protestant orders) for this kind of setting.

25 MS Mus. Grimma 14 in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (D-Dl).

26 Quoted in Ernst Roller, Musikpflege und Musikerziehung in der Reichsstadt Heilbronn vom Beginn der Reformation bis zum Dreiβigjährigen Krieg (Heilbronn, 1970), p. 18. See the church orders of Wittenberg (1533) and Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1543).

27 See Johann Walter, Geistliches Gesangbuchlein (Wittenberg, 1524) and the anthology Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge … für die gemeinen Schulen (Wittenberg, 1544, RISM B/I: 154421).

28 Christopher Boyd Brown, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).


more surprising to find that Hermann positively encouraged them to imitate the Catholic liturgy that they had heard and seen so many times.29 This may have been a way of counteracting the universal popularity of the Latin liturgy: by being opened up to the laity it would quickly lose its high status and then either remain in use, with new emphasis placed on its doctrinal significance, or give way to another practice. Since the Meine Seele erhebt den Herren sung to the tonus peregrinus resembled the revered traditional liturgy more than any of the newer forms of vernacular music, it certainly won immediate acceptance. While the newly adapted, translated and composed chorales were an important part of a Reformation agenda, the German Magnificat and the tonus peregrinus constituted what ethnographers call gesunkenes Kulturgut (‘embedded cultural property’). It seems, however, that Hermann’s method was not widely practised and that, on the whole, Latin polyphony remained highly popular. Despite the pious wish to unite the congregation in the Magnificat, it is questionable whether such cantillation ever occurred. It is complicated enough for a well-instructed choir to recite text: to include a large and inexperienced congregation in this process must have, in the cases where it was desired, called for a great deal of imperitos docere, indeed. We may also note that no examples of a German Magnificat ad equales using the tonus peregrinus seem to originate from the Low-German areas around the coasts of the Baltic Sea. Cities from these regions had a distinct vernacular repertory that was printed and disseminated either in independent volumes or alongside High-German hymns by Saxon and Tübingen authors, in which case the origins of the latter were usually identified in order to set them apart (many questionable attributions to Luther probably arose from this manner of indicating that a text was sanctioned by the reformer). There is a more marked propensity towards demagogic ‘protest’ chorale texts in publications from Low-German areas, and the Jacobsthal model could probably not have been readily implemented successfully in such a culture.

Geistliche Lieder auffs new gebessert seems to be the first printed appearance of a polyphonic German Magnificat.30 As we can see from Example 9.1, it is cast in a basic, practical ad equales style. The normal Lutheran polyphonic practice at this time was alternatim: the polyphony would be used antiphonally against monophonic singing, and the primary reason for writing out all the verses was to facilitate different possible renditions of even and odd-numbered verses for all kinds of combinations. In the unlikely event that the ad equales music was used simultaneously with, rather than in antiphony with, lay participation, this would foreshadow the well-known later practice of lay participation in cantus firmus works, predating it by several decades.31 Erbacher held that the

29 In a travel diary by Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563) we find a similar account Quellen zur Geschichte der evangelischen Gottesdienst, ed. W. Herbst (Göttingen, 1968), pp. 74–77.

30 Geistliche Lieder auffs new gebessert (Wittenberg, 1533).31 The polyphonic chorale settings of Sigmund Hemmel (Der gantz Psalter Davids,

wie derselbig in teutsche Gesang verfasset [Tübingen, 1569, RISM A/I/4: H 5020]), Lucas


Klug setting was ‘probably’ (wahrscheinlich) written by Walter.32 Leaver later drew the conclusion that since three of the psalm-tone falsobordoni in a Rhau print of 1540 (there attributed to Walter) are virtually identical with those in Klug’s print, it is highly likely that the other settings in Klug were by Walter, although he does not rule out the possibility that the tonus peregrinus settings were written by Luther himself.33 The previously mentioned two settings of the German Magnificat in a manuscript held by the Sächsische Landesbibliothek both seem to have a provenance in Grimma and may postdate that in the Klug print by twenty years.

Sixteenth-century settings of the German Magnificat, favour, without any known exception, the Germanic tonus peregrinus dialect. The falsobordone settings in the Jena choirbook and the one by Lassus (both discussed in Chapter 8) used the same dialect. These, and many other Catholic sources, establish that throughout the entire sixteenth century this was a purely geographically dictated variant. That it should have any intrinsic connection only with the Lutheran Church, as implied by M. John B. Connor, is therefore a misguided (and anachronistic) surmise.34 Ulrich Leupold has drawn attention to the fact that the Klug falsobordone presents the tonus peregrinus in a form where the ligatures at the beginning of each semi-verse resolve into two separate notes, each with its own syllable, so as to provide

Osiander (Fünffzig geistliche Lieder und Psalmen mit vier Stimmen auff contrapunctsweise … also gesetzt, das eine gantze Christliche Gemein durchaus mit singen kann [Nuremberg, 1586, RISM A/I/6: O 142]) and Johann Eccard (Der erste Theil geistlicher Lieder auff den Choral oder gemeine Kirchen Melodey [Königsberg, 1597, RISM A/I/2: E 173]) were expressly intended for congregational participation in the cantus firmus part. It has been suggested that congregational participation in polyphonic chorale settings was practised in Wittenberg as early as the 1520s (see Robin Leaver, ‘The Chorale: Transcending Time and Culture’, Concordia Theological Quarterly, 56/2–3 [1992]: 123–144, at pp. 134–35).

32 Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 110.33 Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music:, pp. 256–257.34 M. John B. Connor, Gregorian Chant and Mediaeval Hymn Tunes in the Works of

J.S. Bach (West Hartford, 1957), pp. 55–56.

Example 9.1 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren


a more controlled contour and rhythm.35 He proceeds to the supposition that it was Luther himself who appointed this use of the canticle. While the latter belief is possible (albeit unsubstantiated), the question of notation does not necessarily have any far-reaching consequences for the performance of the psalm-tone. If it has, Klug’s hymnal might represent a transitional form of cantillation adapted to the manner of strophic singing – but it must then also be borne in mind that Lutheran chant sources often use mensuration and coloured ligatures (implying a rhythmic ratio) also for the pan-Catholic cantus planus repertory. The tonus peregrinus occurs twice in Klug’s 1533 version: once with the quoted Geman Magnificat and once with Psalm 113. The latter preserves the tradition of tenor falsobordone, whereas the canticle places the psalm-tone in the top part. The gradual shift of cantus firmus from tenor to discantus in the work of Lutheran composers can be studied in the different editions of Walter’s Geystliches gesangk Buchleyn, and it is significant that the newly established tonus peregrinus canticle idiom was, in this particular respect, more progressive than the inherited psalm idiom. In the later sixteenth century several noteworthy versions of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren ad equales appeared in prints by such composers as Johannes Eccard (1553–1611), represented by a setting in five parts), and Sethus Calvisius (1556–1615).36

Given Luther’s comments on the Magnificat and the fact that it was included with the tonus peregrinus in the early hymnals, one is surprised to find that the German Magnificat is not set by any composer in Rhau’s Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge, which otherwise includes virtually all of the common congregational items and was most likely a highly influential collection as regards bringing the melodies to the awareness of the laity (who in most cases were illiterate and/or without access to a hymnal).37 Was this an effect of the limited application of the German Magnificat, sung as a separate item only at Vespers? This in itself would not exclude the possibility of polyphonic settings: many of the other texts in Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge were translations and paraphrases of psalms, which also must have been intended exclusively for Officium use. Does this indicate that there was no need for vernacular Magnificat settings, since the canticle had its place in the vernacular Sunday Vespers, where it would be chanted? Once again, many of the other melodies in the 1544 collection appear also in Valentin Babst’s Psalmen und geistliche Lieder as well as in other hymnals.38 Besides, we know from the printed enchiridia and liturgical orders that lay participation was at a more advanced stage in the Mass than in Vespers. The fact that lay participation in the German Magnificat was on occasion expressly called for,

35 Ulrich Leupold, ‘Liturgy and Hymns’, Luther’s Works, vol. 53, ed. H.T. Lehmann (Philadelphia, 1965), p. 176.

36 Eccard, Der erste Theil geistlicher Lieder; Sethus Calvisius, Harmonia cantionum ecclesiasticarum (Leipzig, 1597, RISM A/I/2: C 258).

37 Luther, Werke, vol. 8, p. 545; vol. 54, pp. 33–34.38 Valentin Babst, Psalmen und geistliche Lieder (Leipzig, 1545).


does not explain this void.39 From what we know of Lutheran pedagogy, such a direction would, on the contrary, favour the creation of polyphonic settings in order to disseminate the chorale melody more effectively. So neither of these hypotheses can explain why not one person among the first generation of Lutheran composers produced a vernacular Magnificat setting in more elaborate polyphony. What is clear, however, is that the assignment of the tonus peregrinus to its important function was a highly successful liturgical reform. In a computation of the most frequent Lutheran hymns and canticles, prepared by Joseph Herl on the basis of the total number of times the melodies are mentioned in church orders from 1523 to 1750, Meine Seele erhebt den Herren occupies eighth position, which is higher than either Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott or Vater unser im Himmelreich.40 The scarcity of vernacular Magnificat figuraliter settings in the first fifty years of Lutheranism must owe something to the strong tradition of recitation noted earlier.

Works in alternatim counterpoint and motet style

When the tonus peregrinus first appears in contrapuntal Meine Seele erhebt den Herren versions, it occurs several times within the same work: Deutsche Magnificat auff die acht Tonos Musicales, deren ein jeglicher zwey mal und Peregrini toni drey mal gesetzt.41 As the title implies, this is a kind of extended modal cycle, where the ‘newcomer’ in this context, the tonus peregrinus, was set three times – possibly in an attempt to fill a perceived gap in the existing repertory. It is in fact not just the contrapuntal treatment of this psalm-tone bearing that text that constitutes a novelty but also the setting of psalm-tones I–VIII to the German non-strophic translation. It is therefore significant that the works in the collection were composed by a man who was not originally from the German-speaking lands and who encountered Lutheranism only in adulthood: Giovanni Battista Pinellus of Gerardi (c.1545–87), a Genoese composer employed by Lutheran patrons only for the relatively short

39 Joseph Herl, discussing the Vespers as formulated in extant liturgical directives, states: ‘As the office Canticle, the Magnificat was found in German on Sundays a total of 73 times, compared with only 54 times on Saturdays. Of these 73, the congregation was specifically directed to sing eight times’ (Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation and Three Centuries of Conflict [Oxford, 2004], p. 64).

40 Ibid., pp. 66–67.41 Giovanni Battista Pinellus, Deutsche Magnificat auff die acht Tonos Musicales,

deren ein jeglicher zwey mal und Peregrini toni drey mal gesetzt (Dresden, 1583, RISM A/I/6: P 2388). In addition to the three tonus peregrinus Magnificat settings, Pinellus here also provides a Benedicamus Domino based on the same psalm-tone. It is possible that this equally untypical application can similarly be imputed to a laxity in his approach to Lutheran liturgy.


period of four years.42 Some verses of his alternatim settings are rather elaborate, resembling stylistically the polyphonic chorale music that had been widely disseminated throughout the century and bearing little resemblance to his Latin music. All parts engage in fairly free imitation with material derived from the tonus peregrinus. The tenor part operates in a mensuration ratio of 2:1 vis-à-vis the other parts, reproducing the tonus peregrinus strictly. As regards influential contrapuntal models, it is noteworthy that the part with this particular tenor function always enters last, something that is invariably the case in Johann Walter’s polyphonic chorales. This is also common in the cantus firmus writing of Latin tenor motets, but with Walter and many of the composers represented in the Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge it seems to have been observed as a strict rule. Visible in Example 9.2 is another trait that appears to be a relic of this contrapuntal tradition. Here, the tonus peregrinus first occurs in its entirety in a middle part. It was common in psalmody

42 It is unclear whether or not he ever converted to the new confession. Robert Eitner quotes a document from 1580 in the Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, according to which Pinellus was a Catholic, albeit one who wished to hear Lutheran sermons as well, and who was evidently regarded as sound enough in doctrine to be compatible with holding Lutheran employment (Quellen-Lexikon der Musiker und Musikgelehrten [Leipzig, 1900–1904], vol. 7, p. 451).

Example 9.2 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Giovanni Battista Pinellus


at this time to cast the doxology in a tripartite structure, as occurs here: the text conforms to an A+B+B pattern, whereas the music adopts the pattern A (first semi-verse) +A+B (second semi-verse). But in doing so, Pinellus once again adheres to the old-fashioned idea that only the second-lowest part, named ‘tenor’, could adequately perform the tenor function of the terminatio (bb. 54–56).

Very frequently, Pinellus derives diminuted motifs from the cantus firmus. In polyphony based on psalm-tones composers typically draw on the incipit figure of the first semi-verse as an opening gambit. In one instance, Pinellus oddly employs the incipit of the second semi-verse, the most distinctive feature of the tonus peregrinus, with its transition to the lower recitation degree for this purpose (see Example 9.3). The constant emphasis on the note g that results from this procedure effects a move away from the a of the cantus firmus (in the tenor part). If we consider the modal archetype of the tonus peregrinus, this treatment differs greatly from that of most contemporary music based on the psalm-tone; instead of featuring the strong mediatio move to f, the entire verse gravitates towards the terminatio figure. This is not an isolated example: on the whole, the modality of Pinellus’s works is not guided by the closing patterns of the mediatio and terminatio figures. Instead, the harmony centres on the finalis and tenor degrees as such, shunning the cadential activity that would demarcate different subsections of the verses.

Example 9.3 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Giovanni Battista Pinellus


Pinellus’s settings provide a link between the Latin Magnificat cycles and the German Magnificat. This is highlighted by the fact that the term peregrinus, uncharacteristic of Lutheran sources, is used. Along with this, we may note important similarities in compositional method to that of sixteenth-century Catholic composers from northern and central Europe. There are instances suggesting that the In exitu Israel settings by composers from this sphere, with their intense motivic activity, influenced the way in which Pinellus employed the tonus peregrinus. Let us consider the imitation on the mediatio figure in Example 9.4. This interlocking mediatio writing resembles very closely that previously observed in Agricola and Libanus. This distinct style has merged with another sixteenth-century trait proper to the German-speaking area in general and to Lutheran music in particular: a fondness for free melodic diminution – here displayed in the middle part, where the passaggio-like writing is unambiguously an ornamented diminution of the mediatio figure.

There are very few Latin Magnificat settings in motet style from sixteenth-century Lutheran composers, and seemingly none at all of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren. Instead, these composers favoured alternatim works similar to those of Pinellus, probably on practical liturgical grounds. One liturgically deviant tonus peregrinus application resembling those just mentioned occurs in a unique work in motet style. Balthasar Resinarius (c.1485–1544) contributed to the Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge with an ambitious setting of Psalm 111 (Protestant numbering), based entirely on the tonus peregrinus: Ich danke dem Herrn.43 Resinarius was born in what is modern Děčín in the Czech Republic. Like many Bohemian students of his generation, he converted to Lutheranism during his theological studies at the University of Leipzig. The tonus peregrinus incipit of Ich danke dem Herrn is Germanic, as one would expect, and the style of the motet conforms to the style of his German contemporaries (see Example 9.5). There is a prevalence of imitation at the octave, and the most complete tonus peregrinus statements are invariably assigned to the tenor. The occasional passages of writing in paired voices (bicinia) must, in this cultural context, be regarded as a progressive feature.

43 Calvisius lists this Psalm, together with Meine Seele erhebt den Herren and a few other items, as an example of the Aeolian modus (Exercitationes musicae duae [Leipzig, 1600]). This may possibly relate to a tradition of singing this Psalm to the tonus peregrinus

Example 9.4 Meine seele erhebt den Herren, Giovanni Battista Pinellus


Example 9.5 Ich danke dem Herrn, Balthasar Resinarius


Resinarius’s composition is unusual because of the occasionally loose nature of the cantus firmus writing within the mode resulting from the tonus peregrinus but lacking the precise melodic structure of the psalm-tone. His doxology in triple mensuration would resemble, if anything, a cantus firmus setting of psalm-tone I, were it not for the prolonged recitation on g: it seems, in fact, that Resinarius is primarily concerned, just as Pinellus would be later, with the two recitation degrees, regarding them as a cantus firmus skeleton. Unlike Pinellus’s, however, the cadences adhere closely to the tonus peregrinus also in melodic respects. The harmonic structure employed in this instance by Resinarius is uncharacteristic not only of himself in wider contexts but also of the entire body of early Lutheran composers. On the other hand, Resinarius is more typical of the tradition in overriding the division between the semi-verses and using the under-third cadence extensively. The tonus peregrinus is sometimes slightly ornamented but retains its basic shape without giving way to free material as in coeval northern Flemish music. In this respect, Resinarius reflects the Lutheran pedagogical ethos rather than the contrasting ideal of the spiritual exercise for the composer’s own benefit, as described by Osthoff for Josquin’s cantus firmus works.44 In the Flemish tradition the effect of the tonus peregrinus as a symbol overlaying the entire work seems to have been accorded greater importance than its perceptibility, whereas the total perceptibility of the cantus firmus always remains Resinarius’s main aim.45

Resinarius’s Ich danke dem Herrn clearly represents an attempt to compose a through-composed motet in the contemporary Franco-Flemish manner. In a polyphonic process that is burdened by so much octave imitation as occurs here, however, it is difficult to sustain the momentum needed for such a work. To reduce this problem, Resinarius sometimes takes liberties with his cantus firmus on several levels. On some occasions, he lets the archetypical cadences follow without interruption but alters (or, as we saw above, dispenses with) the tonus peregrinus. An example of this arrives in b. 120, where the mediatio in the discantus part is modified so as to reinstate the first recitation note. Accordingly, the second recitation receives its emphasis not on g, but on a (bb. 121–124). This also appears to be a means of merging the two semi-verses by enunciating the mediatio faithfully but avoiding the strong melodic move to f. At other times, the entire polyphonic structure is amended in order not to lose contrapuntal momentum. This is achieved either by simply overlapping the cadences or by introducing the tonus peregrinus fragmentarily in transposed form – a procedure that once again bears considerable similarity to the ‘total thematicism’ of Agricola and Libanus. In either case, the models are ultimately the northern

44 Helmuth Osthoff, ‘Besetzung und Klangstruktur in den Werken von Josquin des Prez’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 9 (1952): 177–194.

45 For a discussion of strict cantus firmus writing as a means of pedagogy in early Lutheranism, see Lundberg, ‘Canon and Cantus Firmus’.


Flemish masters. The parallel motion in outer parts (bb. 127–130) also recalls that school.46

Resinarius reveals in his work a penchant for extended recitation, and since the tenor has here a pre-eminent function, the result is often a very static harmony. Even if the work outwardly imitates the through-composed Flemish motet, the psalm verses are what really guides the composer as regards structure. This approach often manifests itself in crudely handled consecutive intervals – for example, the fifths in the lower parts in bb. 132–133. Such a solecism would not normally occur in motet writing, but does here because Resinarius has structured his entire work around first, the tenor, and second, the text of the psalm verses. His musical mentality seems deeply rooted in the alternatim idiom, in which, of course, the two polyphonic sections would be separated from each other, allowing the consecutive motion not to trouble the ear. In addition, many of these instances would not arise with any psalm-tone other than the tonus peregrinus, since the tenor would not have to commute between the lower recitation degree and the higher. The end of the verse text in b. 132 is treated like the conclusion of a section – or just like the end of a verse in an alternatim work. This illustrates how the tonus peregrinus sometimes adapted with difficulty to compositional models originally devised for a psalm-tone possessing only one recitation degree, and how the composer did not necessarily shrink from problems that in other circumstances would not easily have been tolerated.

Conclusion

A comparison of the music discussed in this chapter with the polyphony based on strophic chorales leads to the conclusion that because of its roots in earlier psalmody the German Magnificat received special treatment in the hands of sixteenth-century Lutheran composers and that it held an altogether different function in relation to lay participation in the liturgy. It is noteworthy that the single, exceptional case of a more elaborate tonus peregrinus setting in motet style (Pinellus’s pieces can not be included in this category, since they observe the alternatim verse structure of the canticle, a remnant of the falsobordone tradition) is not a Magnificat setting but a psalm seemingly without previous connection to the tonus peregrinus. The German canticles seem to have been reserved for the medium of small-scale homosyllabic settings that facilitated ready understanding of the text and perhaps also addressed the possibility of a combined performance by choir and congregation. This possibility was certainly exploited in alternatim practice. Less probable, but still possible, is the participation of the congregation

46 Gafurius regards this procedure as modern in Practica musicae and lists Tinctoris, Guarnerius, Josquin, Werbecke, A. Agricola, Compère, Brumel and Isaac as composers who cultivated this technique (Practica musicae, vol. 3, fol. ee ii r). These men all belong to a generation earlier than that of Resinarius.


in the cantus firmus of the ad equales settings. Neither Johann Walter nor any of the composers represented in Neue deutsche geistliche Gesänge provided a German Magnificat setting in the polyphonic idiom to which other contrafacta of Gregorian origin were treated. David Crook has noted that ‘more sophisticated polyphonic settings [of the tonus peregrinus Magnificat] for trained performers began to be cultivated in Protestant Germany shortly after Lasso’s death’.47 It must be noted that Crook does not attempt to link these coincidental events in history, for the statement appears in his discussion of a Latin parody Magnificat by Lassus. Nevertheless, it is an apt chronological assessment in its location of a rather rapid change in the treatment of the German Magnificat around 1600. Before that time, it appears that its assigned function in Vespers called for versions that were simple and easily circulated from parish to parish. The key to conveying this most important passage of Scripture to the laity in Vespers was precisely the musical simplicity of the tonus peregrinus plainsong. In the more elaborate services of cities such as Torgau and Wittenberg fixed Vespers items could be complemented by polyphonic chorale settings (and Meine Seele erhebt den Herren replaced by a Latin Magnificat). Thus the core of the service was kept basic, while texts of lesser liturgical importance supplied the desired adornment. Natanael Fransén identifies in Saxon sources a conflict between the exclusive devotion of the nobility and the bourgeoisie ideal of an autonomous congregation.48 He concludes that the first current asserted itself strongly at the end of the sixteenth century, and this chapter confirms his theory as regards the state of the tonus peregrinus and the vernacular Magnificat, sung, at least according to the few reports available, by the entire church in the 1530s but then gradually assuming a function similar to the one that had previously been assigned to the canticle in the Roman rite. Chapter 12 will discuss the move towards vernacular tonus peregrinus Magnificat settings of greater scale and complexity, culminating in a situation where German Magnificat settings account for some of the most celebrated works in all of European eighteenth-century music.

47 Crook, Orlando di Lasso’s Imitation Magnificats, p. 136.48 Natanael Fransén, Reformationen och Luther: med särskild hänsyn till den

liturgiska utvecklingen, Nya studier till reformationstiden 1/2 (Stockholm, 1941), p. 264.


Chapter 10

In Faburden and Upon Faburden: The Tonus Peregrinus in Sixteenth-century

English Liturgies

This chapter presents a course of development totally different from that described in Chapter 9. Liturgical reforms occurred later in England, and the Anglican Reformation process is further complicated by its connections with a series of conflicts within the royal house of Tudor. The Church of England during the reign of Henry VIII (from the act of supremacy in 1534 to his death in 1547) seems on the whole not to have produced any major liturgical alternative to the well-established Sarum liturgy.1 A vernacular litany was first introduced in 1544, and the syllabic underlay of English language chant was discussed as an ideal by many scholars, including Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556, archbishop from 1533).2 From the preserved repertory of this period it seems that polyphony, too, continued mainly as before, and it has been maintained that the king deliberately dampened all eagerness shown towards major liturgical reforms.3 After the accession of the adolescent Edward VI early in 1547 the use of the English language both in sections of the Mass and in the liturgy of the hours was decreed centrally (conspicuously in the Chapel Royal), but, just as in many other parts of Europe, the introduction

1 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, pp. 466–467. In fact, the Sarum Use was formally established as an official liturgy in 1542 (see John Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to c.1715 [Oxford, 1991], p. 269). The dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s must thus have affected the quality and standing, rather than the nature, of sacred music.

2 Thomas Cranmer, An exhortacion … also a Letanie with suffrages (London, 1544). Cranmer discussed his plainsong adaptations in a letter to King Henry probably dating from that year: ‘Nevertheless, they that be cunning in singing can make a much more solemn note thereto. I made them only for a proof to see how the English would do in song’ (in O. Strunk [ed.], Source Readings in Music History [New York, 1950], pp. 350–351; see also Paul Chappell, Music and Worship in the Anglican Church [London, 1968], p. 33; Kenneth Long: The Music of the English Church [London, 1972], p. 28). The dating of Cranmer’s letter was debated by James Gairdner (suggesting 1545 as a more plausible year), Frank Brightman and Albert Frederick Pollard in The English Historical Review, 23–24 (1908–1909).

3 Long, The Music of the English Church, p. 19–20. It has been noted that the reforms had little effect on liturgy at the time but great consequences for what came to pass in the Edwardian period (Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1, p. 268).


of vernacular elements met with resistance.4 The protests among lay people to the Boke of common praier of 1549 in the Western parts of England did not, however, prevent the revised Prayer Book of 1552 from including further reforms, now in a different, more distinctively Protestant, direction.5 Whereas the former rested mainly on the Sarum tradition, the latter reveals considerable influence from the continental Reformation movements.6 When Queen Mary I succeeded her half-brother in the following year, she attempted to reinstate the liturgy of the last years of King Henry’s reign and returned the country to communion with Rome, but her sovereignty was of relatively short duration. Following her death in the autumn of 1558, Queen Elizabeth, who evidently had some of her father’s strategic tact, ascended the throne. 1559 witnessed a new issue of the second Prayer Book, slightly amended. This version was on the whole closer liturgically to the 1549 version, but still notably Protestant.7 1558 therefore marked the final official departure from the old Sarum rite.

The prescribed function of the tonus peregrinus

The earliest English translation of Psalm 113 set to the tonus peregrinus is the anonymous work found in the Lumley partbooks.8 The setting comprises only vv. 9–26 (that is, starting at ‘Not unto us, O Lord’) and is available in a good edition in which the missing bass part has been supplied by Judith Blezzard.9 The Lumley partbooks also contain two settings of the Benedicite, neither of which employs the tonus peregrinus. These works, which we shall not quote here, suggest a continuation in sixteenth-century England of the expected liturgical link between

4 Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1, pp. 269–270.5 It has been asserted that the so-called ‘Prayer Book rebellion’ was connected with a

sympathetic view of the Latin language in Cornish-speaking areas (see Philip Payton, The Making of Modern Cornwall: Historical Experience and the Persistance of ‘Difference’ [Redruth, 1992], pp. 58–59; Mark Stoyle: ‘The Dissidence of Despair: Rebellion and Identity in Early Modern Cornwall’, Journal of British Studies, 38/44 [1999]: 423–444, at pp. 436–438). Anthony Fletcher, Tudor Rebellions, 2nd edn (London, 1973), 135–136, and Eamon Duffy: The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 466–472, provide rich accounts of the demands of the 1549 rebellion.

6 The Boke of common praier and the administracion of the Sacramentes (London, Whytchurch, 1552). This book was enforced by parliament alone, and not sanctioned by convocation (Long, The Music of the English Church, p. 20).

7 Long, The Music of the English Church, p. 21.8 British Library (GB-Lbl), Royal appendices 74–76. These partbooks also contain

two settings of the Benedicite, neither of which employs the tonus peregrinus.9 Judith Blezzard (ed.), The Tudor Church Music of the Lumley Books, Recent

Researches in the Music of the Renaissance 65 (Madison, Wis., 1985).

In Faburden and Upon Faburden 165

the tonus peregrinus and Psalm 113. In this respect they are, we shall see, atypical; the connection was never officially prescribed during the period.

The Booke of Common Praier Noted, prepared by John Merbecke (c.1505–c.1585), was printed and issued by the royal publisher Richard Grafton in 1550. It retained the tonus peregrinus for use with the Benedicite omnia opera Domini, Domino (‘All ye workes of the Lord, speake good of the Lord’). The Benedicite replaced the Te Deum during the season of Lent.10 As with the Magnificat in Lutheranism, this is yet another example of a very specific and occasional pre-existent use of the psalm-tone being later made exclusive and official. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Hyun-Ah Kim has drawn attention to similarities between this version of the psalm-tone and a Horation ode in the Dodekachordon of Glareanus. Although there is a similarity in the section of the ode melody that corresponds to the first half of the tonus peregrinus, it seems clear that this does not hold true for the section corresponding to the second half of the psalm-tone. Thus Kim’s statement that ‘Merbecke borrows traditional psalm tunes in this section except the Benedicite’ seems not fully to acknowledge the role of the tonus peregrinus in Western psalmody.11 In the Sarum rite the Benedicite was proper to Sunday Lauds. Here it is similarly allocated to the Matins, one of two ‘hours’ in the 1549 Prayer book. Merbecke’s retention of the tonus peregrinus in this function seems to be in line with Cranmer’s adaptations of chant melodies for the vernacular litany. In his letter to King Henry, the bishop wrote about the Salve festa dies: ‘the Latin note, as I think, is sober and distinct enough, wherefore I have travailed to make the verses in English and have put the Latin note unto the same’.12 John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, wrote in a letter to Henry Bullinger in Zurich that the priests in England ‘although they are compelled to discontinue the use of the Latin language, yet most carefully observe the same tone and manner of chanting to which they were heretofore accustomed in the papacy’.13 It is evident that the vernacular text of the 1549 prayer book (and quite

10 John Merbecke The Booke of Common Praier noted [1550] (Cambridge, 1979). This text is normally excluded from the book of Daniel proper in Protestant Bibles, which include it instead as an apocryphal supplement.

11 Kim, Humanism and the Reform, p. 135.12 Thomas Cranmer, Letter to Henry VIII, 7 October 1544, in O. Strunk (ed.), Source

Readings in Music History (New York: Norton, 1950), pp. 350–351. It has been established that Merbecke’s psalm-tone versions relied on earlier models of adaptation (see Peter le Huray, Music and the Reformation in England 1549–1660, 2nd edn [Cambridge, 1978]. p. 157). Aplin has pointed specifically to the British Library (GB-Lbl), Add MS 34191 (John Aplin, ‘The Survival of Plainsong in Anglican Music: Some Early English Te Deum Settings’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 32 [1979]: 247–275, at pp. 252–259; John Aplin, ‘“The Fourth Kind of Faburden”: The Identity of an English Four-Part Style’, Music and Letters, 61/3 [1980]: 245–265, at p. 251).

13 John Hooper, Letter to Henry Bullinger (27 December 1549), in H. Robinson (ed.), Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation (London, 1846), p. 72.


likely also others, in separate translations) was in some fashion chanted according to the Sarum use.14

The prayer book of 1549, containing the new order of liturgy without musical notation, had been ratified by a committee headed by Cranmer.15 The same year saw an ‘Act of Uniformity’ passed. This document was in some ways to the Prayer Book what the papal bull Quod a nobis was to the reformed Breviarium romanum in Roman Catholicism, but its mandatory status was to prove short-lived, since the Prayer Book issued in 1552 invalidated much of what it prescribed.16 The Benedicite actually retained its place in the ‘ordre for morninge’, but since the 1552 book contained no musical notation, it is possible that other recitation formulas (or indeed plain reading) were used for the canticle during much of Edward’s reign – it is in fact hard to believe that any liturgical custom regarding Merbecke could have become firmly established in practice during the short space of time separating the two prayer books.17

In the 1550 Common Praier Noted the recitation formulas are delivered in measured note-values rather than as free plainsong – an initiative by Merbecke that, incidentally, predates Giovanni Domenico Guidetti’s similar endeavour for the Vatican by more than thirty years.18 Merbecke revealed an acute sensitivity for the stress and rhythm of the English language. He used four note-shapes, which are explained in detail in the preface to the volume (a pedagogical procedure reminiscent of early Lutheran liturgical publications), and eschewed ligatures. The form of the tonus peregrinus resembles the Iberian dialect in not deviating from the first recitation note (see Example 10.1).

In fact, it is even ‘plainer’ than that variant, since it does the same on the second recitation, whereas the Iberian variant frequently has the Roman figure a–b–g.19 The

14 John Milsom, ‘English-Texted Chant Before Merbecke’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 1 (1992): 77–92.

15 Ornithopharcus does in fact mention the use of the tonus peregrinus with the Benedicite along with the Nos qui vivimus group of antiphons (Musice active micrologus, p. 45). It may be significant that John Dowland later (in 1619) translated Ornithopharcus into English, possibly indicating a favoured dissemination and influence of this theorist in England.

16 Only one edition of the publication was produced in Merbecke’s lifetime. It is likely that it was used in Elizabeth’s reign, and possibly also to some extent during the period of Mary’s restoration of Catholicism. In modern times, incidentally, it has enjoyed a glorious resurgence in Anglican liturgy.

17 Also, the Elizabethan prayer book of 1559 maintains the Benedicite as an alternative to Te Deum in the morning service.

18 Robert Granjon’s Directorium chori ad usum sacrosanctae basilicae vaticanae et aliarum cathedralium et collegiatarum ecclesiarum (Rome, 1582) was an answer to needs identified by the Council of Trent.

19 When Sir Richard Terry called it ‘the English form of Tonus Peregrinus’ (‘John Merbecke (1523(?)– 1585)’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 45 (1918–1919): 75–96, at p. 83), he was without doubt referring to the terminatio g–f–d–f–e– d: we have


use of dotted notes in the mensuration is interesting, since it could possibly reflect a rhythmic practice relating to the manner of vernacular chanting either at the Royal College of Windsor, where Merbecke first served as chorister and then remained for all of his professional life, or more widely in England after the dissemination of the 1544 litany.20 It was probably features of this kind that led some later scholars to believe that the chants of the Prayer Book were intended for congregational singing – an idea not only refuted directly in Merbecke’s preface but which also seems highly questionable on account of the practical difficulty of teaching the laity such a vast quantity of cantillation, mensural or otherwise, by rote.

Settings in faburden

As in the rest of Europe, fauxbourdon or falsobordone was the preferred vehicle for psalm-tone polyphony. In common with several other Catholic provinces, the British Isles cultivated their special varieties of this idiom. The term ‘faburden’ seems early on to have signified a practice somewhat different from what we find in central Europe in the fifteenth century. By the end of the fifteenth century the word possessed several different, though related, meanings. We are fortunate in that two important English treatises on the nature of faburden have survived: one pre-Reformation work (by an anonymous theorist in the manuscript compiled by John Wylde, c.1440) and one much later work (the Scottish Anonymous, c.1560).21 In fact, some scholars have argued that also the theorist Guilelmus Monachus (fl. latter half of fifteenth century), who seems to have resided in Venice and was the author of what is arguably the most influential treatise on fauxbourdon, De preceptis artis musicae, was an Englishman.22 If such were indeed to turn out to be the case, authors from the British Isles would seem to have been responsible

already observed that this variant is found in printed Sarum sources as well as in Johannes of Tewkesbury, Quatuor principalia musicae.

20 Merbecke later developed anti-papist sentiments and is believed to have regretted ever working with plainchant material in the prayer book (Long, The Music of the English Church, pp. 30, 80).

21 British Library (GB-Lbl), MS Lansdowne 763; MS Lansdowne 1961.22 Brian Trowell does not base his assumption merely on the fact that Monachus

is very knowledgeable about specific English practices, since he also draws attention to Monachus’ use of a Sarum Sanctus variant in one of his examples (‘Faburden’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell [eds], The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol. 8 [London, 2001], pp. 496–502). Other Monachus scholars are very cautious in their discussion of the provenance of the theorist, even if there is a philological agreement that

Example 10.1 Benedicite


for the lion’s share of practical instruction regarding fauxbourdon structure. The origins of fauxbourdon, especially in its relation to similar English practices, have been much debated by Manfred Bukofzer, Heinrich Besseler, Rudolf von Ficker, Murray Bradshaw and many others and will not be discussed further here.23 We must here highlight the difference between a cantus firmus being set in faburden (which could signify anything from the result of purely improvisatory singing to composed music in the late sixteenth-century manner of falsobordone) and a work being written ‘upon the faburden’, the latter signifying a work where a part derived from the cantus firmus, rather than the cantus firmus itself, is the foundation of the work.

The faburden settings that will be analysed and discussed here must be viewed in the light of their status as works containing elements of free composition but remaining essentially the result of a pre-established formula used to sing plainsong polyphonically. Frank L. Harrison’s impressive survey of annotations of polyphony in English liturgical sources reveals to what considerable extent polyphony could be applied extempore to plainsong material when needed.24 The treatment in faburden of psalm and canticle intonations thus seem to have been familiar to all well-trained English singers in the early sixteenth century. The harmonization by Thomas Tallis (c.1505–85) of psalm-tones I and VII for Evensong on Christmas Day suggests that a practice resembling what we today call Anglican chant was being applied to the psalm-tones already by this time – long before Thomas Morley’s A Plaine and Easie Introduction (1597), which is often claimed to be the earliest English source of harmonized chant of that particular type. Even if Tallis’s settings are set out in mensural notation, with individual text underlay for each verse, they resemble and anticipate the manner of free recitation found later in the Anglican Church.

Thomas Caustun (c.1520–69) is represented by two full services in John Day’s Certaine Notes (London, 1565), which is believed to be the earliest printed collection of English church polyphony.25 The Benedictus in one of the services

the Germanic Faberthon and the Iberian fabordón are derived from the word faburden rather than from the French fauxbourdon.

23 See Manfred F. Bukofzer, Geschichte des englischen Diskants und des Fauxbourdons nach den theoretischen Quellen, Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 21 (Strasbourg, 1936); Heinrich Besseler, ‘Dufay, Schöpfer des Fauxbourdons’, Acta Musicologica, 20 (1948): 26–45; Rudolf von Ficker, ‘Zur Schöpfungsgeschichte des Fauxbourdon’, Acta Musicologica, 23 (1951): 93–123. Regarding the later regional developments of fauxbourdon and falsobordone, see Murray C. Bradshaw, The History of the Falsobordone from its Origins to 1750 (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1969); Trowell, ‘Faburden’.

24 Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain.25 Edmund H. Fellowes, English Cathedral Music, 5th edn, ed. J.A. Westrup (London,

1969), p. 40. The collection was planned for publication with this title already in 1560 (John Milsom, ‘Caustun’s Contrafacta’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 132 [2007]: 1–31). The 1565 title was in fact Mornyng and Evenyng Prayer and Communion (RISM


is a faburden setting of the tonus peregrinus. Edmund Fellowes argued that all music included in this collection was pre-Elizabethan, and therefore – given its liturgical and linguistic context – must in all probability also be pre-Marian.26 Morrison C. Boyd suggested that Certaine Notes was, together with William Leighton’s The Teares or Lamentations, John Amner’s Sacred Hymns … for Voices and Vyols and Michael East’s Sixt Set of Bookes, among the few printed books likely to have been much used and disseminated in English choirs before the death of James I.27 Burney, long before him, went further, asserting that Certaine Notes ‘fixed for near a century the style of our Choral Music; of which the movement was grave, the harmony grateful, and the contrivance frequently ingenious’ (here, he fails to appreciate the importance of music in manuscript prior to 1565. He probably had limited access to such sources, so one can readily understand how he arrived at his conclusion). John Milsom has pointed to a type of musical borrowing that borders on pure contrafactum present in several of Caustun’s works, but this does not seem to be relevant to the Benedictus setting under discussion.28 It is today generally believed that Certaine Notes and the source material of the ‘Wanley’ and ‘Lumley’ manuscripts are not only roughly contemporary but also closely interdependent.29 Caustun was a member of the Chapel Royal up to his death in 1569. To judge from his extant works, especially in comparison with his contemporaries Tallis, Christopher Tye (c.1505–73) and John Sheppard (c.1515–58), he must be regarded as more of an enthusiastic dilettante than a naturally talented and skilled composer.

His vernacular Benedictus is rather typical of his other surviving music. Formulaic and somewhat unsophisticated, it nevertheless conveys sincerity in style and spirit, as well as a distinct sense of functional adequacy. Unlike many other elaborated tonus peregrinus Psalms set in falsobordone style, it cadences in

A/I 15654). Since the publication has become known under the 1560 title, this will be used throughout our discussion.

26 Fellowes, English Cathedral Music. Aplin regards it as probable that a majority of pieces in the collection were ‘produced … in the years immediately before the Prayer Book was issued’ (‘The Fourth Kind of Faburden’, p. 253). We are thus speaking of the years just before the middle of the century.

27 Morrison C. Boyd, Elizabethan Music and Musical Criticism, 2nd edn (Westport, 1975). p. 65. According to Peter le Huray, however, ‘not a note of Caustun’s music is to be found in the pre-Restoration liturgical sources [of the Chapel Royal]’ (Music and the Reformation in England, p. 190). Le Huray holds that most of the composer’s output is likely to date from the Edwardian period.

28 Milsom, ‘Caustun’s Contrafacta’. Here, it is noted that re-used material is less likely to be found in this genre. Speaking of a Sanctus in Certaine Notes, Milsom maintains that ‘even Caustun possessed the skills needed to compose homophony of that kind’ (p. 27).

29 John Aplin, ‘The Origins of John Day’s “Certaine Notes”’, Music and Letters, 62/3 (1981): 295–299; Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1, pp. 283–284.


the pattern d–C–F / d–C–d–A–d throughout, without making use of the possible harmonic variation, with F supplanting d and vice versa. Its artistic merit lies mainly in its distinctly idiomatic style of writing for upper parts, especially as regards the rhythmic drive at cadences. Leaving aside its occasional technical shortcomings, the Benedictus also reveals some rather unexpected part-writing. The treatment of the tonus peregrinus, especially, shows to what extent the cantus firmus seems to have lost its firmus function for Caustun. In v. 3, for instance, the finalis of the tonus peregrinus is replaced by a tierce de Picardie (see Example 10.2, b. 25). This rides roughshod over all contemporary principles of composition and is unusual in continental musical practice around the middle

Example 10.2 Benedictus, Thomas Caustun


of the sixteenth-century.30 A tierce de Picardie appears at one point also in an anonymous tonus peregrinus setting, which we will discuss shortly, but there the bass produces a d/f gymel, whereas Caustun’s case may be interpreted as a migration of the cantus firmus from the tenor to the bass.

It is interesting to see how Caustun applies the principle of variation to the distribution of part-writing between the two upper parts. In the odd-numbered verses, the medius moves in sixths with the psalm-tone, while the contratenor secundus tends to move in fourths with it; in the even-numbered verses the functions of these two parts are reversed. Although de facto identical in basic structure, the verses of this Benedictus thus follow an alternatim practice – an aspect of antiphonal singing that foreshadows later Anglican practice (i.e. the strict antiphonal polarisation between cantores and decani that would also become the model for polyphonic chant).

An anonymous vernacular tonus peregrinus Nunc dimittis in faburden has survived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in the Wanley partbooks.31 The tenor book of this set is missing, a circumstance that is comparatively fortunate, since it turns out to be the cantus firmus – which means that the missing part can therefore be reconstructed relatively easily from the three manuscript parts (Example 10.3).32

There is little ambiguity regarding the tonus peregrinus dialect: on account of the movement in the two outer parts, we are led straight to the Roman incipit. In v. 1 the first semi-verse has the treble in the typical parallel motion, whereas the second semi-verse uses a common variant free from the weakening effect of an f preceding the first d. The clarity with which the copied parts are produced must have made the chanting of the cantus firmus a relatively straightforward affair. The structure testifies to the efficiency with which faburden polyphony could be produced in daily service with a minimum of preparation, but it is not as straightforward in extempore as the faburden example that we have come across previously. All the parts are copied in the same hand, and the work was undoubtedly intended for recurrent use, just like Caustun’s Benedictus. The fact that they were notated could imply either that they were in common use and/or that

30 Aplin has argued convincingly for the dating of this music in the Edwardian reign (‘The Origins of John Day’s “Certaine Notes” ’). In the continental Catholic music discussed in Chapter 8, solutions resembling this one appeared only much later.

31 Bodleian Library, Oxford (GB-Ob), MS Mus. Sch.E 420–422: they have several correspondences with Day’s Certaine Notes.

32 The text follows the translations found in the printed primers: William Marshall, Goodly prymer in Englyshe (London, c.1535); John Hilsey, Manual of prayers or the prymer in Englyshe and Laten (London, 1539); The Primer, in Englishe and Latyn, set foorth by the Kynges maiestie and his Clergie (London, 1545) – the ‘King’s Primer’. For good, albeit not in all respects up-to-date, overviews of these works, see Charles Butterworth, The English Primers (1529–1545): Their Publication and Connection with the English Bible and the Reformation in England (Philadelphia, 1953); James Devereux, ‘The Primers and the Prayer Collects’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 32 (1968): 29–44.


Example 10.3 Nunc dimittis


the tradition of so-called sight-singing had at this stage of history been replaced by a harmonic model that needed more adjustments than the traditional practice of imperfect cadences (fourths and sixths) in recitation and perfect cadences (fifths and octaves) at the beginnings and endings of phrases.

A closer look at the style of the Wanley tonus peregrinus setting confirms the assumption of its dating from around the middle of the sixteenth century or a little earlier, which would make it approximately contemporary with Caustun’s work.33 The pieces are similar in word-setting and the cadential formulas used, but the Bodleian piece explores the compositional possibilities of the cantus firmus much more fully than the printed piece. Not only are the verses varied in respect of voice-leading and harmony, but there is also an awareness of form and affect (the varied form of cadence in b. 25, for instance, allows one verse to stand out from the earlier verses and has the effect of a preparation for the concluding doxology). This is the kind of variety that confers on music the status of an original work. Rather than regarding this Nunc dimittis a faburden tout court, as Aplin seems to do, one could simply say that it is in faburden style.34 Kenneth Long believes that Cranmer’s principle, ‘for every syllable a note’, had considerable influence on contributors to the Wanley manuscripts and on other composers then and later.35 This appears to be true mainly in vernacular music.

The Caustun and Wanley works may at first be seen to fit the definition of what the Scottish Anonymous calls ‘the secund kynd of faburdoun’, where ‘the tribill and the tenor keipis the just way of fabourdoun; the counter and the barritonant ar partis artificiall to tham annexit: ‘the treble and the tenor follow strict faburden, but the counter and the baritone are composed parts and move around them [or ‘and follow them’].’36 This element of composition, or improvisation, would, as in Caustun’s Benedictus, mostly relate to the cadences, whereas there have survived, both on the Continent and in the British Isles, works from this period with much greater freedom of the bassus and altus than what is found here. Our examples lie, as Aplin has argued, more within what is called ‘the fourth kind of faburdoun’.37

[It] is of four partis quhair the baritonant is sett in thridis, fyvftis, octavis beneth the plane sang or in unison with the plane sang; the tribill is sett all in saxttis above the

33 Long suggests a date before the Act of Uniformity and the first Prayer Book: 1549 (The Music of the English Church, p. 28).

34 Aplin, ‘The Fourth Kind of Faburden’.35 Long, The Music of the English Church, p. 29.36 Scottish Anonymous, ‘Heir beginnis coun[t]irin[g]’ [c.1560], in J.D. Maynard (ed.),

‘An Anonymous Scottish Treatise on Music from the Sixteenth Century, British Museum, Additional Manuscript 4911: Edition and Commentary’, vol. 2 (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1961), pp. 258–332, at p. 303.

37 Aplin, ‘The Fourth Kind of Faburden’, p. 247.


plane sang; the counter is all sett in ferdis above the plane sang and the plane sang is modulat in the propir seitt.38

[It] is in four parts, where the baritone [the lowest part] is set in thirds, fifths or octaves beneath the plainsong, or in unison with the plainsong. The treble [the highest part] is consistently set in sixths above the plainsong. The counter is consistently set in fourths above the plainsong and the plainsong is sung in the proper sight [that is, as it stands, without transposition].

For the Scottish Anonymous it was still universally acknowledged that the closing figure (terminatio in a looser sense) constituted a cadence in itself, so that, in combination with non-cantus firmus parts reaching perfect consonances at its terminatio, the psalm-tone governed the cadence of a polyphonic piece, even if exceptions to this practice are commonly found in the contemporary choral repertory.39

Some instances of voice-leading lie wholly outside the boundaries of this limited idiom, as it is described by faburden theorists. Between the semi-verses of the doxology (a very common point at which to place emphasis in sixteenth-century free polyphony) there is a small but highly effective syncopated suspension in the highest part (bb. 40–41). This would be impossible to achieve extempore and demonstrates that some attention has been paid to fine detail in this simple setting. The gymel in the bass part at the end of v. 1 has already been mentioned. The treble alternative to a nota cambiata figure in the cadence of the doxology seems to be an English mannerism encountered much more frequently in this type of faburden than in contemporary continental falsobordone. Caustun, as we saw, uses it throughout his Benedictus.

From the music covered so far, it is obvious that the function of the tonus peregrinus in conjunction with the Benedicite, as found both in the Sarum rite and prescribed in the 1549 prayer book, is not comparable with that of Psalm 113 in the Roman Catholic Church and the vernacular Magnificat of the Lutheran Church so far as polyphonic applications are concerned: conversely, the psalm-tone was used for two other canticles. Psalm 113 motets with the tonus peregrinus were improbable in England even before the Reformation, since native composers cultivated freer forms of psalmody that were not primarily based on psalm-tones – almost as if the quotidian use of plainsong psalmody had to be offset by original material. It would be more likely to find a tonus peregrinus In exitu Israel setting during Queen Mary’s reign. If one examines the repertory, however, it seems that this particular use of the tonus peregrinus was largely neglected also in the Marian period. One surviving work based on the In exitu Israel melody that has already been encountered in Chapter 3 must, however, be briefly discussed.

38 Scottish Anonymous, ‘Heir beginnis coun[t]irin[g]’, p. 309.39 Ibid., p. 291.


An In exitu Israel setting ‘upon the faburden’

The British Library holds a manuscript containing a setting of Psalm 113 that is a remarkable piece in several respects.40 It is a collaborative motet, containing music by the three contemporaries John Sheppard (c.1515–58), William Mundy (c.1528–c.1591) and William Byrd (c.1540–1623).41 Sheppard and Mundy were raised, and received their training, before the liturgy reforms of the 1540s. Most of Sheppard’s music for the Latin rite retains all the splendour of pre-Reformation times. Mundy often reveals many conservative traits in his Latin settings, such as the use of gymel to augment the upper parts at climaxes. Byrd, finally, remained a fervent Catholic all his life.42 The reasons lying behind this unusual collaboration have been the subject of discussion by modern scholars. David Mateer has shown that the later layers of the Gyffard partbooks, in which the psalm setting is found, primarily represents music by composers active in London in the Marian period of the 1550s.43 David Wulstan has ventured the further hypothesis that these three composers laboured to produce and rehearse a large corpus of music for the first Easter of Mary’s reign.44 This interpretation has some significance for our topic, since it seems that the English Church of the mid-sixteenth century preserved the tradition of procession to the baptismal font during Easter Vespers.45

40 British Library, London (GB-Lbl), Add.17802–5: the Gyffard partbooks.41 Some scholars (Stevens, ‘Processional Psalms in Faburden’, p. 109; Joseph

Kerman, ‘Byrd’s Motets: Chronology and Canon’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 14 [1961]: 359–382, at p. 360; David Wulstan, ‘Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco’, in J. Morehen [ed.], English Choral Practice 1400–1650 [Cambridge, 1995], pp. 109–142, at p. 112) believe that the passages marked ‘Mr birde’ are the work of Thomas Byrd, the father of William. Kerman, however, later seems to have changed his mind, regarding the work as a youthful product of William (The Masses and Motets of William Byrd [London, 1981]). Thomas Byrd, a minister of the Chapel Royal is mentioned in the court records for the first time on 7 July 1539 and the last time on 4 June 1558 (Records of English Court Music, vol. 7: 1485–1558, ed. A. Ashbee [Aldershot, 1993], pp. 77, 145).

42 His will contains a prayer that ‘he may live and dye a true and perfect member of the Holy Catholike Churche withoute which I beleeve there is noe salvacon for me’ (John Harley, William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal [Aldershot, 1997], pp. 391–393).

43 David Mateer, ‘The Gyffard Partbooks: Composers, Owners, Date and Provenance’, RMA Research Chronicle, 28 (1995): 21–50.

44 Wulstan, ‘Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco’, pp. 111–112.45 The entire theology of gratitude and penitence that connected Ps. 113 with this

liturgical practice was evident also in England in the period of the Tudor dynasty – perhaps perpetuated by accounts such as that of English chronicler Raphael Holinshed (c.1530–c.1580), who relates in his record of the Battle of Agincourt that King Henry V upon his victory gave thanks by having In exitu Israel sung and commanding all survivors to genuflect at the verse Non nobis Domine (Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland [1587], ed. H. Ellis [London, 1807–1808], p. 555). It was certainly


The setting is the product of a peculiar and rare English technique of constructing free polyphony on a foundation of a faburden bass. That the Gyffard In exitu Israel was so constructed is obvious from the source material itself, where there is no part designated tenor.46 If an extra part is generated by derivation from the bassus, taking into account all the rules of faburden as related by the Scottish Anonymous, the result will closely resemble the already encountered melody given to Psalm 113 for the celebration of Easter Vespers in the Sarum antiphonal (Example 3.7), although the faburden itself is slightly different (Example 10.4).47

The three parts added to the faburden (which is in the bass, transposed down a fifth) do not, however, fit modally with this melody. The bassus duly has none of the characteristic supporting functions associated with sixteenth-century continental four-part homorhythmic singing (such as the Italian and German falsobordoni examined earlier in this book), but is every bit as linear as the putative cantus firmus. In this respect, In exitu Israel displays not only a different but also a much stricter faburden technique than encountered in the Caustun and Bodley examples. While some of the In exitu Israel settings from continental Europe that we have come across (Examples 8.3, 8.4) written ‘upon falsobordone’ in a wider sense (that is having the cantus firmus at best as a latent substructure or migrating ‘thread’ rather than being structured around it), gave rise to considerable melodic ornamentation and diminution, in the case of the Sheppard/Mundy/Byrd setting, an altogether new thematic structure is erected on the faburden.

The pre-Reformation English tradition of using psalms, especially in a festal, processional context, prescribed a faburden setting. If the claim that these three composers attached to the Chapel Royal in Mary’s reign embraced the return of an older liturgical tradition and wished to expand the body of suitable liturgical items without delay is correct, they would surely have employed simple three-part generative faburden in their setting of psalms for procession in Vespers. In contrast to this, their setting of Psalm 113 is, despite its ostinato bass part,

from Holinshed that Shakespeare derived the line: ‘Doe we all holy Rights: Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum’ (Henry V, IV viii 2832–2833).

46 The parts are triplex, contratenor, medius and bassus.47 This melody is found, as has already been said, in the British Library, Harley MS

2945. The faburden for this psalmodic melody was, as a comparison of Examples 3.8 and 10.4 reveals, not uniform in time and space.

Example 10.4 In exitu Israel, bass part of Sheppard, Byrd and Mundy with chant melody from Example 3.7


rather free in its composition (otherwise, there would, of course, have been little point in working collaboratively). William Byrd gave as an instructive title for another work: ‘The playne song Briefs To Be played by a Second person – playe This Ut re mee Fa Sol la: For the grownd of this lesson’.48 This shows that Byrd was stimulated by structural repetition of this kind, which was later to become so popular in seventeenth-century England. It also strengthens the case for attributing the ‘Mr. Birde’ section of the In exitu Israel setting to William, rather than to Thomas, Byrd.

In Example 10.4 we have added the alternative In exitu Israel melody to the Gyffard bass part. The similarity between the two last phrases of the Sarum chant may well be the original reason underlying the three sixteenth-century composers’ decision to include a recurrent bass part. It is very evident that, whenever possible, the bass part is kept identical in these two phrases. The ambitus of the phrases expands on each statement, lending the tripartite structure a pleasing overall arch structure (within the separate phrases, the highest note occurs somewhat early on). The work sets the even verses only, but alternatim singing with the processional In exitu Israel melody plainsong would be problematic. The clearest example of modal incompatibility comes in the upper-part sonorities coincident with the high f in the bass part of the Alleluia. Here, the composers consistently prolong the note c, using the bassus as the foundation of an F major sonority. In contrast to this, the In exitu Israel chant – the reason lying behind the existence of the bassus – has d on this note. It is perhaps significant that the very note that is problematic in relation to the compass of the extant cantus firmus is replaced in the polyphonic setting by one that causes a violation of the mode, as defined by Tinctoris.49 One apparent exception to this is only partially an exception: in the passage quoted in Example 10.5, Sheppard does not prolong the c by the use of free material; the note results from transposition of the bassus (the ficta cs, as suggested here, serve only to weaken the effect of the c in the Alleluia entries). As a direct consequence of this, the modality of the chant (and of the tonus peregrinus) can be clearly recognized in this verse. In fact, Sheppard shows himself to be more modally consistent than his collaborators: Byrd, in one of his verses, breaks with the pattern by avoiding the F triad sonority (Example 10.6, bb. 15–16). This avoidance results in a fairly contrived cadence, but one that at least adheres to the modality of the faburden part (the artificiality may also be simply due

48 This keyboard work is preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale (F-Pn), Rés. MS 1122.

49 Tinctoris explains distonatio as follows: Quinta regula est quod supra nullum prorsus notam sive media, sive superior, sive inferior fuerit perfectio constitui debet per quam cantus distonatio contingere possit. (Liber de arte contrapuncti ‘The fifth rule is that it is not permissible to form a perfect consonance above any note, whether in a middle, upper or lower part, if this causes a departure from the mode of the song’ (Liber de arte contrapuncti, p. 149).


to the very ambitious canonic writing). The persistent suggestions of Roman inflection during the second phrase of the bassus in this verse strengthen this effect.

Even if, in Tinctoris’s terminology, this psalm setting has been ‘removed from the mode’ of its cantus firmus by what we may call an F major sonority, this distonatio is more closely related to the modality of the tonus peregrinus than to that of the chant melody. The bassus, rooted in faburden practice, here represents a link between plainsong and free polyphony. In the same way, the work as a whole occupies an intermediate position between a work based on the faburden and a freely composed psalm motet.

Example 10.5 In exitu Israel, John Sheppard


Byrd’s music for the vernacular service

The tonus peregrinus appears several times in the music for the Anglican service by William Byrd. It occurs in different situations and seemingly for different reasons, for which reason these instances will be treated separately here. Particularly odd is the setting of the preces (O Lord open thou or lips / and our mouth shall shew forth thy praise) and three psalms (Protestant numbering 114, 55, 119), where the tonus peregrinus appears not as one would expect, following Roman Catholic tradition, in When Israel came out of Egypt but instead in Teach me, O Lord (Ps. 119). It is possible that the former psalm originally accounted for the inclusion of the tonus peregrinus in this service. The other two psalms in the set are not proper to the service in question but Byrd may nevertheless have viewed the three as elements in

Example 10.6 In exitu Israel, William Byrd


a larger unit of a theological concept derived from the proper psalm.50 Considering its connections with theological notions of pilgrimage, exile and covenant, it seems not entirely illogical that the tonus peregrinus occurs in association with a psalm where the full chorus sections run: ‘Give me understanding and I shall keep thy law; yea I shall keep it with my whole heart. … Incline my heart unto thy testimonies; and not to covetousness. … O stablish thy Word in thy servant; that I may fear thee’.

The work is in ‘verse’ style, where a solo voice with organ accompaniment alternates with sections for full choir. Byrd here employs a tonus peregrinus variant with the tenor on a in both semi-verses, but he has adapted the psalm-tone well to the Anglican choral style, with delicate word declamation and effective syncopation. Therefore, the character of recitation – something that paradoxically had been more obvious with a g tenor in the second semi-verse – is avoided (Example 10.7).

The verses for the decani treble part alone are melodic and harmonic paraphrases of the tonus peregrinus, once again fully adapted to the style of Byrd’s vernacular music. Just as in the verses for full choir, the recitation character is played down. This is of course achieved easily via the relative flexibility of stress in the English language. The psalm verse in question has 20 syllables, compared with the 21 in the Vulgate, but if the same melodic writing had been applied to the latter, it would have required some melismatic movement in order to achieve good prosody. With the English language in Byrd’s hands, in contrast, every syllable can contribute to the melodic shape of the tonus peregrinus. We can also see that the psalm-tone is ‘disguised’ as free material, with an opening upward fifth leap (preceded by a fourth leap in the organ part) and by a circumvented finalis in the terminatio paraphrase. In contrast to this elaboration, the mediatio figure stands out unaltered and provides a climax in this verse as regards pitch and harmony alike. The cadential structure is archetypical for the tonus peregrinus, but the collision between middle parts in the full choir section is an idiosyncrasy of Byrd and his fellow English composers.

Whereas Teach me, O Lord featured the tonus peregrinus as a structural basis of the entire composition, the Magnificat of Byrd’s second service introduces it as an isolated element in what appears to be free writing. Moreover, this work is in ‘verse’ style – but the alternation does not follow the canticle verse structure as in traditional antiphony: instead, the composer uses the resources freely, sometimes setting off one part from the rest of the choir by syncopation in a striking manner. The tonus peregrinus appears in the solo voice to the textual passage: ‘As he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever’. From what we have seen from Byrd so far, this isolated use of the tonus peregrinus can fruitfully be interpreted as a rhetorical figure signifying something ancient in general and the

50 One is here reminded of the previously discussed connection between Ps. 113 and the Magnificat in the Lutheran Vespers, which also seems to be connected with the liturgical adjacency of these two items.


Example 10.7 Teach me, O Lord, William Byrd


commandment of God in relation to Israel in particular. It seems to be yet another reflection of the theological nexus that was invoked also in the preces and psalms. Thus here, too, we shall suggest that the key to understanding the quotation lies in the composer’s interpretation of Psalm 113 and in his liturgical experience. The coincidence of the use of the tonus peregrinus with the German Magnificat in the Lutheran Reformation is in all likelihood unimportant here. Byrd was, as we know, a faithful (albeit diplomatically tactful) Catholic, and in the event that he was familiar with any Lutheran music in that idiom, this is unlikely to have made any deep impression on him, especially since the polyphonic cultivation of the tonus peregrinus in the German Magnificat peaked only later, after his death.

The accompaniment of the tonus peregrinus verse in Byrd’s Magnificat has survived in two different versions, one formerly in St Michael’s College, Tenbury, and one in Ely Cathedral.51 Both of the organ parts date from the early seventeenth century, and neither is likely to represent faithfully Byrd’s original intentions for the accompaniment. The fact that the versions are so remarkably different harmonically makes it difficult even to begin deducing the properties of their common original stem. Both variants of the organ part are in effect of the faburden type (something that has led the editors to ‘complete’ the movements with a suggested extra middle part). The Ely version has, just like the Bodleian Nunc dimittis, a tierce de Picardie in the mediatio cadence, which shows that the tonus peregrinus was altered in this way (the decani top part has not survived in Ely Cathedral). The lax attitude to cantus firmus conventions, certainly not a hallmark of Byrd, is highlighted by this approach, in which the tonus peregrinus is ordered according to anachronistic harmonic considerations (alien to the psalm-tone itself) of the polyphony.

It is not this abnormal mediatio cadence, however, that is most striking in Byrd’s verse Magnificat, for it presents, in fact, a unique version of the tonus peregrinus, in which the terminatio descends a tone below the normal finalis. In the mediaeval theoretical tradition this trespass into another hexachord would have been a grave problem, indeed. Within the idiom of the Anglican verse service, on the other hand, this is unlikely to have caused any commotion: plainsong quotation was, after all, rare and unexpected here, anyway. In an adaptation of this kind it could even be questioned whether the generations following Byrd (those responsible for the two conflicting accompaniments of the verse service) were at all concerned with the original qualities of the tonus peregrinus. The question remains why Byrd altered the terminatio in this manner. It is not just a question of an exceptional differentia

51 St Michael’s College MS 791 is now held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford (GB-Ob), Ten 791, and is often called ‘The Batten Organ Book’, since it is generally believed to have been copied by Adrian Batten (1591–1637). Ely MS 4 is in the hands of John Ferrabosco. According to Craig Monson (Complete Byrd Edition, vol. 10a [London, 1980], pp. 167–168), the Tenbury source was compiled around 1635, whereas the Ely source dates from after 1662. Thus none of the sources transmits the original, possibly figured, bass part as it existed within Byrd’s lifetime.


that links up with the ensuing movement (if this was the object, which seems likely, since the C prepares for the opening of the lesser doxology which indeed starts on the same chord); if such were the case, the g–f –e of the terminatio would still have been harmonized in accordance with the conventional cadential formula (E–B–E). The occurrence here is, rather, an alteration at the structural level, since the entire second semi-verse is reinterpreted in both versions of the organ part; the terminatio is harmonized A–D–A in order to place the note D in a context where it can act as the finalis.

The Tenbury accompaniment follows the tonus peregrinus closely in declamation, with a clear separation of the two semi-verses. In the Ely version, conversely, the bass part of the organ bridges the semi-verses. Imitation in the middle part, as added to the Complete Byrd Edition, may seem to some artificial or out of style, but is actually rather typical of early-seventeenth-century organ parts loosely based on faburden writing. The two surviving versions serve to demonstrate the variety of practices that could arise in the accompaniment of a solo voice, where the organist was free of all harmonic considerations relative to the full choir, and/or where he did not normally have a written-out organ part available.52 Thus, so far as source material is concerned, solo passages of this kind constitute an extremely tenuous harmonic link between Byrd and ourselves. While the scholar who seeks out the original conceptions of the composer may deplore this fact, the harmonic interpretation provided by these (two or more) Anglican organists are highly valued sources in our research into the tonus peregrinus repertory.

Conclusion

The idiosyncratic qualities of the English language played no small part in how the tonus peregrinus was treated in English music, especially in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The tonus peregrinus Benedicite in the first Prayer Book proposed a rhythm based on a Germanic vernacular never before, it can safely be assumed, accustomed to such singing. The unexpected lack of further tonus peregrinus settings in the music of the British Isles cannot readily be explained by the introduction of metrical psalms – these were probably not of any greater consequence as regards elaborate polyphony, since they were normally only

52 Craig Monson suspects that Byrd’s original accompaniments were considerably less accessible to scribes than the vocal parts, and that Byrd had the organ parts for the Chapel Royal repertoire either in his memory or written down only in a book owned by himself: ‘The more fortunate and assiduous organists and scribes, especially if they had Chapel Royal connections, may have managed to gain access to Byrd’s accompaniments, but the less fortunate must have been left largely or entirely to their own improvisatory devices’ (‘Through a Glass Darkly: Byrd’s Verse Service as Reflected in Manuscript Sources’, Musical Quarterly, 67/1 [1981]; 64–81, at p. 65).


allowed (as was the case also with chorales in moderate Lutheranism) before and after the liturgy proper.53 Nor did the use of festal psalms on grander occasions present an exclusive alternative to the employment of the psalm-tones, as inherited from the Sarum tradition. It is therefore somewhat surprising not to find more tonus peregrinus psalm settings similar to those in contemporary Catholicism and Lutheranism.54 Nor did Merbecke’s assignment of the tonus peregrinus to the Benedicite inspire polyphonic settings of the tonus peregrinus – possibly, as suggested, on account of its short period as ‘official’ liturgy, combined with the fact that the 1552 Prayer Book did not include notation.55 The liturgical applications of the tonus peregrinus examined in this chapter embrace four different canticles (Benedictus, Benedicite, Nunc dimittis and Magnificat) and two psalms (113 and 119) – all appearing, as far as we have been able to find, only once. When viewed in the larger context of the wealth of all Latin and vernacular music from the Tudor and early Stuart periods this promiscuous liturgical use of the psalm-tone does not correspond to a particularly high frequency, so Shore’s impression that the tonus peregrinus seems to have been a ‘favourite theme with composers’ of this long era is in truth rather exaggerated.56 What is true, however, is that the psalm-tone later became very popular in its Anglican chant form (four-part chanting plainly harmonized), especially for the Nunc dimittis.

53 See Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1, pp. 270–271. In this function, however, they played an important role. In the preface to his Whole Booke of Psalmes, with their Wonted Tunes (London, 1594) Thomas Este singles out a group of simple metrical hymns, stating that ‘The Psalmes are song to these four tunes in most churches of this Realme’. John Morehen cites one instance that actually seems to describe metrical psalms as being intermingled in the liturgy, but this occurrence seems exceptional (‘English Church Music’, in R. Bray [ed.], The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, vol. 2: The Sixteenth Century [London: Blackwell, 1995], pp. 94–146, at p. 137).

54 It was only much later, in the mediaevalism of the late nineteenth century, that the connection between the tonus peregrinus and Ps. 113 was re-explored in the Anglican Church. This will be addressed in Chapter 13.

55 There is a ‘fourth-kind’ faburden of the Benedicite in the Wanley material (starting at fols 50, 51 and 50, respectively, in the surviving partbooks) but it seems to be (the tenor part is, as was said, lost) based on psalm-tone VI rather than on the tonus peregrinus.

56 Royle Samuel Shore: ‘The Early Harmonized Chants of the Church of England’, The Musical Times 53 (1912): 585–588, 650–652, 718–719, at p. 718. In a review (Musical Quarterly, December 1935) from the Uganda Choral Festival, J.M. Duncan reports that in a morning service the Benedictus was sung ‘with Byrd’s faux-bourdons’ (p. 1117). It is possible that this was Caustun’s work misattributed either by the musical director or by the reviewer.

Chapter 11

One Applied and One Discreet Method: The Tonus Peregrinus in Roman Catholicism

1600–1750

This chapter traces a broad liturgical tradition that commences with what in many ways represents a synthesis of late-sixteenth-century regional Roman Catholic traditions. During the seventeenth century the cultivation of musical settings of Psalm 113 revealed, to all intents and purposes, very similar practices in all Catholic provinces. Several new psalmodic idioms arose in this period, most of which seem to belie the notion of national and regional styles, almost certainly on account of a growing awareness of the international scene, which encouraged universalism, and also because of an increasingly intensive dissemination of musical sources among ecclesiastics and composers at this time. It is nonetheless possible to distinguish certain sub-variants of style and form during this period.

After the middle of the eighteenth century the tonus peregrinus lost its established place in Roman Catholic liturgy surprisingly quickly. Given the previously indissoluble association of Psalm 113 with the psalm-tone, it is odd that this process could happen so fast, especially in circumstances where musically and liturgically conservative composers, well grounded in tradition, were active. It was perhaps an unavoidable consequence of the greater specialization of musicians and theologians in their respective fields – a process that was to lead, in the eighteenth century, to a rapid decline in traditional theological learning among musicians. In a cultural milieu influenced by what has been termed ‘Enlightenment thought’, the calling of the ecclesiastical musician became a trade rather than a mission. Some composers took little interest in liturgical matters as a whole, whereas many others, forced to work with plainsong as a liturgical core repertory, engaged in free composition whenever possible and, treasuring this freedom, were unlikely to include Gregorian melodic material in their music, even if they were aware of the long-standing connection between psalm texts and psalm-tones. It would appear that it took only a few generations of composers for the traditional awareness of liturgy to transform itself from common knowledge to specialist scholarship lacking any perceived relevance to ‘modern’ sacred music. The backlash against this trend, the spiritually and technically conservative stile antico, as cultivated by Johann Joseph Fux (1660–1741) and Padre Martini (1706–84), enjoyed wider success on the theoretical than on the practical front.



Arguably the most illustrious work in which the tonus peregrinus appears (although this is rarely noted) is the setting of Psalm 50, Miserere mei, by Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652). Many different layers of legend and fact shroud this work, and it is hard to delineate its historiography from the viewpoint of modern musicology. The Miserere mei was intended for the limited function of the solemn Roman Holy Week Tenebrae celebrations, where it stood in a tradition of similar earlier works by, among others, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525–94) and Giovanni Francesco Anerio (1567–1630). Richard Sherr has been able to trace the beginning of this psalmodic tradition with exactness. A manuscript in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana contains a remark dated 12 April 1514 in which singers are described as singing this psalm alternatim and cum novo modi (‘in a new way’), most likely a reference to falsobordone.1 This was, of course, no longer a new way of performing psalms in general, but this specific text in its particular function was previously delivered alte legendo sine nota usque ad finem: ‘reading out aloud continuously to the end without notes’.2 The rumour that dissemination of the parts for Allegri’s version was punishable by excommunication seems highly exaggerated, but it is clear that the work was at any rate highly revered throughout the Christian world as something unique, and that it attracted the interest of many who visited the Vatican in Passiontide with the express intention of hearing it. This enthusiasm reached its climax in the nineteenth century.3

Allegri’s work is in falsobordone style, partly with free recitation but also with some semi-imitative entries in the first choir. It is often confused with another setting of the same psalm, composed by a later Roman composer, Tommaso Bai (c.1650–1714). The latter’s composition is very similar to Allegri’s and was certainly directly prompted by it. Soon after Bai’s death this work, too, was copied into the Sistine Chapel repertory along with Allegri’s, both reported as being performed during the Tenebrae (although in fact normally on different days of the Triduum sacrum). In the Vatican sources these works are kept separate, but their reputation progressively underwent contamination, up to the point where it became hard for those attending Tenebrae to distinguish between the two, especially since both were furnished with elaborate ornamentation. The works were written for

1 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (I-Rvat), MS Vat. Lat 12 274, fol. 120 v.2 This and many other passages relevant to this psalmodic tradition are quoted in

Richard Sherr, ‘The Singers of the Papal Chapel and Liturgical Ceremonies in the Early Sixteenth Century: Some Documentary Evidence’, in P.A. Ramsey (ed.), Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth (Binghamton, 1982), pp. 249–264.

3 Among those who were fascinated by its performance numbered Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (who reportedly transcribed the work from memory, although no concrete evidence for this survives), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (who made his own transcription from memory in 1831) and Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baroness of Staël-Holstein.

One Applied and One Discreet Method 187

antiphonal performance by two choirs, the second of which features the most intricate embellishments, originally almost certainly improvised, or at least preserved only in the memories of the singers of the papal chapel (the choristers would not have been able to read from the page, since some sections of the Tenebrae liturgy, as the name implies, called for complete darkness in the chapel). Today, with collated sources, we can easily distinguish between the contributions of the two composers (and of the choristers of different periods of the Sistine Chapel who have added their ornamentation). Alongside Vatican sources, there is a multitude of less reliable eighteenth-century manuscripts elsewhere in Europe, and at the end of the century Charles Burney even had Allegri’s work printed.4 In these sources the legendary abbellimenti are normally not included.5 It is primarily the music sung by the first choir in that work that is of interest to our study. The second choir, which is subject to the most extreme variation in different sources – among them the famous c’’’ in the highest part from the version compiled by Sir Ivor Atkins in the twentieth century (the extreme register follows from faulty transposition of the second choir in one of the disseminated ‘aurally recorded’ sources) – is not cast in the harmonic mould of the tonus peregrinus. (Example 11.1 shows the first choir’s music from the version copied in the Vatican in 1731).6 This version can be regarded as a source that is representative of how the work was performed during the long period during which the legends arose. In this version the tonus peregrinus appears in the highest part, but in the earliest sources, dating from Allegri’s own time (1661), it is assigned to a tenor part.7 This seems to be a reflection of the universal shift of thematic focus from the tenor to the highest part as the prime bearer of the cantus firmus during this period.

The 1661 version (MS 205) does not contain the imitative entries either, so Allegri’s authorship can be only partially confirmed. Rather, this work represents in itself a tradition to which several generations of papal musicians must have contributed. What remains constant among all Vatican sources is that the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus is given out in loosely elaborated form in the first (five-part) choir. The recitation degrees (d and c) are maintained throughout, but

4 Charles Burney, La musica che si canta annualmente nelle funzioni della Settimana Santa, nella Cappella Pontificia, composta da Palestrina, Allegri e Bai (London, 1771).

5 See Julius Amann, ‘Allegris Miserere und die Aufführungspraxis in der Sixtina nach Reiseberichten und Musikhandschriften’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Regensburg, 1935) for a discussion of the bulk of the sources involved. One fine modern survey of some sources of Allegri’s work (predominantly those held by the British Library) has been published on-line by Ben Byram-Wigfield (http://www.ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/AllegriBook.pdf accessed 2010). See also Magda Marx-Weber, ‘Die Tradition der Miserere-Vertonungen in der Cappella Pontificia’, in Collectanae, vol. 2: Studien zur Geschichte den Päpstlichen Kapelle, ed. B. Janz (Rome, 1994), pp. 265–288.

6 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (I-Rvat), Capp. Sist. MS 185. The different transpositions are discussed further by Byram-Wigfield (http://www.ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/AllegriBook.pdf).

7 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (I-Rvat), MS 205.


the terminatio is abandoned in favour of a final cadence in D major. This harmonic plan is reproduced also in later, ‘external’ variants of the work. It appears to reflect a structural antiphonal device in which both choirs and the plainsong verses have a relationship that represents a type of closed form:8

We are here dealing with an extended and formalized version of the archetypical harmonic pattern of the tonus peregrinus. The recitation in the top part produces a clear first semi-verse of the psalm-tone, but with the addition of a syncopated leap in b. 3. This figure is not present in the MS 205 version, where, as already

8 Choir I: MS 205; choir II: MS 206. This scheme does not reflect the intended alternatim structure, since all even verses were recited monophonically according to the following scheme: v. 1 (choir I), v. 2 (plainsong), v. 3 (choir II), v. 4 (plainsong), v. 6 (choir I), and so on. Note that ‘G minor’ and all similar descriptions in the table refer to opening or closing chords, not to keys. D with a tierce de Picardie functions as an ordinary dominant chord within G minor.

Choir first semi-verse second semi-verseI G minor (tenor: d) – B major F major (tenor: c) – D, tierce de PicardieII G minor – D major C minor – G, tierce de Picardie

Example 11.1 Miserere mei, Gregorio Allegri


commented, the psalm-tone is entrusted to a tenor part. Much of the character of the first choir verses derives from the rhythmic momentum created by this figure immediately following the unmeasured recitation. This is a skilful use of the momentum inherent in the tonus peregrinus mediatio figure. Just as the recitation of the first semi-verse is broken off effectively by this mediatio variant, that of the second semi-verse is complemented by a chain of entries, here too creating a strong effect by simple means. Significantly, these entries are not imitative: that is, they are not derived thematically from the psalm-tone. Instead, the second semi-verse acts as what one might call ‘fractured falsobordone’, where the lower parts appear to function primarily according to harmonic considerations, whereas the top part presents the tonus peregrinus with its terminatio cut short on the penultimate note, seemingly also on harmonic grounds (dominant endings such as this are very common in contemporary polychoral cantus firmus writing).

Allegri’s Miserere mei is one of the most frequently discussed works of its kind in the modern literature (especially in popular musicology), but the presence of the tonus peregrinus is rarely noted. Similarly, most modern performances do not use the tonus peregrinus for the plainsong verses but find some alternative recitation formula, depending on which source their edition is based (an exception is Ben Byram-Wigfield’s edition published by Ancient Groove Music (1997), where the tonus peregrinus is used for the even-numbered verses).9 The reason why scholars do not immediately connect the work with its cantus firmus is certainly related to the fact that the popularity of the work peaked at a historical point where liturgy and music theory had become knowledge available only to the specialist. Another factor may be that the heavy ornamentation of later versions obscured the melodic shape of the psalm-tone beyond recognition. In Chapter 13 we shall see, however, that some composers in the nineteenth century responded to the work with a special fascination relating precisely to the presence of the tonus peregrinus.

The falsobordone legacy in other psalm settings, especially Psalm 113

At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, psalms had already been set to falsobordone for a period of approximately two hundred years. Rarely in the history of music has a genre survived intact for such a long time. Needless to say, falsobordone had undergone major changes throughout this time, but in the late sixteenth century it still remained, by and large, a clearly recognizable genre that had managed to preserve some of its original characteristics. In the early seventeenth century, however, it was to develop in a variety of directions. We have already seen one example of this in settings of Psalm 50, but the differences evidenced by

9 Otherwise, the ‘external’ aurally recorded versions are surprisingly often used for the purpose of editions – perhaps (but this is not very likely) the rumour of excommunication still remains in force among scholars and musicians. When I requested copies of the parts in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana I was received with great kindness and service.


settings of Psalm 113 during the same period are nothing short of remarkable. We concluded earlier that the Romanum breviarium of 1568 inaugurated a situation in which settings of this text were poised to occur in music all over the Christian world. We shall find here, in addition, that the shapes that these settings took owed much to the deviant characteristics of the tonus peregrinus itself.

One of the most elaborate forms of falsobordone that is possible without completely losing the sense of the idiom is represented by an In exitu Israel setting by the Cistercian Johann Nucius (c.1555–1620): a ‘falsobordone motet’.10 Nucius’s work displays the same intricate rhythmic peculiarities found in some late-sixteenth-century florid counterpoint. In this largely homophonic context, the effect produced is very poignant, but the word setting suffers in the process. A work such as this shows that the old falsobordone practice had not, in Nucius’s milieu, been much affected either by the counter-Reformation ideals of text declamation in general or, in particular, by the humanist syllabic ode tradition that was in evidence in his native Upper Silesia (today part of Poland). This is somewhat surprising in the light of a theoretical treatise by Nucius, in which he reveals a

10 Johann Nucius, Canticum sacrarum diversarum vocum liber secundus (Liegnitz, 1609, RISM A/I/6: N 808).

Example 11.2 In exitu Israel, Johann Nucius


great knowledge of, and sympathy towards, contemporary humanist scholarship.11 He had a penchant for superabundant imitation at the octave (one of the most distinct stylistic peculiarities of the earlier generation of German composers). In Example 11.2 we can see this tendency reflected very clearly in his In exitu Israel, where Nucius seems, in accordance with his writings in the Musices poeticae, to employ it as a rhetorical figure to represent the word simulacra (‘idol’ or ‘image’): In bb. 20–26 we have no fewer than six entries of the first tonus peregrinus semi-verse on the same scale-degree, as well as what seems to be a hint at a fugal answer (in the highest part, b. 21). We can see, however, that after the head-motif of the Germanic incipit has been stated, each part settles into its respective falsobordone function, just as witnessed in Allegri.

After the mediatio cadence in b. 23 the melodic content of the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus is ignored (note the strange resolution of the d rising to an a in the tenor part in b. 25). The same occurs in several verses of the work. Whenever the second semi-verse makes an appearance, it is generally assigned to the tenor and is often subject to seemingly arbitrary paraphrase, though in general retaining the clausula e–f–d. In the verse quoted it is clear that the composer regards the shape of the psalm-tone as of minor importance. Since there is no harmonic obstruction for the normal g–d–f–e–d terminatio in this verse, it appears to have been positively and deliberately excluded. Moreover, the mediatio is treated with great freedom by Nucius and is often chromatically inflected in order to achieve the desired harmonic variation of a D major cadence in place of the one in F major. From the table of mediatio cadences below one can clearly see that variation has been given priority over accurate presentation of the psalm-tone:

Nucius has thus reduced the tonus peregrinus to the barest minimum of the Germanic incipit and, occasionally, the tenor clausula figure. These are the most strongly characteristic traits of the psalm-tone, and he reconnects here with a kind of writing found in many works of the entirely cantus firmus-free late-sixteenth-century falsobordone psalmody in northern Europe – only that here the incipit is used as a familiar tag: a presentation of the tonus peregrinus as a ‘genre’ or, to put it differently, the payment of lip-service to liturgical convention.

A markedly different approach to the tonus peregrinus is found especially often in music from the Iberian peninsula, where we find harmonic variation of a kind that seems to fuse the strict teaching of psalm-tone clausula – often with the melodic course of the tonus peregrinus intact – with proto-tonal tendencies.

11 Johann Nucius, Musices poeticae, sive de compositione cantus praeceptiones (Neisse, 1613).

Verse 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Normality (f) * * * *Inflection (f) * * * *e (in A major) *


As one example of this one may cite a work by Pedro Thalesio (c.1565–c.1630), chapel master at Guarda Cathedral and Professor of Music at the University of Coimbra (Example 11.3).12

The mediatio in the tenor (the mediatio nexus formed by the tenor and the cantus here can be found in virtually all Iberian sixteenth-century settings of the tonus peregrinus) leads directly to a bare fifth chord. This reveals a strong sense of fidelity to the tonus peregrinus, since the mediatio was, as we have seen, in other circumstances often amended precisely in order to produce a third. Thalesio is consistent in his use of the terminatio, where, once again, all parts adhere to the archetypical clausulae, resulting anew in a chord without a third. The recitation of the second semi-verse is divided between the two tenor degrees (bb. 4–8), the first being harmonized with a sharpened leading-note in the altus. This strong progression prepares for the chord of the inflexion in b. 6 and represents as such a tonal adaptation of the archetypical tonus peregrinus harmonization. The older way to write the flexa, with a ligature, would not have permitted this harmonic structure. The second recitation degree, after initially following common tonus peregrinus progressions, is supported in its second half by a B triad, marking a return to the modal tradition of earlier Iberian polyphony. Altogether, this strangely attractive harmonization is unorthodox – revealing a new way of thinking about mode on Thalesio’s part – but, unlike the falsobordone type exemplified by Nucius,

12 Our example has been transcribed from Stevenson, Robert, Luís Pereira Leal, and Manuel Morais (eds), Antologia de polifonia portuguesa 1490–1680, Portugaliae Musice 37 (Lisbon, 1982).

Example 11.3 In exitu Israel, Pedro Thalesio


this remains true to psalmodic tradition by upholding the melodic qualities of the tonus peregrinus.

Robert Stevenson has stated that Thalesio’s In exitu Israel is based on psalm-tone IV, although, as our example clearly demonstrates, it is without any reasonable doubt a tonus peregrinus work.13 What may have made Stevenson uncertain is the doxology, which, as in so many other falsobordone works from this period, is set for an augmented number of voices in a thematically less strict way than the psalm verses. Another possibility is, of course, that Thalesio intended the doxology for a completely different work: many instances where separate doxologies are interleaved between psalm settings lacking that portion of the text turn up in seventeenth-century sources.14 A third possibility, again, is that the copyist or compiler, on account of the thematic freedom commonly encountered in the Gloria Patri, considered a non-tonus peregrinus doxology appropriate if one had not been provided by Thalesio himself – psalm-tone IV and the tonus peregrinus do indeed share some similar harmonic possibilities from the viewpoint of seventeenth-century harmony – notably the strong cadences on the degree of a, which, as we saw, were a popular deviation from the tonus peregrinus cadential pattern, especially in the doxology verse.

Even if Nucius does not insist on the melodic presence of the tonus peregrinus and Thalesio takes considerable modal liberties, the settings of these two composers nevertheless ‘shadow’ the psalm-tone in outline as each verse in their settings moves from one point to the next, always leaving open the possibility of a closer alignment with the psalm-tone, either harmonically or melodically. Other falsobordone-like settings depart more radically from the cantus firmus ideal, displaying a more fragmentary approach to the thematic material – very similar to that found in psalm verses in the contemporary organ repertory. A verse by Serafino Cantone (fl.1580–1627) may be cited in illustration of this (Example 11.4).15 Here, no part resembles the tonus peregrinus more closely than any other. The absence of the tonus peregrinus at the linear level allows for a free choice of harmony. It must be stressed, however, that neither these harmonic variations nor the broken textures of entries (as also encountered in the works of Allegri and Nucius) per se signal the dissolution of earlier alternatim manners. Rather, it is by virtue of the thematic unity of these entries that this verse looks forward to works discussed later in this chapter.

The freely thematic approach is intensified further by the fact that the verse starts with imitation relating to the second semi-verse rather than the first. Using

13 Robert Stevenson, ‘Pedro Thalesio’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 25, 2nd edn (London, 2001), p. 339.

14 Several of the falsobordone sources from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich – discussed in Chapter 8 – for example, have hand-written doxology verses provided in the margins or on blank pages.

15 Serafino Cantone, Vesperi a versetti et falsi bordoni (Milan, 1602, RISM A/I/2: C 885).


the same kind of dotted incipit figure as Nucius, Cantone drops immediately after that to the second tenor degree. Unlike in Nucius, this entails imitation at an interval other than the unison or octave. Again, we must note a disparity between contemporary modal theory and this musical practice. To use the language of later tonality, it is noteworthy how the ‘softening’ and ‘flattening’ effect of the imitation based on the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus is effectively counterbalanced by the modally deviant cadence on the degree of a, experienced as a move in a different (sharpward) direction. This is then concluded by a second semi-verse that is modally consistent with the tonus peregrinus but in which, ironically, melodic material from the second semi-verse is lacking. The process as a whole already exhibits many of the harmonic features normally associated with composers of the later seventeenth century, especially the employment of thematic material outside its original modal context. Cantone thus isolates the harmonic and melodic qualities of the tonus peregrinus, always using them separately, as if the modal qualities were important only in the absence of direct melodic references to the psalm-tone.

The unbroken falsobordone tradition that we are outlining here had such deep-rooted connections with psalmody that it served as a basis also for genres that were new to the period under discussion, even ones primarily connected with secular music. The rise of monodic music with virtuoso vocal parts was soon applied to

Example 11.4 In exitu Israel, Serafino Cantone


Example 11.5 In exitu Israel, Francesco Severi


falsobordone psalms by composers such as the papal castrato Francesco Severi (c.1590–1630). In Example 11.5 we can see how the tonus peregrinus has been used as a foundation for passaggiato writing.16

One may think it odd that the title falsobordone is even applied in the title and preface of Severi’s publication (incidentally, a beautiful example of printing by the new process of engraving). It is really a composition sopra i falsobordoni, just like the In exitu Israel by Sheppard, Mundy and Byrd (although of course very different in compositional technique). In his treatment of the thematic material Severi is more conservative than the composers covered so far in this chapter, and his approach to the tonus peregrinus resembles that of his fellow Sistine chorister Allegri. The psalm-tone is present not only as a modal substructure but, in the verses for canto and tenore, also with its full melodic function. Severi also provides verses with passaggi for alto and basso voices, where his approach is completely different. These verses operate strictly in accordance with the harmonic implications of the psalm-tone but do not even hint at the tonus peregrinus melody: instead, they act as ornamented ‘plagal’ equivalents for the other two parts. This means, exactly as in the quasi-imitation of Allegri’s Miserere mei, that the conception of this work is firmly rooted in previous falsobordone theory; the tonus peregrinus can never appear in an alto part, even if the different parts, as is the case here, were never intended for simultaneous performance. We have already encountered this concept of functional solo parts in Vincenzo Galilei’s intabulation of a four-part In exitu Israel.

Despite all its embellishment, a strict conception of cantus firmus is evident in Severi’s setting. We may observe the outline of the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus in bb. 14–15, 18 and 19 (with the flexa figure in b. 16 and the mediatio altered, as was common, to end on a third). The second semi-verse is more ornamented; here, the terminatio is brought out very clearly by the closing figure in b. 24. It is not really fruitful (or relevant) to establish at what point Severi places stress on the scale-degrees of the psalm-tone, because, as one would expect in an improvisatory idiom, he seems to follow the harmony as implied by the bass part, yet without ever losing sight of the melody of the cantus firmus. The way in which the psalm-tone is delineated in the passaggi depends more on when a degree is first reached than on how much mensural value it is assigned. It is worth noting that, except during the initial run in b. 15 (which has a function similar to the sixth-leap figure at the corresponding point in Allegri’s work), Severi almost never dips below the recitation degree at any point. This results in a clear melodic outline and a strong anticipation of the cadence, once the degree d is reached in b. 23.

Severi’s purpose in publishing his volume may primarily have been to instruct singers how to add ornamentation to a melody in general and not necessarily to a cantus firmus in particular. It was probably expected that his fellow Roman choristers could add, when necessary, a considerable degree of ornamentation to their parts in any kind of music. When Severi states in his preface that his settings

16 Francesco Severi, Salmi passaggiati per tutte le voci ... sopra i falsi bordoni di tutti i tuoni ecclesiastici (Rome, 1615, RISM A/I/8: S 2847).


are typical of the way psalms are sung in Rome, he must really mean that such passaggi were added also to choral parts, since there are not a great many extant monodic settings resembling these. Certainly, he, and other castrati, would apply this manner of ornamentation to the upper parts, just as exemplified in the aurally recorded versions of Allegri’s Miserere mei (in which he probably never sang, however, since Allegri joined the choir only one year before Severi’s death). In bb. 60–73 we can see that Severi set the doxology as a duet between two high voices. The parts move principally in thirds and share the psalm-tone material equally. In the course of ‘recitation’ the parts function according to Komplementärfiguration, whereas at the mediatio and terminatio figures they produce the archetypical psalmodic nexus patterns for a discantus–tenor structure. The wording of the title of Severi’s publication, nella maniera che si cantano in Roma: ‘as they are sung in Rome’, implies that this ornamental practice was renowned in the provinces, and was also one of the sources of the peculiar fascination of Allegri’s work. Many if not most reputable choral institutions outside the Italian peninsula had no castrati in their choirs, and boys, even considering the high standards of choristers of the period, could not normally had been expected to sing passaggi of this kind.

Concertato psalm settings

All the falsobordone-based styles of psalm settings discussed here stand in some kind of parental relationship to a type of largely homophonic psalm setting for larger choral and instrumental forces cultivated all over Europe from the first half of the seventeenth century onwards. The prominence of the psalms proper to Sundays and some important feasts in the reformed Breviarium, meant that it became customary to write entire sets of Vespers music (on Sundays, Pss 109–113, the hymn and the Magnificat), since these fixed sets were now pertinent to more recurrent occasions than had previously been the case. It is nevertheless important to note that Psalm 113 was, unlike some of the others, excluded from the double feasts that called for really large scale music.17 Just as we observed in connection with the tonus peregrinus in early Lutheran liturgy, the tonus peregrinus seems sometimes to have ‘spilled over’ into settings of other psalm texts: not only those for normal Sundays but also those for other Vespers. This is, for instance, the most logical explanation for a setting by Pedro Vaz Rego of Psalm 115, Credidi propter quod locutus sum, employing the tonus peregrinus (it is adjacent in numbering, but falls liturgically on the Vespers of the following day). By and large, however, the psalm-tone remained closely connected as before with Psalm 113.

These concertato psalms are often divided into several movements and include solo passages or sections for a smaller choir of soloists. The instrumental and choral forces needed for these works range from modest to considerable. The

17 Harper lists orders for Vespers of our lady, of the Apostles, Corpus Christi and Dedication (Forms and Orders, pp. 160–161).


earliest works of this type are found in northern Italy, and it was there that the grander ideal came to dominate. The solemn Vespers at the ducal church of San Marco in Venice called for distinctly festive settings of Psalm 113. There exist several printed collections of salmi spezzati (i.e. psalms alternating canto figurato and canto gregoriano) by the chapel master and other leading figures of that institution: Salmi a otto brevi (1629) by Alessandro Grandi (c.1577–1630); Salmi a otto voci (1644) and Delli salmi a otto voci (1662) by Giovanni Rovetta (c.1597–1668) and Vesperi a otto voci (1675) by Francesco Cavalli (1602–76).18 Each of these composers set Psalm 113 to what was called a misto tuono, which denotes either the tonus peregrinus used as a melody or the modal qualities associated with the psalm-tone, exactly as these different manners were described in our earlier discussion of falsobordone. A setting by San Marco vice chapel master Giovanni Legrenzi (1626–90) exemplifies how the tonus peregrinus was often assigned to only one of the separate choirs in this type of writing (Example 11.6).

The strong voice-leading effect of the tonus peregrinus mediatio and terminatio appears to have been considered undesirable, whereas the stability of the recitation degrees could provide a convenient link between the rapidly alternating choirs, especially since these extended notes could be reinterpreted harmonically in the

18 Note that in cori spezzati the ‘split’ is between different choirs, whereas in salmi spezzati the ‘split’ is between cantus planus and figural music in alternatim – even though salmi spezzati commonly also used cori spezzati, hence the frequent misunderstanding by musicologists of the first term.

Example 11.6 In exitu Israel, Giovanni Legrenzi



course of their recitation. The three different choirs all focus around the recitation degrees, but from different harmonic angles. In our example we see that the first recitation degree (a) is a central axis from which choir I moves flatwards (with the tonus peregrinus flexa), whereas choir II immediately plunges into the ‘sharper’ sonority of an E major chord (as the dominant of A minor). The instrumental group reinforces the texture in certain sections of the work but is not thematically involved. This procedure was typical for northern Italian psalm settings from the early seventeenth century onwards and culminated late in the century in composers such as Legrenzi. In his case, the tonus peregrinus is firmly rooted in only one choir, so that the other choir (or choirs) takes on an auxiliary function, looking at the matter from the plainsong perspective of liturgy. The ‘sharp choir’ sometimes features psalm-tone elements in transposition, but normally the tonus peregrinus occurs at one level only. This manner of writing is unquestionably rooted in the increasing awareness of tonal space, of major and minor keys and of their interrelationships as regards direction of harmony. Therefore the recitation degrees attracted attention from composers at the expense of the previously so significant mediatio and terminatio figures, which in these situations only caused unnecessary breaks in the momentum and hindered rapid harmonic progression.

This development most certainly accounts for the steadily declining interest in the tonus peregrinus in music written by Italian composers at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the distinctive features of the psalm-tone had been abandoned, as in Legrenzi’s work, it is likely that the tonus peregrinus was not always even perceived. The same situation is reflected even more strongly in the rhythmically driven homophonic settings of Psalm 113 by Italian composers such as Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), Nicola Porpora (1686–1768) and Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85), which do not refer to the tonus peregrinus at all. We know from the psalmodic oeuvre of these composers that psalm-tones are not normally to be expected as a basis for any work. As is the case also in other genres, the sheer amount of text in Psalm 113 may in some instances have accounted for the absence of the tonus peregrinus. In such cases, composers, especially if they were themselves orchestral players (as was the case with Vivaldi and Porpora), frequently set the text as a homorhythmic declamation of functional harmonic character, with greater melodic intensity in the orchestral parts than the vocal ones. The relation between the psalm-tone and polyphonic music lived on, nevertheless: Gregory Barnett has discussed the ways in which some theorists tended to characterize the D modality with one flat (Aeolian) as a mode even in early tonal theory, and he goes so far as to employ the term tonus peregrinus as the description of a mode in his analysis of Baroque sonatas.19 Inadequate and confusing as this may appear, the concept has been very fruitful in his analysis of music of free writing by Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) and Giovanni Maria

19 Gregory Barnett, ‘Modal Theory, Church Keys, and the Sonata at the End of the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51 (1998): 245–281, at p. 265.


Bononcini (1642–78). This case points to a survival of the modal qualities of the tonus peregrinus in the teaching of harmony, which means that it must have been regarded as distinct from minor tonality as well as from the Aeolian and Dorian modes. The theoretical differences between these three genera were discussed in Chapter 4.

Johann Stadlmayer (c.1570–1648) was an influential composer of music in a strictly liturgical tradition. With him (or at least, with his generation) there commenced an Austro-German tradition of writing Vespers music in concertato form influenced by northern Italian models. For this reason, one is not surprised to encounter the tonus peregrinus primarily in its Roman variant. In Stadlmayr’s Psalmi vespertini omnes all Vespers psalms are set with close adherence to the relevant psalm-tone.20 His In exitu Israel in concertato style has a very even distribution of writing for the six vocal parts, as regards both solo passages and the distribution of the tonus peregrinus material. Throughout his work Stadlmayr remains faithful to the cadential formula of the tonus peregrinus not only harmonically but also melodically. The rise of the concertato style (as applied to all kinds of instrumental and choral idioms) has often been linked to the increasing dominance of the basso continuo and the supremacy of the highest part in choral and instrumental textures alike. Here, however, one is often struck by the persisting predominance of the tenor part in homorhythmic tutti sections.

In Example 11.7, bb. 84–86, for example, the second semi-verse – and, most distinctly of all, the terminatio – of the psalm-tone is found in tenor I. It may be doubted whether this line would be at all audible amid such a rich texture. It seems, in fact, that Stadlmayr remained concerned to reflect the psalm-tone in two connected but separate ways: (1) as melodic material and (2) as a clausula, a formula underlying harmonic progress without necessarily being the main focus of the audible result. The latter conception is evident from the much greater frequency of appearances of the terminatio figure vis-à-vis those of the second recitation note. This stands in contrast to the pattern observed in Italian works for larger forces, as exemplified by the Legrenzi work. A strictness in the cantus firmus treatment and an emphasis placed on its clausula are so common that they may be regarded as characteristic of central European salmi concertati as a whole. Generally, only one element of the tonus peregrinus is singled out for a solo verse in a manner very similar to Cantone’s setting but also closely resembling the Choralkonzerte of coeval Lutheran composers. In Stadlmayr (Example 11.7, bb. 131–136) it is the first semi-verse that is subject to imitative treatment. As soon as the mediatio has been stated, the parts ‘spin forth’ with free material over the harmonic foundation of the psalm-tone. The solo verses, often taking the form of a duet or a trio, follow early-seventeenth-century style in their tendency to favour conjunct movement, which is achieved by undemanding passaggiato writing (as observed in bb. 131–136). As a result, the tonus peregrinus terminatio is often deprived of its characteristic

20 Johann Stadlmayr, Psalmi vespertini omnes (Innsbruck, 1640).


Example 11.7 In exitu Israel, Johann Stadlmayr


descending fourth. The doxology thereby attains a somewhat monumental character when it gives out this figure in its original form (bb.193–196). The fact that the more freely conceived altus part also reproduces the leap of a fourth (twice) suggests that this is a deliberate affect-related employment of the psalm-tone. The tonus peregrinus, with its characteristic deviations, was the perfect vehicle for the rhetorical device of peroratio when stated in full, and it seems that it is deliberately used in this way here. Stadlmayr’s setting observes closely the following disposition: exordium (the plainsong intonation of the tonus peregrinus); narratio (the first two polyphonic verses presenting the tonus peregrinus clearly in an upper part); divisio (fragments of the tonus peregrinus presented in a variety of manners for different groups of soloists, making a considerable distinction between the two semi-verses); peroratio (the return of the strict statement of the tonus peregrinus previously cited). Similar dispositions are found in the other psalms in the Psalmi vespertini omnes, but in no other psalm is the demonstration of divisio so literal. In other instances, a similar effect is often achieved by the introduction of free material and/or by variation of style, whereas in In exitu Israel the thematic material – above all, the two recitation degrees – is central to the compositional strategy. This is a direct response to the special nature of the tonus peregrinus.

Progressive elements in Stadlmayr’s divisio technique include a thematic involvement of the tonus peregrinus in tutti sections and the transposition of tonus peregrinus elements in solo verses. In bb. 59–66 the three notes of the mediatio appear at three different levels of transposition in tenor II: first at normal pitch, then transposed up a fifth (bb. 62–63) and finally in a form identical with the terminatio in the final bars of the verse. In several other instances Stadlmayr explores the similarity of the two descending clausula figures. However, the concertato elements are not fully exploited and have still to be developed in the


hands of later composers. Stadlmayer conforms rather strictly to the alternatim pattern in the succession of solo and tutti verses, which are all of approximately equal length, in accordance with the verses of the psalm text.

The way in which the tonus peregrinus – as a cadential clausula – is assigned to a middle part in choral sections may have seemed old-fashioned already in Stadlmayr’s day, but this treatment remains current at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, appearing in an In exitu Israel by Johann

Example 11.8 In exitu Israel, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer


Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (c.1660–1746).21 Having stated the entire psalm-tone in the alto part, Fischer lets the violins enter with the first semi-verse, almost in the manner of a commentary (see Example 11.8). Here, too, the psalm-tone is used first as an opening gambit, with the function of a rhetorical exordium, and is then broken up into smaller fragments (e.g. the terminatio in bb. 4–5). Whereas Stadlmayr used the psalm-tone in three distinct ways – in its entirety, as two separate semi-verses and as fragments – German composers of Fischer’s generation largely neglect the clear division into semi-verses, introducing the psalm-tone either in full statements or in the form of smaller fragments.

The tonus peregrinus variant given in the alto in Example 11.8 exemplifies how a smooth progression of the entire psalm-tone was sought; the final note of the mediatio (which would here be e) is eschewed on the second beat of b. 2, conferring on the phrase a melodic continuity that resists the traditional bipartite division. Since the cadence in E is avoided here, it is perceived very strongly when it is achieved by the strings in b. 4. The effect of the first three bars is strikingly similar to that of plainsong intonation, since the archetypical tonus peregrinus harmony is saved for what would have been the first polyphonic verse. This new control over the harmonic progression inherent in the tonus peregrinus was vital in large-scale, multi-movement works such as these, where total conformity to the archetypical tonus peregrinus cadences would have been detrimental to creating the desired effects of tension and release. Even if such cadential points were occasionally varied, as in Stadlmayr’s case, they produced a regularity of periods that was rather undramatic, and the dramatic style cultivated in contemporary instrumental music was one of the most important models for the concertato psalm idiom.

Franz Xavier Anton Murschhauser (1663–1738), organist of the Frauenkirche in Munich, followed in the same tradition as Stadlmayr and Fischer with his Vespertinus Latriae et Hyperduliae (Ulm, 1700).22 His In exitu Israel (Example 11.9) is a fully-fledged concertato setting. As in the previously discussed settings, there is continuous alternation between tutti and solo writing, but here the difference achieved by the two types of texture is sharper. The character of the opening canonic statement of the tonus peregrinus is an apt application of dramatic effect through thematic intensity. Note that the tonus peregrinus occurs also here in a middle part, something to which we shall return shortly. The ripieno is the main bearer of the tonus peregrinus, whereas the solo sections are treated in a variety of ways. First and foremost, the latter showcase the virtuoso writing one associates with the stile concertato. The reference to the psalm-tone is made in a very typical way; it acts as a link between the tonus peregrinus ripieno section preceding it and the longer free solo section that follows in a different part (e.g., in bb. 15–17). In

21 Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, Vesperae seu psalmi vespertini pro toto anno (Augsburg, 1701, RISM A/I/3: F 985).

22 Franz Xavier Anton Murschhauser, Vespertinus Latriæ et Hyperdulie (Ulm, 1700, RISM A/I/6: M 8203).


Example 11.9 In exitu Israel, Franz Xavier Anton Murschhauser








fact, the first tonus peregrinus semi-verse is repeatedly favoured for this purpose. This may be on account of its simple basic conjunct structure, but is probably also connected with its suitability for rapid modulation.

The tonus peregrinus becomes a focal point also in Murschhauser’s solo versus tutti writing. In bb. 36–37 and b. 41 the flexa figure is used in this way. In b. 38 we also find the Germanic flexa. This commingling of Gregorian dialect is typical of composers working in central Europe. Roman Catholic printed sources were very much standardized in this period, but the psalm-tones can hardly ever have been learned by that route. Rather, they would have been passed on by rote and in particular through their occurrence in polyphony, the latter fact perhaps explaining the occasional appearance of Germanic intonation in this repertory. Murchhauser achieves a very well-organized closing section for his work. After the climactic return of the tonus peregrinus, set against arpeggiated motion in the violins and presented in its most complete and literal form so far, the full chorus enters with the tonus peregrinus in the tenor (b. 115–128). Just as with Fischer, Murschhauser avoids separating the two semi-verses and thereby preserves momentum at this point. Instead of concluding the entire work with this cantus firmus section, he works up a further climax by introducing an original theme treated in stretto.

Murschauser’s treatise Academia musico-poetica reveals an astoundingly conservative view of ecclesiastical polyphony and was predictably attacked and ridiculed by Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) in volume 1 of Critica musica.23 Among other things, Murschhauser seemed to have adhered closely to the rule

23 Franz X.A. Murschhauser, Academia musico-poetica bipartita, oder Hohe Schul der musicalischen Compositions (Nuremberg, 1721); Johann Mattheson, Critica musica, vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1722).


of tenor cantus firmus in homosyllabic sections, an archaism that surely must have seemed odd to someone such as Mattheson, who believed in the natural progress of music through history.24 We have, however observed this trait not only in Murchhauser but also in Fischer and (perhaps less surprisingly) Stadlmayr. It is thus not an isolated stylistic trait in Murschauser: rather, it seems that, despite otherwise succumbing to all the modern influences offered by instrumental and dramatic music, the central European concertato psalm preserved the anachronistic tenor cantus firmus ideal with remarkable tenacity up to around 1750. What is remarkable in this is not that thematic material is deliberately entrusted to a middle part as an act of homage towards the stile antico – this feature is found often enough in sacred counterpoint in many genres and also in later periods. It is, rather, the seemingly habitual assigning of thematic material to a middle part in homorhythmic sections that is so noteworthy here.

The Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden holds the manuscript of an In exitu Israel by Jan Dismas Zelenka that shows strong influences from dramatic music.25 This setting, dated 1725 in the autograph manuscript, contains no allusion to the psalm-tone. However, a smaller-scale setting of the same psalm by the same composer, and apparently belonging to the same period, refers to it with great confidence and originality (see Example 11.10). The work is framed by two near-identical movements in which sopranos and oboes state the tonus peregrinus over obbligato alto, tenor and bass parts, while all the strings play in unison together with the basso continuo. We can see that the massive unison accompaniment has a peculiar effect on the work as a whole; the movement is abstract in that it does not interpret the text by introducing rhetorical figures, and the tonus peregrinus is not aligned rhythmically with either the obbligato bass part or the choral voices.

In vivace tempo, the movement would possess a highly artificial character, were it not for the over-arching, smoothing effect of the tonus peregrinus recitation. The presentation of the text is radically abridged by parcelling it out among the lower vocal parts (see, for example, how several verses have been condensed in this way in bb. 3–6). When the highest part finishes the text of the first verse, the lower parts have already covered nearly half of the psalm. This approach could not be more different from that taken in the settings of Stadlmayr, Fischer and Murschauser. The way the tonus peregrinus is set in relief and the obvious intention to impress recall Zelenka’s contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), and Bach’s similar use of the tonus peregrinus will be discussed later. Zelenka follows a tonus peregrinus dialect in which the second recitation degree descends one degree before the mediatio. This variant

24 This view is expressed repeatedly in Johann Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713).

25 Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden (D-Dl), Mus. 2358-D-61.12. This library is today known by the acronym SLUB after its merger with the university library of the same city.


was over-represented in sixteenth century polyphony, and it is more than likely that Zelenka was acquainted with In exitu Israel settings from earlier periods (he personally prepared many lightly updated arrangements of Renaissance sacred vocal works for the use of the Dresden Hofkapelle). This conclusion may seem far-fetched, but how can one otherwise explain why he, unlike any other contemporary Catholic composer, sets the first word of the recitation (In) to a disyllable, as if following a ligature? His setting is indisputably a great deal more liturgically oriented than the concertato settings by his contemporaries.

As noted, Zelenka’s part-writing seems to lack the musical representation of the text that was so marked in both Italian and German concertato psalms. The strange unvarying unison writing for the strings in Zelenka’s work may, however, be intended to represent the concept ‘barbarus’. In a very brief article John Parkinson discusses how the unison and the octave seem to have connoted barbarism in early eighteenth-century music.26 Parkinson cites the instance of Vivaldi’s In exitu Israel – alongside several similar examples from George Frederick Handel (1685–1759) – which, instead of having a harmonized cadence for the final words of the first strophe, de populo barbaro, makes all the voices go in unison with the bass part.27 Unison writing was, according to this reasoning, a symbolic return to the oldest form of music imaginable by the eighteenth-century composer: monophony. More exactly, the oldest form of monophony known to the musicians of the time was, of course, plainsong. In Zelenka’s case, the use of the tonus peregrinus (with its ligature-like phrasing) and the unison writing in the instrumental parts may therefore be intended as a twofold representation of the concept of barbarism.

In the second movement Zelenka invokes the incipit and mediatio figures in the bass and tenor solos, where the latter is most effectively set in staggered imitation (bb. 42–44). The tutti section Dominus memor fuit nostri (‘the Lord has remembered us’) is set as a return to the psalm-tone employing the typical tonus peregrinus harmonic pattern. The work closes with a return to the material of the first movement, retexted, leaving the overall structure very similar to the rhetorical plans encountered in the three concertato works discussed above. Zelenka’s different approach can hardly be ascribed to any regional tradition, since both he and Fischer were Bohemians by birth, were active in Dresden at some point and also travelled beyond that region. The clear and full tonus peregrinus statements that acted as a short, climactic peroratio for Fischer and Murchhauser become the very core of Zelenka’s work. Zelenka’s setting has, indeed, stronger connections with a concertato repertory that will be discussed in the next chapter.

26 John Parkinson, ‘The Barbaric Unison’, Musical Times, 115 (1973): 23–24.27 Another instance pertinent to our topic are the psalms (Estro poetico-armonico

[Venice, 1724–26, RISM A/I/5: M 423–425]) of Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739), where unison writing is often employed in allusion to the Hebrews, both ancient and modern.


Example 11.10 In exitu Israel, Jan Dismas Zelenka





Mass settings

The idea of using the tonus peregrinus as a cantus firmus for Mass settings was congenial to the seventeenth-century ethos of ecclesiastical counterpoint that was later termed stile antico. One fine setting has survived from the hand of the Aragonian composer and singing master Diego de Pontac (1603–54).28 Constructing a Kyrie movement around a psalm- or canticle-tone confronts the composer with the predictable problems connected with deriving a tripartite structure (Kyrie–Christe–Kyrie) from a bipartite component. In the case of Pontac’s peregrinus Mass the first Kyrie employs the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus in strict cantus firmus writing (Example 11.11). The Christe is spun out from the second semi-verse, with a thematic ‘head-motif’ in all parts being followed by a strict terminatio cadence in the tenor part (note the exact statement at transposed pitch in the contralto, bb. 25–29). In the concluding Kyrie Pontac uses the entire psalm-tone as a tenor cantus firmus condensed into approximately the same amount of mensuration as the first Kyrie section. This method of using the

28 Diego Pontac, Misa In exitu Israel de Egipto à cuatro voces. We have transcribed our examples from Lira Sacra-Hispana, sigl. XVII, ser. 2A:I (1869).


Example 11.11 Kyrie from Missa In exitu Israel, Diego de Pontac



Example 11.12 Sanctus, from Missa In exitu Israel, Diego de Pontac


tonus peregrinus in its full idiosyncrasy within a context completely different from that of antiphonal psalmody attests to both a full awareness of the possibilities of the psalm-tone and a flexibility of cantus firmus writing. Should Pontac’s Mass turn out to be an instance of the transformation via parody technique of one particular (unfortunately unidentified) setting of Psalm 113, his compositional feat would be even more notable.

In addition, Pontac’s Sanctus represents an original polyphonic approach to the tonus peregrinus that once again stems from the structure of the Ordinary of the Mass itself. The parallelismus membrorum of psalms and canticles and the resulting bipartite structure of their psalm-tones were problematic enough in the tripartite Kyrie, but in the Sanctus, which was often set in florid imitative style, the harmonic structure of the psalms had to be openly counteracted. Pontac evades the typical cadential patterns of the tonus peregrinus through a combination of several means. Fragments of the psalm-tone are set against an attractively conceived invertible counterpoint, but in b. 10 (Example 11.12) the terminatio is interrupted.29

Following the normal cadence of the mediatio in F (b. 15), Pontac is anxious to thwart the expected cadence leading to the degree of D. Instead, the mediatio appears again, moving ‘flatwards’ by transposition (bb. 17–20), and the terminatio is first introduced at this level of transposition. It is not until b. 32 that the first complete untransposed terminatio cadence occurs, and this interlocks with a new mediatio immediately followed by allusions to c (cf. the b in b. 34). By these means, the composer replicates exact fragments of the tonus peregrinus while steering clear of the cadential patterns with which the mediatio and terminatio are associated.

Organ Music

All over southern Europe Roman Catholic liturgies produced a wealth of organ music in some way related to the psalm-tones. The tradition in francophone

29 I have not been able to establish whether the non-coincidence of psalm-tone and text in bb. 4–5 was the intention of the composer or of the anonymous editor.


areas to compose entire sets of Mass and Officium music for organ may certainly have originated as an alternatim convention but seems to have become a self-contained instrumental genre during the course of the seventeenth century. Even in cases where such music was used alternatim, there was a typical distinction between psalm-tone, mode and ‘ton’, where the last term is equivalent to neither of the other two. This new concept places stress on the finalis in a way that justifies an equation with the concept of a ‘tonic’. Guillame Gabriel Nivers (1632–1714) prescribes that choristers, when singing alternatim, should pay attention only to the finalis as given out by the organ and allows the organist freedom from all melodic rules, so long as he provides the choristers with their notes at the end of the verse. Nivers even states that the search by singers for the right psalm-tone while the organ is still playing is a principal cause of musical confusion.30 This seems to indicate either that the singers of Saint-Sulpice and the Parisian court, which Nivers served throughout his career, had lost the ability to recognize the psalm-tones or that the psalm-tones were not used in organ versets any more. In either eventuality, this description of French alternatim practice sheds light on the fact that we do not encounter the tonus peregrinus in surviving psalmodic organ works from this milieu. Had thematic psalm-tone quotation been expected in the alternatim organ versets, singers would logically have been well advised to follow the psalm-tone rather than merely picking up the finalis in the final chord. Here, they are expressly recommended not to do so, which most likely points to a situation of free improvisation with little or no thematic reference on the organist’s part.

In seventeenth-century Iberian organ traditions, where there is more thematic reference to the psalm-tones, the tonus peregrinus was commonly regarded as an extension of psalm-tone VIII (then called octava irregulár). Consequently, tonus peregrinus works are also lacking here, since an intonation on psalm-tone VIII would suffice also for the tonus peregrinus. There seems to have been a difference in pitch, however: Antonio Martín y Coll (?–after 1733) prescribed that psalm-tones I, IV, VI and the tonus peregrinus should be intoned on A la mi re, leaving the tonus peregrinus as it stood in the system of twelve modes, whereas the others should be lowered to G sol re ut.31 How this transposition was effected we do not know, but no intonations with clear tonus peregrinus references appear to have survived from this period, either. Nor do the Italian or the southern and central German organ traditions appear to have produced any tonus peregrinus settings for psalm or canticle alternation. Two tonus peregrinus organ settings by Johann Pachelbel will be discussed in the next chapter, since even though

30 Guillame Gabriel Nivers, Dissertation sur le chant grégorien (Paris, 1683), quoted in Almonte C. Howell Jr, ‘French Baroque Organ Music and the Eight Church Tones’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 11 (1958): 106–118, at p. 108.

31 See Bernadette Nelson, ‘Alternatim Practice in 17th-Century Spain: The Integration of Organ Versets and Plainchant in Psalms and Canticles’, Early Music, 22/2 (1994): 239–259, at p. 245.


Pachelbel wrote much of his music for Catholic liturgies, these items clearly belong to the sphere of Lutheran liturgy as settings of the German Magnificat. Considering the sympathetic view taken towards cantus firmus writing that we find in the southern German organ repertory, this would be a logical milieu for possible tonus peregrinus settings. If we look at the Nuremberg school, the Magnificat fugues on all the psalm-tones by Pachelbel are based on themes unrelated to the psalm-tones. This also goes for much of the extant repertory, including psalm-tone IX settings. The earlier Nuremberg organist Erasmus Kindermann (1616–55) based some Magnificat intonations on plainchant but did not produce any psalm-tone IX settings. The few organ works based on the tonus peregrinus of Catholic composers that have been identified owe at least as much to the Lutheran organ tradition as to earlier Catholic traditions based on psalmody. This definitely seems to be the case with a sectional toccata for organ by Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702–62).32 Both the nature of this toccata, and the way it was in all likelihood used, places it outside the liturgical scope of this book. It presages the type of abstract organ repertory that became common at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Although the tonus peregrinus might have had, and probably did have, an important position in the alternation between organ and choir, it has not left any clear traces in the organ music of the Catholic rite during the period covered here. In view of the fact that there survive cantus firmus settings for organ based on the other psalm-tones, it is perfectly possible that the tonus peregrinus suffered from its close connection with Protestantism. We will see in a later chapter that the Magnificat (regardless of language) and the tonus peregrinus psalm-tone became emblematic of Lutheran doctrine and liturgy. For a conservative ecclesiastic, the tonus peregrinus might also have been problematic on account of its perceived connections with the new teachings of Glareanus and Zarlino. For instance, Jean Titelouze (c.1565–1633), whose importance as an organist (at Rouen Cathedral), poet and music theorist made him an important influence on many younger French organists, ignored the tonus peregrinus in his set of Magnificat settings based on psalm-tones I–VIII. He held that, although it had been proved that there were indeed twelve modes and psalm-tones, it was necessary to remain loyal to the doctrine of eight species as prescribed by the Church.33 Thus it seems that a combination of progressive elements (the rise of virtuoso keyboard technique and the rejection of cantus firmus writing) and conservatism (the refusal to adopt the ‘new’ modes within the liturgy) accounts for the lack of tonus peregrinus organ settings for the Catholic rite.34

32 Johann Ernst Eberlin, IX. Toccate e fughe per l’organo (Augsburg, 1747, RISM A/I/2: E 160).

33 Jean Titelouze, Le Magnificat, ou cantique de la Vierge pour toucher sur l’orgue, suivant les huit tons de l’Eglise (Paris, 1626).

34 If any scholar reading this book knows of any organ tonus peregrinus settings for the Catholic liturgy in this period, I would be very grateful for the information.


Conclusion

It is noteworthy that the emerging tonal harmony, with its strong sense of direction, shares many traits with the tonus peregrinus. These traits are encountered also in some other psalm-tones (I and IV) while being foreign to most of them. The mediatio and terminatio figures of psalm-tone V, for example: f–a–c [recitation]–d [flexa]–c / c [recitation]–d–b–c–a, exhibit no sense of direction from a tonal point of view. The situation is similar with psalm-tones III, IV, VI and VIII whereas psalm-tone II, c–d–f [recitation]–g [flexa]–f / f [recitation]–e–c–d, presents a direction that excludes all possibility of concluding a work as it commenced – a basic requirement for ‘rounded’ tonality as already cultivated in instrumental music. The harmonic plan of the tonus peregrinus must therefore have attracted composers on account of its similarity to a harmonic plan that was to be favoured by minor tonality, especially in respect of the tension produced by the mediatio, with its move towards what we today term the relative major key.

Just as works based on the tonus peregrinus in certain ways anticipated the ideas of Glareanus in sixteenth-century polyphony, so it seems that this psalm-tone acquired a similar function in the rise of the harmonic sense associated with modern tonality. In both cases, the result was to attenuate or marginalize its purely melodic aspects. While this sense of tonality may have been a decisive factor in the post-Renaissance use of the tonus peregrinus, the general development of sacred music was by then moving away from a reliance on fixed melodic items towards the creation of original thematic material. As regards organ repertory, the rise of tonality seems to have been particularly detrimental to the long-established cantus prius factus principle. Psalm-tone IX attained a meaning that did not, in pan-Catholic circles, imply the tonus peregrinus as such but referred, rather, to free composition using the qualities of the Aeolian mode, as laid down by Glareanus and Zarlino. However, we shall see, in the following chapter, that psalm-tone IX retained a closer melodic connection with the tonus peregrinus within the Lutheran organ repertory.

The ascendancy of the basso continuo together with the prevalence of the highest part, generally taken to be strongly characteristic of the concertato style, can be confirmed in the Italian psalms that we have discussed here. The central European works, however, all show a tendency to retain the tenor, or another middle part, as the principal bearer of the cantus firmus and as the modal or tonal guide for the entire texture. That this was still true in the eighteenth century for Murschhauser and Fischer betokens a compositional approach of rare stubbornness. Even if this trait does not go back directly to the tenor-based cantus firmus style of sixteenth-century German composers (for this is otherwise not much in evidence in the sacred concertato repertory), it seems to have been the preferred psalmodic compositional method. The northern Italian works, on the other hand, focused on the recitation degrees as an axis for harmonic variation. We have furthermore encountered two works (both by Iberian composers) that remain saturated by the melodic and harmonic implications of the psalm-tone: Thalesio’s psalm setting


and Pontac’s Mass setting. In a manner quite unanticipated, both these works are harmonically forward-looking as a side-effect of their composers’ intransigence in the handling of the melodic aspects of the tonus peregrinus. This deliberate preservation of tradition may, with some simplification, be contrasted with the apparently ingrained conservative traits of Austro-German composers displayed even within such a ‘modern’ idiom as the concertato psalm. Yet, once again, the presence of the tonus peregrinus is never more inherent in a work than we find in Stadlmayr’s and Murschhauser’s compositions. The southern European approach may be labelled ‘discreet’, while that of central Europe is ‘applied’. The former uses the tonus peregrinus in whatever pragmatic way suits the composer (note the use of recitation degrees by the San Marco masters and Pontac’s application of the psalm-tone in a manner that negates its bipartite structure), whereas the latter seems to regard the tonus peregrinus as the fons et origo of the edifice: even if it sometimes appears lost amid a welter of rhetorical representation and concertato writing, the tonus peregrinus remains the harmonic clavis, the ‘key’ to the work.


Chapter 12

A Handmaiden of Many Different Voices: The Tonus Peregrinus in

Lutheranism 1600–1750

The wealth of sixteenth-century Lutheran vernacular polyphony placed much reliance on the ever-growing stock of congregational chorale melodies. Even though the tonus peregrinus had been officially designated for the singing of the Magnificat in German, and even though the canticle played an important role in Lutheran liturgy, we have seen that this tradition threw up a surprisingly small number of tonus peregrinus settings in the course of the sixteenth century. The musical production of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren settings peaked only much later, in the seventeenth century. This chapter traces the development of this tradition up to about 1750. The canon of significant settings did, in truth, decline after that point but, in any case, its further prolongation is of no direct interest to our study. As regards large-scale settings, those dating from the late eighteenth century onwards no longer exemplify the liturgical raison d’être of the chant within earlier Lutheran tradition. In the case of the liturgical music of hymnals and Choralbücher subsequent to the period covered here, these have, conversely, lost their connection to the major traditions of polyphonic music. Thus the story of the German Magnificat ended in much the same way as it started. Its place in the Lutheran liturgy has remained unchanged from the days of the Reformation up to our own time – but for two hundred years it was, over and above this routine function, a centre of attention for generations of outstanding composers.

Chapter 9 revealed how the vernacular Magnificat, although a non-strophic (that is without accentually rhyming strophes) item of prose, was used alongside strophic chorales.1 Moreover, that the tonus peregrinus was not confined simply

1 One is surprised to find that at least one prominent scholar has altogether missed the connection between the canticle and the psalm-tone in Lutheranism. When Connor correctly stated that the Lutheran Magnificat was normally sung to the tonus peregrinus. Willi Apel protested: ‘but this statement is definitely wrong. The tonus peregrinus is – and always was – used only for Ps. 112, Laudate pueri, on a few special occasions. Why and how it found its way into Bach’s Magnificat settings would be an interesting question to pursue’ (Review of M. Connor, Gregorian Chant and Medieval Hymn Tunes in the Works of J.S. Bach, Speculum, 33/2 [1958]: 269–270). Apel cannot be excused on account of discussing matters outside his special area of expertise, since the tonus peregrinus was occasionally assigned to the Magnificat also in mediaeval sources.


to the German canticle, but also inspired the minds of Lutheran composers to compose Magnificat settings in Latin.2 All the major idioms of Protestant Baroque music are represented, and, perhaps unexpectedly, it will emerge that some of the identifiable difficulties associated with the polyphonic application of the tonus peregrinus can provide a useful insight into various compositional problems concerning the genres in question.

Cantional, motet and Choralkonzert

As earlier chapters have shown, falsobordone was for a long time the psalmodic idiom par excellence. In the early seventeenth century, the most common form of falsobordone was the variant of the technique in which responsibility for text underlay devolved largely to the chorister. Alongside this model, there existed everything from occasional pointers in the psalm or canticle verses to mensural settings with complete text underlay, in which the different parts sometimes have their own distribution of text, according to their individual voice-leading. Tonus peregrinus harmonizations of the German Magnificat in all these variant forms proliferated in the Lutheran Church at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is well documented that the organ sometimes supported choirs in falsobordone-like music.3 This foreshadows indirectly the later practice of accompanying the monodic Lutheran chorale on the organ; the accompaniments in question were often notated in a manner similar to the basic type of falsobordone, without any text underlay. The tonus peregrinus holds a unique position in this historical process on account of its central role in both traditions: as a psalm- and canticle-tone in falsobordone and as a non-strophic chorale-like melody in Lutheran hymnody.

Hans Leo Hassler (1564–1612) set the German Magnificat to the tonus peregrinus in the most basic of four-part writing, without text underlay.4 Bartolomäus Gesius (1562–1613), in a setting that is harmonically simplified, even renounced the F–d–F cadential formula and made all cadences end on a chord of D major.5 Several such settings were printed and distributed during

2 The additional liturgical uses that we saw in Chapter 9 had largely been discontinued by the mid-1600s. One notable exception is the prescription of the tonus peregrinus for the vernacular Nunc dimittis: Herre nu låter tu tin tienare fara i frijd, in an official Swedish hymnal, musically edited primarily by Harald Vallerius (1646–1716): Then swenska psalm-boken medh the stycker som ther til höra (Stockholm, Burchard, 1697).

3 In the preface to Melodeyen Gesangbuch (Hamburg, 1604), Gabriel Husduvius Modderanus describes all combinations of organ, figural and unison singing that were practised in Hamburg at this time.

4 Hans Leo Hassler, Psalmen und geistlichen Lieder auff die gemeinen Melodeyen (Nürnberg, 1608, RISM A/I/4: H 2330).

5 This improbable harmonization results from the chromatic inflection of f on the tonus peregrinus mediatio figure. The work originally appeared in the print Concentus ecclesiasticus (Frankfurt and der Oder, 1607), now lost and accordingly without RISM

A Handmaiden of Many Different Voices 229

the first decades of the seventeenth century. Stylistically, they are not very different from those encountered in the sixteenth century. There we observed that falsobordone settings of the Meine Seele erhebt den Herren greatly outnumbered figuraliter works, so that the tonus peregrinus used for this purpose was treated in elaborate polyphony only exceptionally. The same tendency clearly operates in the early seventeenth century. Whereas Meine Seele erhebt den Herren settings in falsobordone consistently employ the officially prescribed melody, this is often disregarded in figural music. A good example of this avoidance is a Meine Seel erhebt den Herren ‘à 3’ by Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625).6 Not only is this work based on original thematic material: it also features a textual paraphrase of the Magnificat.7 It seems that the official translation and the officially recognized psalm-tone appeared at this time primarily in ordinary daily liturgical usage rather than in the polyphonic repertory of school choirs and Kantoreien. This distinction may account for the prominent position of the tonus peregrinus in later collections of congregational chorales.8 In addition to its presence in the vernacular Magnificat, the tonus peregrinus retained its traditional relationship with Psalm 113 in Protestant liturgies. In Ein schön geistlich Gesangbuch by Melchior Vulpius (c.1570–1615), for example, the tonus peregrinus appears both in Meine Seele erhebt den Herren and in a German translation of Psalm 113.9

Early on in this period, the tonus peregrinus was used in the semi-dramatic liturgical Historiae settings peculiar to the Lutheran Church. Rogier Michael (c.1555–1619), a composer of Dutch ancestry, used it for the Gospel narrative in his Die Empfängnis unseres Herren Jesu Christi of 1602.10 Quotation from other Gregorian melodies is found in some of the polyphonic interludes of this Historia, while other movements are based on original themes. Significant, however, is the fact that when the narrative reaches Luke 1:46, Mary recites her Meine Seele erhebt

number. It was fortunately reproduced in K. Ameln, C. Mahrenholz and W. Thomas (eds), Handbuch der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenmusik, vol. 1: Der Altargesang (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1933 R/1942), pp. 450–452.

6 Adam Gumpelzhaimer, Lustgärtlein Teutsch und Lateinischer Geistlicher Lieder … Ander Theil (Augsburg, 1619, RISM A/I/3: G 5133).

7 The rhymed paraphrase reads: Mein Seel erhebt den Herren mein, mein Geist thut sich erspringen. In dem der soll mein Heiland sein, Maria so tut singen: mich schlechte Meid aus Nichtigkeit allein hat angesehen. Sein göttlich Macht in mir verbracht, all G’schlecht mir Lob verjehen.

8 Robert Scholz has connected the sudden increase of Magnificat settings in German in the early seventeenth century to the rise of Lutheran Pietism during this period (‘17th-Century Magnificats for the Lutheran Service’ [D.Mus. diss., University of Illinois, 1969], p. 27).

9 Melchior Vulpius, Ein schön geistlich Gesangbuch … mit sonderm Fleiβ contrapuncts Weise gesetzt (Jena, 1609, RISM A/I/9: V 2574).

10 The manuscript of this work is held by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. The work was included in Ameln, Mahrenholtz, and Thomas (eds), Handbuch der deutsche evangelischen Kirchenmusik, vol. 4, pp. 3–14, which is the source of its transcription here.


den Herren in falsobordone to the tonus peregrinus. This is an effective way of highlighting this scriptural passage for the listener, and it typifies the pedagogical concern of the early Lutheran Church. Since the Magnificat connects musically to the part of the Evangelist, this passage forms a climax to Michael’s work.

In addition to the organ accompaniment of choral falsobordone, it is generally believed that this kind of canticle setting was on occasion performed on the organ alone. On account of its expediency, falsobordone was a genre that was not readily abandoned even after more practical ways of notating keyboard music, for example tablature and figured bass, had made it possible to write down more elaborate playing than what was possible with extemporization from choral notation. The bassus parts of the Cantional oder Gesangbuch Augsburgischer Konfession (Leipzig, 1627) by Johann Hermann Schein (1586–1630) show that keyboard accompaniment to falsobordone was generally expected at this point. In Das Magnificat Mariae Falsi bordoni Schein also identified the syllable (written in capitals) where each of the two recitation notes of the tonus peregrinus ends in order to facilitate the text distribution in all the parts (e.g. Denn er hat seine elende Magd AN-ge-se-hen; Siehe, von nun an werden mich selig preisen AL-le Kin-des-kind) – a useful aid to singers and organist alike. It is odd that the composer refrained from including the third in the final chord, even though the tenor is in a good position to supply that note. The bare fifth chord cannot, as in so many examples, be explained by an adherence to the psalm-tone clausulae. Rather, this compositional choice suggests that continuo support was not merely an option but actually an expectation.

The alternatim practice governing the singing of psalms in falsobordone applied also to the German Magnificat. The alternation between two choirs in homophonic writing can in fact be seen as an important prototype for through-composed cori spezzati works. In that light, it is interesting that Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), who composed several polychoral tonus peregrinus settings (discussed later on in this chapter), often divided the falsobordone of his Meine Seele erhebt den Herren settings into separate choirs. In sixteenth-century falsobordone and Cantional settings the tonus peregrinus was almost always presented in its traditional position, d–c’, with recitation on a and g, but from the early seventeenth century onwards it also appears in various transpositions, as in the high-register setting from volume 5 of Praetorius’s Musae Sioniae, where the incipit is e’’–g’’–e’’, in accordance with the Aeolian modality of contemporaneous music theory.11

In the eighteenth century homophonic chorale harmonization had become an idiosyncratic art wherein a considerable number of the features found desirable in large-scale works were introduced at a ‘micro’-level (within the context of a larger work of polyphony such sections are sometimes referred to as in ‘familiar style’). Strong progressions and a rapid harmonic pace were favoured – something

11 Michael Praetorius, Musae Sioniae, vol. 5 (Wolfenbüttel: Michael Praetorius, 1607, RISM A/I/7: P 5352).


clearly evident in a setting of the doxology from Cantata X (BWV 10) by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) (Example 12.1).12

The tonus peregrinus appears in modal transposition (almost as high as in Praetorius’s case), which reinforces the effect of a favoured eighteenth-century style of harmonization in which the three upper parts all lie in a high position, allowing greater independence to the bass part. The crossing of the two lower parts reflects the fact that the instrumental bass part was doubled at 16-foot pitch by the continuo instrument. For Bach, no idiom is too simple not to undergo some form of contrapuntal treatment. Accordingly, he exceeds the ‘familiar style’ by having the parts enter in imitation in the second semi-verse. The tradition of intoning

12 The manuscript is preserved in the Library of Congress, Washington DC (US-Wc), Whittall collection ML30.8b B2M4). A facsimile edition has been published: Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantata Autographs in American Collections, ed. Robert Marshall (New York and London, 1985).

Example 12.1 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Johann Sebastian Bach


the tonus peregrinus with one syllable to a ligature of two or three notes (d–f or d–f–d in this particular transposition) remains evident here, even if the incipit notes are separated syllabically; the harmonic pace is slow on the incipit figures and swift on the recitation notes, diverging strongly from his normal practice. His harmonizations of original chorales dating from his own period are almost always even in their harmonic pace, and a minim in the chorale melody is almost invariably harmonized as two crotchets.

As a result of the practical convenience of figured bass, which led to a more ‘vertical’ approach to composition, the elaborate style of chorale harmonization as we know it from J.S. Bach declined soon after his time (although elements of that style survived in vocal writing and probably also as a non-notated practice in organ playing). Meine Seele erhebt den Herren retained its status as one of the most familiar congregational melodies and accordingly gained admittance to most important Lutheran hymnals of the eighteenth century. The setting contained in Christian Gregor’s Choralbuch of 1784 (Example 12.2) represents a late and simplified Cantional style that is highly representative of Lutheran congregational music at this time. The text is not given at all in this Choralbuch, since it was in all probability presumed that the organist knew the canticle verses by heart. The overall effect is the opposite of that produced by the earlier style of harmonization: the harmony is dynamic on the incipit figures, which here function almost as upbeats, and static on the recitation, reflecting a more pragmatic approach that falls back on earlier fauxbourdon.

Conceivably, no seventeenth-century composer chose to set the German Magnificat so many times as did Michael Praetorius. This should come as no surprise, given his abundant output, much of which appeared in print within his lifetime. Together with his diligent activity as a theorist, encyclopaedist and musical director at the court of the dukes of Wolfenbüttel, he was one of the chief Lutheran exponents of cori spezzati writing, a practice that he had most likely learned from his extensive studies of Venetian works, but which he had possibly also picked up indirectly from fellow Germans who had studied in Italy, such as H.L. Hassler.13 Volume 1 of his Musae Sioniae, published in 1605 in Regensburg, includes a polychoral Meine Seele erhebt den Herren in grand style (Example 12.3). Leaving aside the first semi-verse, which is intended for plainsong intonation, it is a through-composed

13 The two composers met 1596 at the famous organ inspection in Groeningen.

Example 12.2 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Christian Gregor


Example 12.3 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Michael Praetorius





work that sets all the verses and the doxology. The full ensemble, CATB + CATB, is used sparingly, and only when directly required by illustration of the text. One effect that Praetorius learned from his models was the rhythmic impetus achieved by dovetailing the entries of the two sub-choirs. He makes the most of all possible contrasts without ever transgressing the basic framework of the tonus peregrinus. Psalm-tone recitation is frequently shared between the two cantus parts before one of the choirs bring the section to an end with the terminatio formula.

Praetorius derives diminuted motifs from the tonus peregrinus – notably dotted variants of the incipit figure. Having already introduced a section with the motif a– b–c–a, the incipit of the first semi-verse, he can go on to use a corresponding motif derived from the second semi-verse (a–b–c–g) as a ‘divider’ to set up a passage in C major or G major tonality before drawing to a close with the tonus peregrinus terminatio. An example of such an excursion occurs in bb. 17–20. Even the pitch of g by itself, often in a C major context, can perform this dividing function, as when a longer venture into outlying tonalities, with some prominence given to F major, is permitted to the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus via recitation (see bb. 155–169).

Praetorius has astutely noticed that the two incipit motifs both possess the typical characteristics of bass parts. This allows him to have the bass parts of both choirs thematically involved, something that tends to be rare in the necessarily vertical conception of polychoral music. In the hands of lesser masters these parts are often reduced to mere foundations. In bb. 37–41 choir I proceeds from an interrupted cadence with the second incipit in the bassus part, outwardly in the form of a commonplace cadential figure. The first mediatio motif is used similarly in the ensuing passage of choir II (bb. 47–51); the motif here in cantus II is used throughout the work, and is likewise derived from the mediatio (it also reappears later in the work). In the interplay of the two choirs entire passages are frequently presented a second time in transposition. The way in which Praetorius uses the incipit motif as a link in these transpositions is highly effective. Having had recourse to the second incipit twice in interrupting the psalm-tone recitation (bb. 18–22), choir II concludes with the second semi-verse. Overlapping the cadence of the latter, the incipit enters again, but since it is now transposed up a fourth, it leads back not into the second but straight into the first semi-verse. The link is tightened by the harmonization of the incipit motif in b. 31: the strong F major chord, archetypical of tonus peregrinus harmonizations, is withheld until the cadence of choir I has sounded. Using such devices Praetorius was able to build up the impetus that it is essential to maintain in a through-composed cori spezzati work.

On the whole this setting employs a ‘smoothed-out’ version of the tonus peregrinus, in which the second semi-verse is deprived of its first downward leap to d. The result is a terminatio resembling that of tonus I, although the regular terminatio could easily have been accommodated in most of his cadences. The intention behind this procedure is unclear, since Praetorius in all his other tonus peregrinus settings used the common Germanic second semi-verse, as he indeed


occasionally did also in this setting. We have seen that the motivic content of this Meine Seele erhebt den Herren draws on the opening motifs of the two tonus peregrinus semi-verses. The terminatio is used only to round off sections. Sometimes, Praetorius replaced the second half of the psalm-tone by a conventional cadential phrase, as if that component of the psalm-tone were regarded as of lesser importance. This is interesting, since the second half of the tonus peregrinus in effect assumes the function of an intermediate level forming a bridge between ‘ordinary’ (or ‘free’) material and the strict quotation of the tonus peregrinus.

Prætorius later published a revised version of the setting in volume 1 of Musae Sioniae, this time with the text presented in Latin.14 In Urania oder Urano-Chorodia … auff 2, 3 und 4 Choren zu gebrauchen (1613) he set Meine Seele erhebt den Herren for three CATB choirs. Stylistically, this through-composed setting approaches what we today call ‘colossal Baroque’. Not much of the thematic unity found in the previously examined setting is present here. It is possible that a greater degree of spatial separation between the choirs was intended, since many of its traits resemble those of large-scale works by the two Gabrielis. The cantus and bassus parts of the three choirs are doubled in tutti sections and the choirs generally perform longer sections of music than in the setting in volume 1 of Musae Sioniae. The composer attempted to knit these sections together using common motivic material. Another technique to this end is the practice of having a dotted incipit figure tacked on to the finalis. This happens also in verses where that figure is not used in the incipit of the recitation. This method is effective in dovetailing the canticle verses even when the choirs are spatially separated. The plainchant intonation of the first verse is here replaced by a strophe set for a reduced number or voices.

A different polychoral approach was taken in a Meine Seele erhebt den Herren for eight voices by the Coburg court composer Melchior Franck (c.1580–1639). Instead of allotting the psalm-tone semi-verses to each choir according to the recitation note, as Praetorius frequently did, Franck usually let both choirs take part in the same semi-verse before proceeding to the next. This can be seen in our example (Example 12.4). Both choirs are employed simultaneously in a manner contrasting with that seen in Praetorius, who reserves the full forces for homophonic tutti sections. The juxtaposition of the two incipit figures (first and second semi-verse) in bb. 24–25 exemplifies an integration of the choirs that in style comes closer to the Lutheran motet tradition than to Italianate cori spezzati writing. In other respects, this setting shows Franck to have been a more forward-looking composer than most of his German contemporaries. The way in which the incipit figure is absorbed into the rhythmic drive of phrases, rather than set to a ligature-like rhythm of its own, prefigures the rise of the Choralkonzert, to which we shall shortly turn our attention.

14 Michael Praetorius, Megalynodia Siona continens cantium (Wolfenbüttel, 1611, RISM A/I/7: P 5365).


In his German Magnificat settings Michael Praetorius demonstrated his versatility: if the setting in volume 1 of Musae Sioniae followed a stereotypically Venetian fashion, the setting ‘à 6’ in volume 5 demonstrated that this Lutheran polymath was equally proficient in the conservative ‘Roman’ style of polyphony (even if the German language necessitates some recitation untypical for that style in order to get the stress on the right words). The occasional recitation on chosen scale-degrees, partly an effect of the ever-meticulous word setting, never disturbs the counterpoint, which is very refined in its preparation of dissonance and its clarity

Example 12.4 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Melchior Franck


of texture (Example 12.5). The first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus is divided into two elements: (1) the incipit figure, which serves well as an emblematic entry for all the voices, and (2) the mediatio, viz. the conjunct move from E to B, the cadential possibilities of which Praetorius exploited very adeptly. The tonus peregrinus is transposed from final D to final G, and since the German incipit does not include the note E, the music appears to possess a Dorian character until the mediatio figure subverts this modality very strikingly with the E pitch. In this verse the composer refrained from overt word-painting and other mannerisms, which enhances its dignified character, seemingly attempted.

Some verses of the setting in volume 5 of Musae Sioniae are set separately, while others follow in immediate succession. Taken together, the verses make a display of compositional techniques that include, in addition to the sixteenth-century-type of voice-leading of the quoted example, strict cantus firmus treatment, falsobordone and free writing with illustrative mannerisms. There is a remarkably apposite use of the rhetorical figure hypotyposis in the setting of the contrasted phrases stöβet die Gewaltigen – erhebt die Niedrigen (‘put down the mighty – exalted them of low degree’), but here, untypically for Praetorius and other Lutheran composers of his time, the cantus firmus of the work is not involved in the illustration. The seventh verse, in contrast, shows how the text can be reflected by exploiting the qualities of the psalm-tone itself. Its first semi-verse is once again split up into segments based, respectively, on the incipit figure and on the mediatio. The former appears in Vorimitation ‘à 2’ and is repeated in ornamentation. When the full ensemble enters, the mediatio in the highest part appears in augmented note-values (1:2 temporal ratio to the Vorimitation). This, in combination with the strong cadence that results from the E of the tonus peregrinus, is an effective representation of füllet er mit Gütern (‘he hath filled [the hungry] with good things’).

The gradual development of multi-movement works for choir and instrumental ensemble unified by the use of a common cantus firmus can be traced throughout the course of the seventeenth century. These works, called Choralkonzerte or Geistliche Konzerte, were important forerunners of later Lutheran semi-dramatic genres such as the oratorio and the church cantata. The Choralkonzert in its earliest form, however, betrays no theatrical or representational tendencies whatever. Instead, its normal liturgical function was very similar to that of the larger works we have discussed earlier in this chapter. One of the earliest exponents of this genre was Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654), who included a work based on Meine Seele erhebt den Herren in his Pars prima Concertuum sacrorum, published in Hamburg, 1621.15 Concertus Sacer is thus one of the earliest names for this quintessentially seventeenth-century genre. Scheidt later published a similar

15 Since it has not been possible to obtain copies of the only complete print of this work – in the Bibliothek der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna (A-Wgm) – the examples are reproduced directly from Samuel Scheidt, Werke, vol. 14, ed. G. Harms and C. Mahrenholtz (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1971).


Example 12.5 Meine Seele erhbet den Herren, Michael Praetorius


set of works with German texts, which were called Geistliche Concerten. The most conspicuous difference between Scheidt’s work and those by Praetorius and Franck is that in the former the eight-voice choir is used as a group of soloists. Tutti sections are rare, and Scheidt does not at all rely on having complete chords in the ensemble passages because of the presence of an accompaniment pro organo. If figured bass was already used as a support for the bassus part(s) in some earlier Magnificat settings, it has here become the real fundament of the work. In the light of passages that feature repeated fifths in a low register occurring between the bassus and the bassus pro organo parts, which would sound unstable and weak without 16-foot support, we may assume that the envisaged continuo section included at least a positive organ and an additional 8-foot instrument, and probably even a 16-foot one.


Scheidt took the motivic development of short fragments derived from the tonus peregrinus to a very high level. The Et exultavit movement of his Latin Magnificat Choralkonzert is constructed around two such fragments, one derived from the incipit and the other from the mediatio (see Example 12.6, bb. 1–19). While this procedure has been observed before, the rigour with which the separate sections are controlled melodically and harmonically contrasts greatly with the treatment in the earlier works. The first theme is actually a contracted version of the full tonus, presenting incipit and terminatio alone. In the section based on this motif, the harmony is kept static, in D minor (bb. 1–5). Such accumulation of tension was unthinkable in motet-style works, in which a regular transition between different cadential degrees was standard practice.

The tension is relieved by the first cadence resulting from the mediatio fragment, which enters in all voices in succession, starting in b. 6. When that figure is later (in b. 9) treated in a rising sequence, tension once again builds up. It is not until b. 18 that the first statement of the tonus peregrinus is completed. In the same number of bars, Hassler, Praetorius or Franck would already have stated the psalm-tone several times over, and half of the passage would have been given over to the recitation of its two tenor degrees – something completely absent here. It was this kind of careful planning of the thematic material, combined with a feeling for dynamic harmony – with full use made of the devices of phrase-repetition, voice-exchange (Stimmtausch) and sequence – and the firm underpinning of the continuo, that enabled composers of the Baroque era to employ a simple melodic idea, such as the tonus peregrinus, over a much wider time-span than had previously been possible.

The same control of the harmonic pace is evidenced in the Esurientes movement, but by means of a completely different method. Cantus I and tenor I – here, as elsewhere, the main soloists of the ensemble – enter with a motif that appears loosely based on the terminatio. The way in which the mode immediately switches to the fourth scale-degree on the tenor entry almost amounts to an early example of fugato. The harmonic pace is rapid, and when the full ensemble enters, the harmonic plan of the whole movement has already been summarized in the preceding section, the effect of which is strangely impressive. In the tutti conclusion the harmonic and melodic pace is held back; recitation of the tonus peregrinus commences in a cantus part in b. 70, but is interrupted by a cadence in G. A plagal cadence is expected, but, instead, the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus continues, transposes, in the part where it commenced set off against the other parts by a rest (bb. 74–76). The prominent scale-degree of e, merely implied in the opening harmonic ‘summary’, is saved for this climactic moment. Exactly as in the Et exultavit section, the first completed statement of the tonus peregrinus provides the culmination of the movement.

If Scheidt was progressive in many respects, the variation form dictated by the Choralkonzert concept allowed him also to cultivate more traditional styles of composition. Sicut locutus est is set in falsobordone, and the fact that it is ‘à 3’, with the tonus peregrinus in the tenor, implies a deliberate archaism in order to


Example 12.6 Magnificat, Samuel Scheidt





illustrate the text Ad patres nostros (‘to our fathers’). The part-writing, however, is in an unmistakably seventeenth-century ‘mannered’ style, with the seventh (the flexa of the tonus peregrinus) well-prepared and resolved against the other parts (b. 87). Another conservative stylistic trait is the strict cantus firmus technique displayed in several movements. In Fecit potentiam the tonus peregrinus is in the bassus and the continuo. Over that foundation cantus I and tenor I perform diminutions of the tonus peregrinus, illustrating in particular the word dispersit (‘he has scattered’) with the incipit motif. This idiosyncratic combination of progressive and conservative writing brings to mind the instance of Monteverdi in his Vespers of 1610. Scheidt is an able composer in the old German cantus firmus style, but at this late point in time such writing is somewhat complicated by the addition of a continuo part. From the figures we can see that he manages to provide effective continuo harmonies even over this very static bass line.

Scheidt’s later Geistliche Concerten (Leipzig, 1640) likewise includes a tonus peregrinus Magnificat, this time with German text. Some features that were merely hinted at in the Latin setting are developed more fully here. In the earlier setting the strict cantus firmus movements possessed an antiquated character, as if returning to a manner that the composer had learnt in his childhood. In that setting the tonus peregrinus in an upper part was in a note-to-note relationship with the figured bass, whereas the middle parts engaged in florid, virtuoso writing. In his German Choralkonzert, however, the continuo and the middle parts become equally involved in free imitation. The cantus firmus is here altogether disconnected from the other parts. Standing as it does in Pfundnoten, its quotation appears as a rhetorical statement. In eighteenth-century stile antico this treatment of chorales and Gregorian material became common. Present-day musicologists do not always appreciate the close correlation of conservative cantus firmus writing, as found in Scheidt’s Latin Choralkonzert, and this Baroque mannerism. In his German Magnificat Scheidt likewise employs falsobordone: this time, it is the verse Er übet Gewalt mit seinem Arm (‘He has showed strength with his arm’) that is set ‘à 4’, with the tonus peregrinus in the cantus. Katrin Bartels has suggested that falsobordone had the significance of a rhetorical figure for the generation of Vulpius, M. Praetorius and Scheidt.16

In comprehensive discussions of chorale and plainsong quotations it is rarely noted that Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) referred to the tonus peregrinus in his setting of Psalm 119 (Protestant numbering).17 This is a sizable multi-sectional

16 Am Häufigsten steht diese Satztechnik als Affektausdruck, vornehmlich des Schmerzes: ‘Most often, this compositional technique is used to express feeling, above all that of pain [or ‘painful sorrow’].’ (Katrin Bartels, Musikalisch-rhetorische Figuren in kompositorischer Praxis: Untersuchungen zur Deutscher Evanglie-Motette um 1600 [Aachen, 1997], p. 227).

17 See Heinrich Schütz, Neue Schütz-Ausgabe, vol. 39, ed. Wolfram Steude (Kassel, 1984) where cantus II and tenor II have been reconstructed by the editor. In the index of Schütz’s Schwanengesang the work is listed as Schin und Thav Noni Toni. The Hebrew


work for eight voices and continuo. The section Die Fürsten verfolgen mich ohn Ursach (SWV 492) is preceded by an intonation of the tonus peregrinus. Remarkably, it is here given in its Roman variant (with incipit a–b–a). None of Schütz’s Magnificat settings is based on the tonus peregrinus, although Erbacher opines that the notes b–c–b–a–g on the words erhebt den Herren in SWV 426 can hardly be completely coincidental.18 From the psalm-tone intonation of Die Fürsten verfolgen mich ohn Ursach, one would expect the tonus peregrinus to have a prominent role throughout the work, but this is not at all the case. It is rather a matter of recurrent allusion to the formula through harmony or melodic curve, and via an oscillation between the scale-degrees of A and G. There are occasional statements of larger fragments of the tonus: for example, to its first semi-verse in bb.70–73. The text Ich bin wie ein verirret und verloren Schaf (‘I am like a lamb lost and gone astray’) is set to a motif reminiscent of the tonus peregrinus that enters in fugue-like imitation. This motif actually resembles the contracted version of the tonus peregrinus used by Scheidt in the Esurientes movement of his Latin Magnificat. It may be significant that this tonus peregrinus fragment occurs in this very psalm verse, possibly in illustration of the idea of wandering (peregrinatio), but this cannot amount to more than conjecture.

Semi-dramatic liturgical Kirchenstücke

Beside the two central Lutheran idioms we have encountered so far – those of the verse-by-verse Magnificat (by structure a cappella works, with continuo as a possibility) and the Choralkonzert – another application of the tonus peregrinus came to the fore in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: the Magnificat cantata for choir, soloists and orchestra. These multi-movement works, in their time commonly termed Kirchenstück, frequently used a cantus firmus as a unifying element throughout. Since Kirchenstücke were normally suitable for only a small part of the liturgical year, they were often based on chorales associated with the ecclesiastical season in question. Musically, the tonus peregrinus served these needs perfectly: it is comparatively short and has a distinctly recognizable character. In addition it carried, at least to the educated parts of the congregation, an established theological subtext. It can accordingly be applied in a variety of manners as the situation requires. Liturgically, however, its association with the Magnificat always posed the risk of overshadowing all other possible theological connotations. Nevertheless, these settings had a less restricted exegetical function than most other cantatas (Vespers being held daily in cathedrals and major urban

letters (Schin and Thav) allude to the fact that the psalm is ordered so that every eighth verse follows the letters of the alphabet in succession. The addition noni toni seems to reflect the new modal system (as codified by Glareanus) in general and the tonus peregrinus in particular.

18 Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, pp. 120–121.


parish churches), and the Meine Seele erhebt den Herren cantatas by Wilhelm Friedrich Zachow and J.S. Bach have conceivable functions also outside cantata cycles and a specific feast-day.19

We have seen that the sudden increase of liturgical Magnificat settings in German in the early seventeenth century may have been due to Pietistic tendencies in Lutheranism. The semi-dramatic vernacular settings that we will discuss shortly, were in contrast regarded as an abominable secularization by the Pietists. Orthodox Lutherans, conversely, saw this genre as a sacralization of secular music.20 Also rationalists such as Johann Mattheson (1681–1764), who had championed the dramatic style of sacred music already in Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713), encouraged such settings. In Der musicalische Patriot the recourse to fixed liturgical ‘items’ is presented as a restriction on the inspiration of composers, although the special value of scripture over ‘human’ texts is stressed for these purposes.21

Despite this, the literal, non-strophic Magnificat translation finally prevailed over the poetic versions of the early seventeenth century. Following in the tradition of the Choralkonzert, eighteenth-century composers produced Magnificat settings in separate movements and of ever-increasing proportions. These works have no observable dramatic purposes, but resemble closely the contemporary Kirchenstücke. Alternatively to retaining their literal translation, these Magnificat settings sometimes retained Latin texts, as did most large-scale music performed at Lutheran Vespers at this time. J.S. Bach’s Latin setting dates, in its original version, from the 1720s. Philip Spitta and later scholars have suggested that the original E version (BWV 243a) was composed for Bach’s first Christmas in Leipzig (1723), on the grounds that the paper and hand-writing on the first score date from that year and that there were only three major occasions in the church year in Leipzig which called for a concerted Magnificat, the first being Christmas day.22 Later, it has been suggested that the performance of concerted Magnificat settings in Leipzig and elsewhere were more common than assumed by Spitta.23 In 1717, before Bach’s employment in Leipzig (which included responsibility for music at both the Nikolauskirche and the Thomaskirche), the Magnificat

19 It is likely that a lost Magnificat by Johann Philipp Krieger (1649–1725) was a large-scale tonus peregrinus setting. The work is dated to 1685 by Scholz and was, it appears, for eight voices, strings, trumpets and timpani (‘17th-Century Magnificats’, p. 222).

20 See Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (London, 1948), p. 268.21 Johann Mattheson, Der musicalische Patriot [1728] (Leipzig, 1975), p. 220.22 See Alfred Dürr’s preface in the ‘Kritischer Bericht’ in Johann Sebastian Bach, Neue

Bach-Ausgabe, II/3 (Kassel, 1955), p. 7. For a discussion of the context and circumstances, see Robin Leaver, ‘The Mature Vocal Works and their Theological and Liturgical Context’, in J. Butt (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bach (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 86–122, at pp. 109–111; Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Oxford, 2000), p. 264.

23 Robert Cammarota, ‘The Repertoire of Magnificats in Leipzig at the Time of J.S. Bach: A Study of the Manuscript Sources’ (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1986), p. 96.


was, according to Wolff, sung in German on regular Sundays and performed in concerted form in Latin on high feast-days.24 It is in the latter function that we should understand Bach’s work. It stands in a long tradition of troped Magnificat settings. Ever since the sixteenth century certain Lutheran composers had ‘interleaved’ the canticle with sections of non-biblical text, sometimes in order to connect the work to a particular ecclesiastical season (as in Bach’s case, where the first version contains intercalated Christmas chorales), and sometimes with the aim of exegetical interpretation.25 The fact that the chorales were included as an appendix and not in their sequential order may indeed suggest the intended first performance during Advent 1723, with the interpolations added for a later performance at Christmas.26 Because of the close connection between the tonus peregrinus and the German Magnificat specifically, there was no obligation to use the psalm-tone in festive Latin settings. Nevertheless, Bach decided to include it in his Suscepit Israel movement. As in Scheidt’s German Magnificat, it appears in Pfundnoten over an otherwise self-contained piece of polyphony. In the E version the psalm-tone is assigned to the trumpet; in the revised version, to two oboes playing in unison. Example 12.7 shows the earlier version. The three vocal parts are not totally unrelated to the cantus firmus; it would not be too far-fetched to view the figure beginning in b. 18 as a motivic development of the two descending fourths in the second semi-verse of the psalm-tone.

In no cantus firmus setting of the tonus peregrinus prior to Bach’s Suscepit Israel is the harmony so resourcefully varied over the prolonged ‘recitation’ of the instrumental descant. Especially during the second recitation (bb. 20–25), the lower parts eloquently reinterpret the harmonic context in the manner of the stylus phantasticus. The overall high pitch of the piece (the accompanying voices no less than the chant) lends it an ethereal character that makes it stand out from the other movements of the Magnificat, an effect that has been interpreted in many different ways by modern scholars. In the long tradition of construing theological meaning from Bach’s work, Samuel Terrien writes of the Suscepit Israel movement:

24 Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, p. 289. Joseph Herl has drawn attention to sources that imply that the tonus peregrinus was used also for congregational participation in German prose hymns in some early eighteenth-century Lutheran parishes (Worship Wars, p. 160). This is not surprising, since the wish for lay participation encouraged the use of the best-known chorales for more than just one purpose.

25 In a wider context this tradition probably predates the Lutheran Reformation. For a good study of the German troped Magnificat, see Larry Cook, ‘The German Troped Magnificat’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1976).

26 It has been suggested that the separation of the interpolations from the sequence of movements should have been due to Bach’s unawareness of the Leipzig tradition of including them, but since this practice was widespread (observed by, among others, Praetorius in Wolfenbüttel and Schütz in Dresen), it is likely that Bach would have been familiar with it.


Example 12.7 Magnificat, Johann Sebastian Bach


He performed here one of his feats of exegetical symbolism and he did this on three levels. First, he understood that the Suscepit was a quotation from the Isaianic prophet of the exile in Babylon (Isa 42:1); second, the reference to the slaveboy as Israel [puerum suum = ‘his boy’], was viewed as renewing the motif of the Exodus from Egypt; and third, the silent servant of the Lord, anonymous instrument of Israel’s redemption (Isa 53: 4–6), now evokes the darkness of Calvary.27

Terrien is here at risk of over-interpreting, but his is indeed an interesting hypothesis. The last of the three claimed allusions is the most vague, but perhaps also the most plausible, since a constant memento of the Passion was a common element in both the orthodox and the pietistic Lutheran thought of Bach’s time. The connection between the Exodus and this verse of the Magnificat is very interesting, since it was suggested also by Martin Luther, of whose writings Bach possessed a thorough knowledge.28 Even if Bach was perhaps aware of the ancient connection between the tonus peregrinus and In exitu Israel, it is unlikely that he was familiar with any specific contemporary settings of this psalm (with the

27 Samuel Terrien, The Magnificat: Musicians as Biblical Interpreters (New York, 1995), p. 72.

28 See Martin Luther, Das Magnifikat verdeutscht und ausgelegt [c.1521], ed. A. Brandenburg (Freiburg, 1964).


possible exception of the setting by J.D. Zelenka). As far as practical matters were concerned, the tonus peregrinus was for him first and foremost synonymous with the German Magnificat. It is therefore highly significant that the instrumental tonus peregrinus part does not fit the words Suscepit Israel puerum suum syllabically: it fits Meine Seele erhebt den Herren perfectly.29 At all events, Bach brought to this movement a new approach to the tonus peregrinus, in terms of the aesthetic concept called Affekt in contemporary German literature. Without any doubt, this altered character exemplifies the general change of perceived affect of this period: it was during the eighteenth century that the description of the tonus peregrinus changed from hilarus and iocundus to erraticus and vehementius.

Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663–1712), organist in Halle and G.F. Handel’s first teacher there, used the tonus peregrinus throughout his German Magnificat cantata for Festo visitatio Mariae.30 As the title states, works such as this had their appointed place not in ordinary Vespers but on the Sunday Feast of the Visitation, which in a normal year occurs in July. The second half is headed Nachmittag, indicating that the work was to be divided between two different services on that day. This is a work based on the German Magnificat, but troped with movements of free prose, exactly as in the original Latin Magnificat by J.S. Bach. An instrumental first movement is followed by a straightforward fugato on Meine Seele erhebt den Herren. The first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus is complemented by a characterful countersubject, which always follows on, in the same part, from the statements of the subject itself (see Example 12.8). The two subjects enter successively, without development, at regular intervals throughout the movement according to the following plan:31

The effect of this somewhat strained fugato is most readily understood in the light of the preceding movement; this instrumental sonata for strings, oboes, cors de chasse and basso continuo does not hint at the tonus peregrinus melodically, although its cadential structure coincides with that of the psalm-tone. This last

29 The ligature-like intonation on one syllable of the whole incipit had gone out of fashion by this time. The fact that Bach himself used a similar device harmonically in the doxology of Cantata X has its own special reasons unconnected with text underlay. In the previous chapter we saw that Zelenka presented the tonus peregrinus in a very similar way.

30 Günter Thomas regards the cantata as an early work, perhaps dating from before 1700 (Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung 38 [Regensburg, 1966], p. 183).

31 Dux (‘leader’) and comes (‘companion’) are the traditional contrapuntist’s terms for ‘subject’ and ‘answer’.

Dux S T + B.c. S + Vln. II T + Vla + B.c. A + Vla

Comes A B + B.c. Vln. I B + B.c.


fact could possibly be significant, but one must bear in mind how common alternation between a minor key and its relative major is in movements such as this one. Zachow’s intentions notwithstanding, the sonata prepares effectively for the Meine Seele erhebt den Herren movement precisely because it anticipates the harmonic foundations of the tonus peregrinus cadences. This prevents the harmonically rigid fugato from sounding superficial or contrived. Just as the first movement introduces the tonus peregrinus harmonically, the second establishes the psalm-tone melodically. There is, apart from the two combined subjects already mentioned, a third subject in this movement. It is usually heard against the ‘combined’ subject and counter-subject, but is only of three bars’ length, so it cannot keep in phase with those. In b. 7 we see the three subjects operating concurrently: subject I (tonus peregrinus semi-verse) is in the tenor; subject II (suffix to tonus peregrinus semi-verse) is in the alto; and the third subject in the soprano.

The allocation of the subjects changes at the next entry so that, in effect, the entire movement only contains one free part at any given time (and sometimes not even that, since some of the material in the alto is repeated in the tenor and soprano parts. This movement is an almost perfect example of a ‘permutation’ fugue, a type briefly popular in the late seventeenth century among such composers as Theile, Reinken, Buxtehude and Rosenmüller in Germany and even Purcell in England (in the trio sonatas): its three subjects follow in succession, I–II–III, and are rotated every three bars.32 Subjects I and II have the properties necessary (according to the rules of invertible counterpoint) to function also as bass parts, whereas subject III is used only in the upper parts. The tonus peregrinus stands out in this process on account of its longer note-values and rhythmically important isolated quaver (initially f ).

The seventh and thirteenth movements of Zachow’s cantata are short verses of the canticle text set to the tonus peregrinus for a solo voice with continuo. Here, we find the tonus peregrinus successfully assimilated to the melodic style of the composer’s other short movements – yet the chant melody is preserved in its original form with a minimum of ornamentation. These two movements are almost identical, and the variations in their vocal part are due mainly to conscientious word setting. Melchior Hoffman (c.1680–1715), who incidentally succeeded Zachow in Halle but left the position after only a few months, used the tonus peregrinus in the doxology of his Meine Seele erhebt den Herren cantata in way that is very similar to these verses.

J.S. Bach’s previously mentioned Cantata X, Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, is similar in structure to Zachow’s work. Three movements are based on the Lucan text, and all of these feature the tonus peregrinus. In the opening movement the instrumental parts and the three lower vocal parts form a unity against which the tonus peregrinus appear in relief in the soprano (see Example 12.9). A very striking

32 For a discussion on permutation fugues, see Paul Walker, Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach (Rochester, 2000), p. 204–217.


Example 12.8 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow





Example 12.9 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Johann Sebastian Bach


progression occurs within the terminatio, in b. 57. This elaborate treatment is more typical for the In exitu Israel settings of Fischer and Murschhauser than for any Lutheran music other than Bach’s.

In the rising part of the phrase the inserted note a is harmonized with a diminished chord that provides a foretaste of the shifting harmonies beneath the finalis beginning two bars later. The a acquires an unusual prominence in this movement and it is likely that it reflects a German tradition, since it is also present (as f ) in a concertato German Magnificat in G major by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767).

In Telemann’s case, the tonus peregrinus appears in the doxology, Wie es war im Anfang, in tripla style (see Example 12.10: the triple metre relates, in a conventional manner, to the Holy Trinity eulogised in the first verse of the doxology). The opening tonus peregrinus statement has a largely trochaic rhythm, resulting in a dance-like character that is unique in tonus peregrinus works. The recitation is also harmonically unstable, with constant oscillation between E minor and G major. This defies all the momentum inherent in the mediatio figure, since G major is approached already on the incipit figure on the second beat of b. 1. Very much in the contemporary ‘French’ style, this abrupt juxtaposition of relative minor and major follows through the entire psalm-tone, resulting also in a juxtaposition also of old and new musical elements. The compositional method as a whole involves what Michael Talbot has identified



in instrumental music as a climax ‘through regression’: a final reversion to a simpler state or a form of development via simplification.33 For a doxology, this is of course an especially relevant stylistic observation. Just as we noted in Zelenka, it seems that Telemann here used the ‘beginning’ of the tradition of Western Church music, as represented by plainsong in general and the tonus peregrinus in particular, as a symbol.

33 Michael Talbot, The Finale in Western Instrumental Music (Oxford, 2001), pp. 38–42.

Example 12.10 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Georg Philipp Telemann


For J.S. Bach and Telemann the added second degree of the terminatio appears not to be an aspect of plainsong dialect. Rather it is a way of ‘honing’ the tonus peregrinus to form a conjunct melody for harmonic purposes and connects with the practice of extra ‘bridging’ notes often supplied to the melodies of harmonized chorales. The choral opening movements of Bach’s cantatas often reflect the cantus firmus in more than one way: for example, both as cantus firmus and in fragmentary imitation. Here the tonus peregrinus stands in complete thematic isolation. However, the movement is of course harmonically characterized by the oscillation between the parallel tonalities of G minor and B major.

The Er denket der Barmherzigkeit movement of Bach’s cantata takes the form of a duet for alto and tenor with continuo, above which the tonus peregrinus appears in the trumpet. The cantus firmus technique employed here resembles that of the corresponding verse in the Latin Magnificat (Example 12.7). That the tonus peregrinus was a potent symbol of biblical covenant for Bach requires no further corroboration. Whether this association was due to a personal theological interpretation of its connection with Psalm 113 or to the fact that Bach had pondered, and wished to reflect, the origins of the psalm-tone cannot be gauged merely from study of the musical practice of the composer. It is, however, quite conceivable that he had arrived at a conclusion similar to that of Padre Martini, or that theories resembling Martini’s were then current in the scholarly discourse of church musicians.

Organ music

Meine Seele erhebt den Herren seems to have been one of the most popular melodies in Lutheranism, both in congregational hymnody and in the choral repertory. Alternatim organ verses were composed in association with both of these functions. When the organ alternated with congregational monody, it did not originally perform interludes to the sung stanzas, but took possession, as it were, of a stanza and reproduced it in instrumental form. Because of the laity’s deep familiarity with the text, the organist was able to interpret these verses with the addition of virtuoso technique, in accordance with the Figurenlehre of the rhetorical models learned in the Lateinschule.

The Berendt Petri tablature in Visby Landsarkiv, Sweden, contains an anonymous In exitu Israel for organ.34 This is one of the earliest instances of a procedure that was later commonly used by many composers of organ music: the fragmentation of the second semi-verse of the psalm-tone, as we have already noted in the music of Scheidt. Here the composer methodically divided up the polyphony according to semi-verses, with no thematic ‘contamination’ between these sections. In the first verset, for example (Example 12.11), approximately half

34 Visby Landsarkiv (S-VIl), B-Tbl. This setting, containing two alternatim stanzas, is marked 29 June 1609. The tablature itself was copied in 1611.


the length of the movement is allotted to each semi-verse, the division occurring after the first chord in b. 15.

The rounding off of a section with a florid cadence, as we observe in bb. 14–15 and later in bb. 24–25, was very common in the Sweelinck school, the exceptional degree of floridity acting as an advance signal of sectional closure. The two sections are completely different as regards polyphonic treatment. The first tonus peregrinus semi-verse is laid out with a plain cantus firmus in the bass, the other parts supplying Vorimitation and diminuted thematic fragments. The



second semi-verse is, as already noted, split up into fragments, which are treated sequentially; the chant melody appears in its entirety only at the conclusion. The underlying objective of this varied treatment could have been to achieve a kind of tripartite form (cantus firmus – development – cantus firmus). Equally, it could have been a means of avoiding the premature emphasis on the note g that would result from a straightforward cantus firmus treatment of the second semi-verse. If this second supposition has any credence, it may be significant that clear-cut bipartite treatment of this kind occurs primarily in the early seventeenth century, after which it gradually gives way to the ideal of technical consistency throughout a movement. Similarly, in keyboard variation writing, the diversity of figuration permitted within a single variation (in the works of sixteenth-century composers such as W. Byrd, J. Bull, J.P. Sweelinck and others) is substituted in the generation of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–1667) by the principle of using only one style per variation. In the light of the new modal theory that became normative during the late sixteenth century, the double recitation was regarded as less of an inherent problem than in earlier theory, which only acknowledged one tenor degree. It is of course also important to remember that organists of the early seventeenth century produced Magnificat versets in all psalm-tones (the Petri tabulature itself comprises several such sets). It is certainly true that the tonus peregrinus did not fit the normal forms of such Magnificat settings, which often conformed to one compositional principle throughout, on account of its double recitation.

The Petri tablature also contains a tonus peregrinus Magnificat by Jacob Praetorius the younger (1586–1651).35 In stylistic terms, this work occupies a position intermediate between the Sweelinck school and the northern German tradition.36 The disparity of note-values, which results in a very uneven pulse reminiscent of older keyboard traditions – the leap from a flattened leading note is possibly influenced by English practice – is somewhat compensated for by an evenly running Komplementärfiguration in a more ‘modern’ style.37 In Praetorius’s second verset, the second tonus peregrinus semi-verse is fragmented, just as in the first verset of the anonymous Visby setting. In his first verset, on the other hand, Praetorius retains cantus firmus technique for the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus. From the standpoint of traditional modal theory, we can see some of the problems that arise from this practice. The inclusion of Es over

35 Visby Landsarkiv (S-VIl), B-Tbl.36 Pieter Dirksen has suggested that Jacob Praetorius studied with Sweelinck between

1606 and 1608 (The Keyboard Music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck [Utrecht, 1997], p. 180).37 Komplementärfiguration, translatable as ‘complementary figuration’, implies

a degree of melodic and rhythmic consistency that does not amount to the use of actual counter-themes. Kimberly Marshall has shown that Jacob Praetorius revised the organ Magnificat settings of his father Hieronymus (1560–1629) precisely in order to increase the consistency of rhythm (‘The Development of the German Organ Magnificat’, Gothenburg Organ ART Research Reports, 3 [2003] 111–133, at pp. 121–123. Yet the tonus peregrinus setting of the younger composer still bears this mark of earlier generations of organists.


the second recitation introduces what was termed distonatio in earlier theory: the prolongation of pitches tempts the polyphony into moving outside the bounds of its mode. Moreover, the fact that the second recitation is kept so short, certainly on account of these problematic aspects, destabilises the overall modal balance of this stanza.

Samuel Scheidt supplied six organ stanzas for a psalm-tone IX Magnificat in the third part of his Tabulatura nova.38 The fact that he indicated to which canticle verse each section applied enables us to see that his reflections of the respective texts resemble those demonstrated in his Choralkonzerte, in which the treatment of the tonus peregrinus is also very similar. In all probability, Scheidt prepared these organ verses at a time when his Latin Magnificat, published in 1622, was already completed. Maybe he even reprocessed some devices deliberately (the term tabulatura implies transcription of existing music). We have therefore already encountered examples of the clear division made by him between the tonus peregrinus semi-verses, which resembles in many respects that seen in the Magnificat verses in the Berendt Petri source. What is new in these organ stanzas is the greater thematic unity allied to a more idiomatic writing for organ. In the first stanza, Et exultavit, there is hardly any ‘free’ writing; the semi-verses are stated in unadorned form, with entries overlapping the cadences (see Example 12.12, bb. 1–19).

Scheidt was in many ways successful at preserving the psalm-tone character within the northern German style, even though he, unlike Jacob Praetorius the younger and probably also the anonymous master in the Petri tablature, was not directly connected with that tradition. The sequences with strong suspensions under the tonus peregrinus mediatio in bb. 67–70 may be regarded as forward-thinking; nothing like them occurs in the Visby settings. Yet Scheidt’s procedure also differs sharply from the organ Magnificat settings of progressive northern German contemporaries such as Heinrich Scheidemann (c.1595–1663) in that it strictly respects the Gregorian character of the tonus peregrinus. We will shortly witness, at the end of the northern German organ tradition, an attempt at a distinction between the tonus peregrinus canticle-tone and the equally non-strophic vernacular Meine Seele erhebt den Herren. This is already implicit in Scheidt’s psalm-tone IX Magnificat, where it is clear that the composer is concerned specifically with the first idiom. The distonatio problem, as observed in the first Magnificat stanza of Jacob Praetorius, does not seem to have bothered Scheidt, who willingly uses the es not as passing notes but with a structural purpose during the g recitation.

Several organ settings of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren are found in the important and extensive Lüneburg tablatures KN 208 and 209.39 The former was compiled in 1650 and the latter in 1667. Despite these late dates of copying, the settings found in them resemble in stylistic respects the earlier Visby settings rather than any contemporary central European tonus peregrinus organ works. The

38 Samuel Scheidt, Tabulatura Nova, vol. 3 (Hamburg, 1624, RISM A/I/7: S 1354).39 Lüneburg Ratsbücherei (D-Lr), KN 208/2; KN 209.


main difference between the Visby and Lüneberg KN 208 settings concerns the strictness of the cantus firmus technique. In the Lüneburg verses the principle of strict cantus firmus prevails, sometimes with Vorimitation, but always reproducing also the tonus peregrinus terminatio in its original form.

Johann Christoph Bach (1642–1703), a second cousin of Johann Sebastian, has left a miniature organ-fugue on Meine Seele erhebt den Herren.40 By virtue of its modest dimensions and its simplicity of style, this piece may well have been intended as a hymn intonation or as an organ verset for alternatim performance. Yet it contains all the central constituents of a fugue. The opening introduces

40 Bibliothek der Universität der Künste, Berlin (D-Bhm), Mus. MS 1491.

Example 12.12 Magnificat, Samuel Scheidt


the first semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus in the disposition dux–comes–dux–dux. Imitative play based on the second semi-verse incipit replaces development (Example 12.13, bb. 13–19), in that it widens the harmonic scope and fragments the tonus peregrinus in quasi-stretto. The second recitation takes up a rather large portion of the movement – approximately a third; the static, repetitive nature of its harmony counterbalances the thematically more intense first half of the work.

This is only one example among several to show how unsuited the second tonus peregrinus semi-verse is to this kind of small-scale fugato treatment. A chorale melody with greater melodic variation would have offered much greater possibilities for varied harmony than we observe in the latter half of this work. In his effort to lend the music for the second intonation more substance and continuity, the older Bach tonicizes the degree of c in bb. 20–26, fitting simple

Example 12.13 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, Johann Christoph Bach


imitative play on the manuals against alternating C minor and G major harmonies and (in bb. 22–23) a G pedal-note. The problem is that the return to D in bars 26–27 is too forced to be fully convincing, and, in any case, insufficient time is left to consolidate the final note of the tonus peregrinus. In this instance, one might well comment that the theorists’ nightmares regarding distonatio have become musical reality.

An undated manuscript in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin contains three tonus peregrinus organ variations attributed to Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707).41 The first variation is in fact on psalm-tone I and therefore does not belong to the set; the reason for its presence in the source is obscure. Erbacher, however, finds all three verses so stylistically heterogeneous (einen großen Artunterschied) that he draws the firm conclusion that they are either individual settings or mere fragments of variation-sets.42 The configuration of the set, now consisting only of two verses, may seem unbalanced – but this shape is in fact nothing out of the ordinary for Buxtehude and his contemporaries. On closer examination, one finds that many of his chorale variations are structured in a similar way. Erbacher’s assessment is thus far from being the last word on the matter. The fact that the third variation is marked Vers: 5 indicates merely that the variations were intended for alternatim performance: nothing implies that the set is incomplete as it stands. Frederick Gable has drawn attention to the multiplicity of alternatim practices in northern German organ music. According to one model, longer organ movements based on psalm-tones acted as interludes between groups of verses – thus not as replacements for individual chorale verses but as musical interpolations between them.43 A Hamburg order of service from 1699 confirms the further implication that northern German alternatim practice needed fewer organ versets than one would expect, had each and every alternate verse been replaced:

5. die Orgel præludieret das Magnificat. 6. daß Magnificat wird teutsch gesungen, jedoch so daß es in 4 sätzen abgeteilet, und alle Zeit wen ein satz aus ist, die Orgel dazwischen spieled, biß endlich der letzte vers ausgesungen [ist].44

5. The organ plays a prelude to the Magnificat. 6. The Magnificat is sung in German, but in such a way that it is divided into four sections, and every time a section finishes, the organ plays an interlude, until the last verse [is] finally sung.

41 Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (D-Bsb), Mus. MS 30 280.42 Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 142. Josef Hedar seems to hold the same

view, since he refers to the movements as ‘Buxtehudes Magnificatfragment’ (Dietrich Buxtehudes Orgelwerke [Stockholm, 1951], p. 261).

43 Frederick K. Gable, ‘Alternation Practice and Seventeenth-Century German Organ Magnificats’, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 18 (2001): 135–151.

44 Quoted in Liselotte Krüger, Die hamburgische Musikorganisation im 17. Jahrhundert (Strasbourg, 1933), p. 114.


In the second of his variations, which, for the reasons stated above, we shall call the first, the tonus peregrinus is presented in literal form in the pedal, while three upper parts produce close imitation of tonus peregrinus fragments in ‘doubly diminuted’ note-values. The juxtaposition of major and minor on the second recitation degree expresses the new concept on the aesthetic level, which is ‘fantastic’ rather than functional, and which erects no obstacle to a strict cantus firmus treatment of the second tonus peregrinus semi-verse. In Buxtehude’s final variation, for manuals only (Example 12.14), the tonus peregrinus incipit is paired with a lively counter-subject.45

The tonus peregrinus statements seem to follow a plan, appearing in voices 1–4–3–2–(4) + 1–4–3–2–(1), but the counterpoint is so pervasive and smooth that no sense of a bipartite structure results. The use of Komplementärfiguration is aptly managed, especially in the rising sequences that provide a climax preceding the highest note in the variation (and in the entire set), which occurs in the closing figure. Buxtehude’s two-movement work shows well how the principle of variation appears gradually to have superseded that of reflection of the text during the course of the seventeenth century.46 Significantly, Buxtehude displays

45 The parts do not cross – not even in passage-work where the lowest part but one thematically would naturally have descended below the bass part (e.g. in b. 16, where the parallel tenths with the upper part would ideally continue down to the low B). If 16-foot registration had been available for the lowest part, such part-writing would have posed no problem. So it is clear that the use of pedals was not intended.

46 Ibo Ortgies has stressed the financial importance for northern German organists of attracting students by way of distributing works in as many different styles as possible (‘Another Re-match between Mean tone and Well-tempered Tunings, or are the Organ

Example 12.14 Magnificat, Dieterich Buxtehude


two widely divergent approaches to the cantus firmus in his two versets. The strict cantus firmus treatment of the first is complemented by the freedom of the second, with its migrating ostinato tonus peregrinus fragment and the pervasiveness of independently conceived keyboard writing. The Bibliothek der Hansestadt in Lübeck holds an organ prelude on the German Magnificat by Buxtehude’s successor at the Marienkirche, Johann Christian Schiefferdecker (1679–1732).47 The work is signed 1710 and is in elaborate style with climactic cantus firmus renditions in the pedal part. Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) contributed significantly to the Lutheran chorale prelude repertory. Among his works, two verses of Meine Seele erhebt den Herren are agreeably crafted, even though both exemplify further the problems that attend prolongation of the second recitation degree.48 Even though the harmonic scope is greater than in Johann Christoph Bach, the verses are characterized by mechanistic part-writing over the second recitation.

The consistory of Arnstadt, in their proceedings of February 1706, complained that their organist, Johann Sebastian Bach, confused the congregation with his use of the tonus peregrinus. It is stated that if he wished to introduce this melody into his playing, he should refrain from using a tonus contrarius. We do not know what was meant by contrarius, a relative term that could possibly signify ‘divergent’, ‘conflicting’, ‘opposed to something’ or, interpreted technically, ‘counter-melody’.49 This seems to suggest that Bach played in a manner that compromised with cantus firmus audibility and congregational singing. It is also possible that the outmoded character of the tonus peregrinus in comparison with eighteenth-century chorales was the basis for the consistory’s criticism. Padre Martini’s opinion regarding the ‘superior’ structural organization of the tonus peregrinus can be seen in the light of this strange disapproval.50 Both the learned priest from Bologna and the Thomanerkantor were in their day admired for their cultivation of conservative polyphony, the stile antico. As the eighteenth century progressed, and with it a more homophonic understanding of music (resulting from the dominance of figured bass), overt counterpoint of any kind came to represent an antique and ostentatious heritage. If quotations of plainsong in general, and maybe even the tonus peregrinus in particular, were associated with that tradition,

Works of Buxtehude really Organ Works?’, paper given at the annual conference of the Swedish Society of Musicology, Gothenburg University, 5 June 2003). Variation-sets served that purpose especially well.

47 Bibliothek der Hansestadt, Lübeck (D-LÜh). The setting occurs as a manuscript addition to a copy of Johann Georg Christian Störl’s highly significant Choralbuch, the Neubezogenes Davidisches Harpfen- und Psalter-Spiel (Stuttgart, 1710).

48 Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (D-Bsb), Mus. MS 30 245. Also Johann Michael Bach (1648–94), younger brother of Johann Christian, wrote three variations on Meine Seele erhebt den Herren. These are ordered in style and progression very much like those of Buxtehude and are available in the edition Sämtliche Orgelchoräle by C. Wolff (Stuttgart, 1988).

49 The Ratsprotokoll from 21 February 1706 is quoted in Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach (Leipzig, 1930), p. 313.

50 See Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, p. 42–43, 84.


Example 12.15 Fuga sopra il Magnificat, Johann Sebastian Bach


it perhaps represented not only its own features inherited from plainsong, but also an idiosyncratic manner of playing and composing the stylus phantasticus. This style, which we have already seen applied to the tonus peregrinus, may be what was meant by contrarius in the Arnstadt proceedings, since the criticism was not based on the tonus peregrinus, but on Bach’s playing of it.

J.S. Bach’s Fuga sopra il Magnificat (BWV 733) is a youthful work, probably composed during his years in Weimar. It is an ambitious endeavour, ranking among his larger-scale fugues on original themes from this period. The tonus peregrinus is complemented by a lively counter-theme, and both themes are rather strictly restated. No remnants of recitation remain in the tonus peregrinus; unlike in Buxtehude’s work, it is clearly the quasi-chorale rather than the Latin canticle psalm-tone that is set. Accordingly, the tonus peregrinus always adheres to the octosyllabic Mei-ne Seele er-hebt den Her-ren, throughout, even when entering in augmentation. In the stretto climaxes Bach reveals himself both as a master contrapuntist and as a composer drawn towards abstract pathos rather than towards Figurenlehre (see Example 12.15, bb. 55–60, 75–79). The harmonic variation applied to the thematic statements is extensive. Even when a generic cadence is employed, it is prolonged so as totally to lose its character of simple punctuation. As usual in Bach’s fugues, the borderland between thematic utterance and free Fortspinnung gives rise to some climactic moments (as in bb. 89–94, where the tonus peregrinus lies in a middle part).

The second tonus peregrinus semi-verse is what makes the Fuga sopra il Magnificat unavoidably different from the fugues that Bach composed on original themes. It is reserved for the pedals, where it appears in twofold augmentation to close the work. In a ‘normal’ fugue, this would be the right place for stretto and/or augmentation of the main theme. Such a passage is encountered much earlier in this Magnificat fugue, at the augmentation of the first tonus peregrinus semi-verse three-quarters of the way through the work. In the Suscepit Israel of Bach’s Latin Magnificat we noted a harmonization unfamiliar from earlier tonus peregrinus settings. In bb. 98–108 of the organ fugue we discover a different, equally original, harmonic procedure. The inescapable F major chord at the end of the tonus peregrinus mediatio figure is reached only via a series of chords in ‘flatter’ tonalities. After the distinct dominant function of the first beat of b. 105, the tonality veers into B major so that the progression acquires a plagal character. This is a beautiful example of what in German terminology is called a Trugschluß (and in Italian a cadenza sfuggita): a ‘deceptive’ cadence that, by harmonizing the expected cadential tonic note in a devious way, creates interest and tension, besides lending the music greater continuity.

One other tonus peregrinus organ setting by J.S. Bach (BWV 648) has survived in the Schübler collection, and is thus probably a rather late work.51 This chorale prelude for two manuals and pedals is an adaptation of a movement

51 Johann Sebastian Bach, Sechs Chorale von verschiedener Art (Zella, 1748, RISM A/I/1: B 464).


of his Cantata X discussed-above. So far as style and affect are concerned, this organ chorale comes close to the Suscepit Israel movement of his Latin Magnificat setting. The material in the second manual and the pedal are not related directly to the cantus firmus.52 Strangely, Bach has left the basso continuo part, as it stood in the cantata, without realization. The resulting pedal solo, quasi ostinato , is unusual in cantus firmus organ chorales such as this. The great tradition of Magnificat settings for organ had effectively fallen into obsolescence by that time. Objectively considered, the two settings by Bach belong more to the respective histories of the fugue and the organ chorale than they do to the older tradition.53

Conclusion

What strikes one most forcefully when one surveys the Lutheran Magnificat repertory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the multitude of possible affects extracted from the canticle and how the tonus peregrinus is reinterpreted to reflect all these different affects. To take only two instances, the disparity in character of Zachow’s permutation fugue and J.S. Bach’s Suscepit Israel is so immense that it is difficult to believe that these movements are based on the same biblical text passage and the same psalm-tone. Nevertheless, the tonus peregrinus is the centrepiece of both movements, and, equally importantly, the way in which the tonus peregrinus is interpreted in the light of the canticle verse in question is common to both works. Arno Forchert has described the typical frame of mind of a Lutheran composer: Der cantus firmus … steht nicht als Idee hinter dem Satz, sondern er benutzt den Satz, um sinnlich in Erscheinung zu treten: ‘The cantus firmus is not an idea underlying the setting – rather, it uses the setting as a means of making itself manifest to the senses.’54 This is a good description of the phenomenon evidenced by Zachow’s and Bach’s totally different treatments of the tonus peregrinus.

Typically for Lutheran culture, the borderline between high and low art is blurred; we saw how the quasi-chorale in ‘familiar’ style for the doxology of J.S. Bach’s Meine Seele erhebt den Herren cantata is accorded the same level of harmonic sophistication as movements in more ambitious idioms. This undifferentiated approach seems to have declined with the inexorable rise of figured bass and the emerging practice of accompanying congregational singing on the organ: an instrument that in this new, important function effectively took

52 It could be said that the descending tetrachord closing the first semi-verse is present in chromaticized form in the self-imitating sequential counter-motive.

53 See Peter Williams, The Organ Music of J.S. Bach, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 117–119, 276–278.

54 Arno Forchert, Das Spätwerk des Michael Praetorius: Italienische und deutsche Stilbegegnung, Berliner Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 1 (Berlin, 1959), p. 4.


over that of a continuo instrument. This development in turn inevitably led to a break with the polyphonic Lutheran tradition in organ and choral writing alike.

Problems with accommodating the second tonus peregrinus recitation in the polyphonic cantus firmus model were ever-present in the early seventeenth century, after which period the psalm-tone as a whole gradually became assimilated with greater facility, even though the same polyphonic methods continued to operate well into the early eighteenth century. This improved facility seems to be connected with a shift from the modal awareness of constructive polyphony in sixteenth-century traditions to the more phenomenological considerations of mannered and ‘fantastic’ Baroque styles. This development is clearly perceived in the organ tradition, where, significantly, it runs parallel with the replacement of the psalm-tone IX Magnificat by Meine Seele erhebt den Herren as the normative canticle setting. It was only logical that the latter should be less concerned than the former with the compositional principles of the organ Magnificat based on psalm-tones I–VIII. But there were also instances where progressive tendencies and practices complicated the harmonic handling of the second tonus peregrinus semi-verse. We have discussed the special difficulties arising within works in which the lowest part has the dual function of cantus firmus and figured bass. Scheidt handled this compositional task adeptly in his Choralkonzerte, but the problem grew harder to accommodate within the customary relationship between the bass part and the upper parts as this developed in later Baroque music. Accordingly, the bassus cantus firmus model was thereafter mainly confined to organ music, where an equality of part-writing was preserved in respect of both thematic involvement and individual function.

In the history of the Lutheran church Meine Seele erhebt den Herren was assimilated into a large corpus of equally well known chorale melodies. The tonus peregrinus was on the whole rather untypical of this repertory of melodies, and this distinctiveness is reflected in the polyphonic treatment it received. The great majority of the most common chorale melodies are not only strophic, but also cast in bar form – a feature that made them perfectly suited to strict cantus firmus treatment; the basic structure of these melodies already possessed a self-sufficient form, which could be successfully transferred as it stood to a larger-scale work – for instance, a chorale prelude for organ. The bipartite psalm-tone structure of the tonus peregrinus renders it very different from the bar form chorales. Problems such as those of distonatio and static harmony in the second semi-verse of the tonus peregrinus did not affect melodies that had a wider span and covered greater harmonic and tonal space. Johann Christoph Bach’s awkward handling of the second tonus peregrinus semi-verse exemplifies this obstacle. Conversely, polyphony constructed on very short motivic fragments, such as that exhibited in Scheidt’s Tabulatura nova, would be unthinkable for, say, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott or Christus der uns selig macht, since these melodies are not sufficiently concise to be readily recognizable in such short fragments. Similarly, their use of melodic repetition would make them unsuited to the polyphonic treatment of Zachow’s tonus peregrinus permutation fugue.


One could make an essential distinction between two alternative approaches to the tonus peregrinus: one that favours longer statements of the psalm-tone, often accompanied by non-cantus firmus material, and one that dissolves it in motivic passage-work. Even if these methods are often combined – e.g. in the shape of a cantus firmus work with diminuted fragments – there are clear tendencies working towards perfecting them independently (here we may propose Suscepit Israel and the Schübler chorale by J.S. Bach as outstanding examples of the first method, and Scheidt’s Et exultavit and Buxtehude’s final psalm-tone IX variation as almost equally fine examples of the second). It is interesting to observe that there is also a clear tendency to treat the first tonus peregrinus semi-verse in the first manner, and the second semi-verse in the second manner – as one might indeed expect in the light of the problems discussed above.

The use of a strict cantus firmus was more pervasive in the tonus peregrinus settings covered in this chapter than it was in Roman Catholic tonus peregrinus settings of the same period. This is not merely a reflection of the differences between canticle and psalm styles; it is also a sign that Lutheran composers, at least those active before 1700, remained faithful to the Torgau tradition.55 The strict handling of the tonus peregrinus, which, even in instrumental settings, takes into consideration the syllabic underlay of each verse, as we encounter it in Michael and Jacob Praetorius, Scheidt and Buxtehude, flows in a continuous tradition from the pedagogical ideals of the first generation of Lutherans. The symbolic value of the chorale cantus firmus began as a liturgical obligation but later came to reach an artistic stature that accounts in part for the great popularity of the German Magnificat in the middle of the eighteenth century.

In its purest form, this musical–religious ideal tends towards a separation of the cantus firmus from the other parts. In the case of the tonus peregrinus within the Baroque repertory, we can see that there is a clear demarcation between tonus peregrinus and free material. Such thematic ‘isolation’ was underpinned in different ways. Instrumental isolation is encountered in J.S. Bach’s Suscepit Israel and Er denket der Barmherzigkeit, but also in the assigning of the tonus peregrinus (and only the tonus peregrinus) to the pedals, as in one of Buxtehude’s Magnificat verses. Another form of thematic isolation is that founded on text. In Lutheran cantatas for the feast of the Visitation, works in which all movements relate to the Magnificat and its theology, the tonus peregrinus never occurs in movements set to free prose (madrigalian verse), but is reserved for movements with biblical text. The tonus peregrinus was the Lutheran Magnificat in an almost literal sense – hence its veneration almost as a liturgical extension of Scripture.

55 A more or less uniform musical tradition that stems from the first centuries after the Reformation and more specifically from the cantus firmus techniques of Johann Walter, Thomas Stoltzer, Sixtus Dietrich and others.


Chapter 13

The Continuing Tradition: The Tonus Peregrinus in Music after 1750

This chapter covers the period following the one covered in the two previous chapters. Here we encounter many works that more or less directly overstep the practical bounds of Western liturgy, either by virtue of their untraditional and superficial applications of the tonus peregrinus or by the fact that they are primarily concert music with loose or non-existent liturgical connections. The latter case is often signalled by confusion over liturgical texts, by the size or type of ensemble required or by the expressly stated intention of the composer. This chapter is not designed to analyse the works listed, since they belong at the periphery of, or entirely outside, the scope of this book; nor should it be taken as an exhaustive list of tonus peregrinus appearances in works composed after 1750. For all these reasons, detailed discussion will be all but absent in this chapter, the intention being merely to exemplify and illustrate the continuing importance of the tonus peregrinus as an influence on composers in the Western musical tradition.

Missa pro defunctis (requiem)

One of the most surprising appearances of the tonus peregrinus is in the requiem setting (K 626) of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). The appearance of the psalm-tone in a requiem Mass does not seem to pertain to any existing liturgical tradition, and we must try to trace this unexpected use partly from tendencies in contemporary works and partly from a theological context. The tonus peregrinus occurs as a soprano solo in the introitus taken from Psalm 64, Te decet hymnus, as well as in a scoring for full choir later in the same psalm.1 More importantly, Psalm 64 makes direct reference to Exodus: in the Vulgate it is headed by the inscription, In finem Psalmus David canticum Ieremiae et Exechielis populo transmigrationis cum inciperent exire: ‘At the end, a psalm of David: the canticle of Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the people of the captivity when they began their migration.’2 Then follows the psalm text proper, as it appears in the order for the requiem Mass: Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion: et tibi reddetur

1 Richard Maunder, in his edition/completion, includes the psalm-tone also elsewhere in the work, but there are no indications in the sketches that this was the composer’s intention (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Requiem, ed. Richard Maunder [Oxford, 1987].

2 Ps. 64:1.


votum in Hierusalem. Exaudi orationem; ad te omnis caro veniet: ‘A hymn, O God becomes you in Zion: and a vow shall be given to you in Jerusalem. Hear my prayer; all flesh shall come to you.’3

It would be difficult to avoid the suggestion that Mozart here interpreted the tonus peregrinus as a musical symbol representing that hymn: befitting the Lord and sung by his people. Without any doubt the composer was aware of the connection between the tonus peregrinus and the Exodus, since profuse In exitu Israel settings by composers in previous generations continuously offered this interpretation, following a well-established musical and exegetical tradition. We must, in addition, consider the possibility that Mozart had come across the hypothesis of the tonus peregrinus being a remnant of the Jerusalem Temple liturgy. This hypothesis was addressed by (among others) Padre Martini, whom Mozart met on his visit to Bologna in 1770 – it was on the same Italian journey that he allegedly made his copy of Allegri’s Miserere mei in Rome, revealing some fascination for that work and seemingly also for the tonus peregrinus in particular.4 No copy of Allegri’s work in Mozart’s hand appears to have survived, but the work is likely to have made an impression on him (he composed his own Miserere mei [K 85] that same year). In fact, Martini held one of the few authorized copies of the work, so Mozart may have, after hearing the work in Rome, also have read it in score during his sojourn in Bologna.5

Before Martini, there was no explicit formulation of this theory of Hebraic origins for the tonus peregrinus – nevertheless, it is highly likely that Martini’s speculation on these matters was shared by other scholars. We also know that the other significant historian of sacred music at the time, Martin Gerbert, also connected the tonus peregrinus with ancient Jewish culture, but in a way that seems distinct from the information in Martini’s writings.6 The fact that these two scholars presented related views in so different ways, without just reiterating each other’s ideas, suggest that this theory was not a conjecture that was unique to Martini or that he kept it to himself. If there was a common belief in the theory of Temple/synagogal origins, would then also Mozart have been interested in it? We shall find reasons to return to this question shortly, but first we must investigate

3 Ps. 64:2–3. Translation by the present author, since the King James Version is nearer to the Vulgate reading: Tibi silens laus Deus in Sion et tibi reddetur votum. Exaudi orationem donec ad te omnis caro veniat.

4 It was Leopold Mozart’s long-standing intention that his son should take lessons in counterpoint from Martini. We do not know if, and in what form, this ever happened but if the tonus peregrinus was ever under discussion at the Bologna meeting, could the young Mozart have failed to be influenced by the old master’s fascination for the tonus peregrinus? Martini held that the tonus peregrinus could be one of the oldest surviving chants and found it oltremodo brillante, e vezzosa: ‘exceptionally brilliant and delightful’ (Giovanni Battista [Padre] Martini, Storia della Musica, vol. 1 [Bologna, 1757], pp. 419–420).

5 Erbacher believes that this might have been the case (Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 132).6 Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 42–43.

The Continuing Tradition 277

what seem to be the immediate musical factors behind Mozart’s use of the tonus peregrinus in his requiem.

Manfred Schuler has attempted to show how Mozart, in his requiem Mass, followed a specifically Austrian tradition regarding the choice of liturgical texts, scoring and orchestration.7 The composer was doubtless aware of many similar works in this tradition, but in the case of the introitus it is one particular setting that seems to have been especially influential: the Missa pro defunctis (1771) of Johann Michael Haydn (1737–1806).8 Both works are structurally similar, and both quote a Gregorian melody to mark the official, canonic character of the introitus. In Haydn’s case this is the pertinent introitus melody Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine itself, whereas Mozart – as we have seen, possibly on exegetical grounds – employed the tonus peregrinus.9 The very idea of using Gregorian material for the Te decet hymnus section may have been inherited by Mozart indirectly from the Salzburg tradition and directly from Haydn. Given Mozart’s highly influential standing in the nineteenth century, nobody will be surprised to find the tonus peregrinus appearing in requiem settings by Eduard Grell (1800–1886), Friedrich Kiel (1821–85) and Felix Draeske (1835–1913).


Possibly as a result of the increasing specialization of theologians, officiating priests and musicians (and the specialization of some composers in sacred or profane repertory), many major composers were uninterested in, or unaware of, the historical position of the tonus peregrinus in Western liturgy. It is unlikely that the unison der Jordan wandte sich zurück on g–a–g in Da Israel aus Ägypten zog (op. 51) by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s (1809–47), a work otherwise displaying what could possibly be interpreted as general references to Orientalism, is a reference to the tonus peregrinus.10 It would appear that if

7 Manfred Schuler, ‘Mozarts Requiem in der Tradition gattungsgeschichtlicher Topoi’, in A. Laubenthal (ed.), Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher (Kassel, 1995), pp. 317–327.

8 Charles Herman and Donley Thomas, Johann Michael Haydn (1737–1806): A Chronological Thematic Catalogue of his Works (Stuyvesant, 1993), no. 155.

9 Manfred Schuler interprets the melody as being a paraphrase of the first psalm-tone, which is very similar to the first introitus phrase (‘Mozarts Requiem’, p. 320). He is certainly right that psalm-tone I was used for the psalm Te decet hymnus, but it is important that Haydn employs a rare and untypical form, very considerably adapted to the introitus melody. Later, the melody transgresses the ambitus of the psalm-tone, showing that the composer really intended to paraphrase the introitus melody itself. It is also notable that the psalm Te decet hymnus is more often associated with psalm-tone II than psalm-tone I in liturgical indices.

10 The composer’s encounter with his own Jewish heritage came late in his life, as has been shown by Jeffrey Sposato, The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-semitic Tradition (Oxford, 2006), p. 6, 14.


Mendelssohn had taken interest in the contemporary beliefs relating to the history of the psalm-tone, he would possibly have responded in a more overt way, just as the more liturgically orientated composers who continued to employ the psalm-tone in their settings of Psalm 113 throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among these are Georg Joseph (Abbé) Vogler (1749–1814), who used the psalm-tone in a somewhat altered form, Caspar Ett (1788–1847) and Bernhard Mettenleiter (1822–1901).11 Some settings are deliberately and self-consciously archaic in locating the tonus peregrinus in the tenor rather than in the soprano. Standing apart from this tradition, there were also organ works, which are more complex stylistically and often also have a less distinct liturgical intention. Verset fugué sur ‘In exitu Israël’ by Louis Vierne (1870–1937) is a short but significant setting that exemplifies this type of work.12 Vierne has turned the tonus peregrinus into an evenly flowing melody lacking any suggestion of recitation (Example 13.1).13

As a fugal theme, his adaptation is very successful: the added chromaticism allows the theme to stand out from the contrapuntal texture; more importantly, it also resists the previously so fundamental move to the mediatio cadence degree, with the result that the psalm-tone acquires a completely different character. Eighteenth-century fugal techniques struggled with the twofold division of the tonus peregrinus (as in Fuga sopra il Magnificat by J.S. Bach, in which only the first semi-verse was used as a fugato theme). Vierne treats the entire psalm-tone as an integral unit, which is only natural, since the parallelismus membrorum, the mediatio cadence and the two tenor degrees were completely irrelevant, or inappropriate, to his fugal technique. The work, representative of a very modern way of thinking about Gregorian elements, could therefore be said permanently

11 Georg Joseph (Abbé) Vogler, Vesperae chorales modulis musicis ornatae (Speyer, 1776); Caspar Ett, Vesper-Psalmen für fünfstimmigen Chor und Orgel (Regensburg, 1870); Bernhard Mettenleiter, Psalmi vespertini, op. 13 (Archiv der Dommusik, St Gallen, MS I:390).

12 Louis Vierne, Album de pièces modernes (Paris, 1894).13 Our brief example is quoted from the thematic catalogue by Rollin Smith, Louis

Vierne, Organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral (New York, 1999). The work was for some reason not included in the earlier thematic catalogue by Bernhard Gavoty, Louis Vierne: la vie et l’oeuvre (Paris, 1943).

Example 13.1 Verset fugué sur ‘In exitu Israël’, Louis Vierne


and ultimately (if brutally) to settle the question of dual recitation, which had been the object of so much learned debate throughout the centuries.

Settings of the German Magnificat

To use the tonus peregrinus as an official melody for Meine Seele erhebt den Herren remained throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries essentially a matter of religious confession. Roman Catholic composers, for example Michael Haydn, did not use that melody in their vernacular Magnificat settings.14 Among Lutherans, there were those who, like their forebears, regarded the tonus peregrinus not merely as a (non-strophic) chorale melody of Gregorian origin but rather as a plainsong melody demanding treatment that was pertinent to its individual characteristics. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–88) followed his father rather closely both in technique and spirit when he quoted the tonus peregrinus in the movement Et misericordia eius in his Magnificat of 1749. Apart from this example, there are surprisingly few instances of quotation of the tonus peregrinus in larger Latin Magnificat settings by Lutheran composers.

In contrast to the scarcity of Latin Magnificat settings based on the tonus peregrinus, Meine Seele erhebt den Herren, the ‘chorale’ version of the tonus peregrinus, was set in liturgically practical monodic settings during all periods of the Lutheran Church: thus also in the early modern period. Initially (and continuing until surprisingly late), it was set for basso continuo; later, it also appeared in harmonizations for three, four or five parts. Among settings deserving mention may be mentioned those of Karl Gottlieb Umbreit (1736–1829) and Karl Marx (1897–1985).15 Martin Traugott Blumner (1827–1901), conductor of the Berliner Singakademie, mentions that he composed an eight-part setting.16 The Lobgesang Mariae was also at this time translated and used in Lutheran Scandinavia, where, as we have seen, the tonus peregrinus had previously been used for different functions.

We have previously observed some special appearances of the tonus peregrinus in Christmas Vespers, a tradition that dates back to the first generation of Lutherans. In the Magnificat of the Weihnachtsmysterium nach Worten der Bibel und Spielen des Volkes, op. 31, by Philipp Wolfrum (1854–1919) the tonus peregrinus occurs first as a soprano solo in simple style – obviously an attempt

14 Haydn’s German Magnificat for two soprani, horns, violone and obbligato organ of 1790, uses tonus V in the solo parts. Occasionally, Lutheran composers uncoupled the German Magnificat from the tonus peregrinus: see e.g. the setting by Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–80) for organ and choir.

15 Karl Gottlieb Umbreit, Allgemeines Choral-Buch für die protestantische Kirche (Gotha, 1811); Karl Marx, Psalmtöne für dreistimmigen Chor (Kassel, 1957).

16 Martin T. Blummer, Geschichte der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin: eine Festgabe zur Säcularfeier am 24. Mai 1891 (Berlin, 1891).


at representing the historical Mary rather than making one of the theological interpretations that prevailed in the Baroque canon of German Magnificat settings.17 Later in the work, the tonus peregrinus is used with full orchestra, melodically permutated and exploited as a focal point for late-Romantic stylistic elements, almost dissolving the harmonic functions associated with the melody, the tonality resembling that of Max Reger (we may incidentally regret the fact that Reger himself appears never to have set the tonus peregrinus). The tonus peregrinus also appears in the guise of a quotation in a Magnificat for soprano, viola, orchestra and distant choir by Heinrich Kaminski (1886–1946), and in Mariae Verkündigung, a motet by the Hindemith pupil Felicitas Kuckuck (1914–), again with the tonus peregrinus maintaining the simplistic style that betrays a leaning towards ‘traditionalism’, as that vague concept became translated in the sacred music of many modern composers. Following loosely in the Christmas Vesper tradition is likewise the Weihnacht for choir and double bass by Heinz Werner Zimmermann (1930–).18 Here, the tonus peregrinus appears in a ‘superimposed’ manner, on the surface of a structural basis that is otherwise unrelated to the melody. Siegfried Reda (1916–68), in many ways a great modernizer of Lutheran Church music, used the tonus peregrinus both in the work Marienbilder (1950) and in a Magnificat for organ, choir and soloists. Here, the tonus peregrinus seems to have symbolized a wider concept of Marian devotion. The modern liturgico-ecumenical situation that is partly a result of a general movement from practical liturgy to recital-like services means that Meine Seele erhebt den Herren is sometimes performed also in Catholic churches. Sometimes the traditions cross over for pedagogical reasons: Marcel Dupré (1886–1971) for example, included the tonus peregrinus in his 79 chorals, op. 28 – the preface to the collection modestly describes the chorales as an exercise preparing the student for the playing of J.S. Bach’s organ chorales.19

The modern Lutheran liturgical reformation movement, along with an increasing interest in early music, has seen the new publication of many Magnificat settings from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alongside this, many twentieth-century composers and liturgists have produced their own tonus peregrinus settings in historical pastiche styles – a tradition, it seems, that still continues at the time of writing. These works are mostly mere replications or adaptations of earlier styles, but some use modern instrumentation and idioms in a skilful and artistic way in what seem to be attempts at modernizing the liturgy – a

17 Rehearsal score: Philipp Wolfrum, Ein Weihnachts-Mysterium nach Worten der Bibel und Spielen des Volkes zur Darstellung durch Musik (Heidelberg, c.1899).

18 Heinz Werner Zimmermann, Weihnacht (Berlin, 1958).19 Marcel Dupré, 79 chorals, op. 28 (New York: Gray, 1932). The use of the tonus

peregrinus in a Magnificat for the Anglican Evensong service by Edward Woodall Naylor (Services and Anthems for Men’s Voices [London, n.d.]) may also have been influenced by Lutheran settings, but here we must not forget Byrd’s vernacular setting discussed in Chapter 10.


Lutheran parallel to the effects of the Second Vatican Council. To my knowledge, the Vespers by Zimmermann for choir, vibraphone, harpsichord and double bass cited previously provides the only experiment with the tonus peregrinus in the context of Afro-American musical influences. The Magnificat of these Vespers is structured in the manner of a blues pattern, over which the psalm-tone appears in the opening and closing sections of the work. While this work may lie close to one facet of the original Lutheran service ideal – that of incorporation of contemporary tendencies into a pre-established formula – there are other works that serve to exemplify the Melanchthonian mission to edify the laity through participation: Paul Ernst Ruppel (1913–) has ingeniously constructed a canon ‘à 3’ on the tonus peregrinus, a work obviously intended for youth or amateur choirs and possibly congregational singing.20

Other liturgical and devotional music

The requiem was not the first manifestation of Mozart’s fascination with the tonus peregrinus; the psalm-tone appears also in the final movement of his oratorio La Betulia liberata (KV 118/74c), composed around the time of the his meeting with Martini, and again with an evident connection with the Old Testament (the work represents, in Pietro Metastasio’s libretto, Judith’s triumph over Holofernes: the liberation of Israel from Assyrian domination). We know that the composer had a broad historical interest in, and a penchant for, theological and musical symbolism. Now, it seems as if he was more concerned with these facets of the tonus peregrinus than with its traditional liturgical implications. In fact, he used the melody on two occasions that are unique, although logical from a symbolical viewpoint – his requiem Mass and Betulia liberata – whereas he does not even hint at it where one might expect him to: either in the Miserere mei – this is all the more surprising since he revealed a genuine enthusiasm for Allegri’s work – or in Als aus Ägypten Israel, vom Volke der Barbaren, gezogen (KV 343), a chorale-like paraphrase of Psalm 113 set for solo voice and basso continuo in ten musically identical verses.

The twentieth century has witnessed an increased use of the tonus peregrinus in the Mass – possibly as a side-effect of the reduced importance of Vespers among the modern Catholic laity. Paul Berthier (1884–1953) published a Missa

20 Ruppel’s canon can be found in the anthology Chorbuch advent, ed. Wolfgang Bretschneider (Stuttgart, n.d.). Wayne Wold has drawn our attention to further organ works from the preceding century: three Meine Seele erhebt den Herren settings by Randall Thompson (1899–1984) included in Twenty Chorale Preludes, Four Inventions and a Fugue (Boston, Mass., c.1970); Augustinus Franz Kropfreiter, Marienkroner Magnificat (Vienna and Munich, 1995); Pierre Vidalis, Magnificat pour Orgue sur le peregrinus (Sampzon, 2001).


peregrina for four-part choir and two organs.21 This work draws melodically on both the tonus peregrinus and the antiphons of the Nos qui vivimus group. According to Erbacher, in the Offertorium of the Deutschen Propriums zum Fest der unbeflechten Empfängnis Mariens Fritz Schieri employs the tonus peregrinus in modified form.22

For some reason, the tonus peregrinus is given to the last verse of the Dies irae in Henry George Bonavia-Hunt’s setting of that sequence, appearing in an Anglican publication.23 Wakeling Dry writes in relation to alternative melodies of the Te Deum:

Some time ago I was discussing the question of congregational singing with Sir Walford Davies, and he told me that he had made effective use, especially with a large body of voices in unison, of the Tonus Peregrinus – that familiar piece of plainchant invariably used for the Psalm ‘In exitu Israel’.24

It is possible that the revival of Merbecke’s Prayer Book and a renewed interest in the Sarum tradition did set off a new interest in the strictly musical properties of the tonus peregrinus in the early twentieth century.25 As has already been mentioned, the psalm-tone is presently in frequent use for the Nunc dimittis (‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace’) in Anglican chant settings.

One would expect a similar liturgical laxity in the modern Lutheran Church, but, instead, we witness a return to older practices. Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770–1846) and Karl Piutti (1846–1902), the latter being organist at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, both recalled the Lutheran tradition of singing verses from Psalm 67, Gott sei uns gnädig, to a variant of the tonus peregrinus.26 Strangely, both these composers were born and raised in the little town of Elgersburg in Thuringia (Piutti was born in the year of Rinck’s death), possibly suggesting that

21 Paul Berthier, Missa peregrina (Nancy, n.d.).22 Erbacher, Tonus peregrinus, vol. 1, p. 134.23 Novello’s Parish Choir Book (London, n.d.), no. 386.24 Wakeling Dry, ‘Chant Settings of the Te Deum’, Musical Times, 66/987 (1925): 441.25 It should be remembered, however, that the tradition of singing the Benedicite to

the tonus peregrinus was not exclusive to the first Prayer Book – it is indeed found also immediately after the restoration of the monarchy, in Edward Lowe’s A short direction for the Performance of Cathedrall Service, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1664) and in James Clifford’s Brief Directions: The Divine Services and Anthems usually sung in His Majesties Chappel and in all Cathedrals and Collegiate Choires, 2nd edn (London, 1664) (see Ruth Wilson, Anglican Chant and Chanting in England, Scotland and America 1600 to 1820 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 35–37. Also in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the psalm-tone was commonly used, in a variety of harmonized forms, in the Anglican Church.

26 Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck, Vorspiele zu den gebräuchlichsten Chorälen der evangelischen Kirche (Essen, c.1833); Karl Piutti, Zweihundert Choralvorspiele für die Orgel, op. 34 (Rieter-Biedermann, Leipzig, 1900; repr. ed. Martin Meyer, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005).


this use had survived as a local practice. The preface to Piutti’s collection states clearly that his preludes are intended for worship, but also that most of them can be used alternatively as free-standing preludes or postludes. This interesting remark reveals that these small works were in the truest sense Choralvorspiele and not organ preludes – semantically, these two terms would ideally be equivalents, but the Orgelpreludien of that age were often works of considerate proportions and by that token debarred from being central to the liturgy. Those such as Piutti’s Gott sei uns gnädig, in contrast, were intended as intonations, and (although this would have been less likely in the nineteenth century) possibly as interludes during congregational singing.

The Anglo-Canadian organist Alfred Whitehead (1887–1974) prolonged the tradition, established in mediaeval orders for Lauds and retained by Merbecke, of setting the Benedicite to the tonus peregrinus in a work for choir (SATB) and organ from 1936 – positively related to the nineteenth century revival of the Merbecke’s Booke of Common Praier Noted.27 One noteworthy modern setting of the tonus peregrinus is that by the American composer Daniel Moe (1926–): Chorale Prelude: God, be Merciful. Despite its title, this, too, is a work for choir (SATB) and organ.28

Para-liturgical and ‘abstract’ concert repertory

There is a short tonus peregrinus setting for organ by Johann Georg Herzog (1822–1909),29 who taught at the conservatoire in Munich. One of his pupils was Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839–1901), who in his Organ Sonata no. 4 in A minor, op. 98, employed the tonus peregrinus in his typically learned style of counterpoint. The psalm-tone here has the function of a second fugue theme against an invented principal theme, and the way in which these two are contrasted relies heavily on the singular properties of the tonus peregrinus. The psalm-tone is presented in flexible rhythm and appears effectively in augmented note-values. Thus its presence here looks and sounds more central to the work than in any other contemporary tonus peregrinus setting. Martin Weyer summed up this centrality well:

Nein, Psalmtöne sind variable Rezitationsmodelle ohne spezifische Inhalte, sie sind in Gegensatz zu Choral-melodien gleichsam assoziations-neutral. … Rheinberger [hatte] durch die Psalmtöne die Möglichkeit, cantus-firmus-artige

27 Ralph Vaughan-Williams’s (1872–1958) setting of the canticle for orchestra, soprano solo and choir (Benedicite [Oxford, 1929]) does not use the psalm-tone.

28 Daniel Moe, Chorale Prelude: God, be Merciful (Augsburg, c.1956).29 It is included in the anthology Orgelmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3, ed. J.F.

Doppelbauer (Altötting, 1981). I am indebted to Wayne Wold for drawing my attention to this item.


Thematik zu gewinnen, ohne damit zugleich in pseudo-sackrale Atmosphäre zu greaten.

No, psalm-tones are variable recitation formulas without specific content; in contrast to plainchant, they are neutral as regards association … by virtue of the psalm-tones, Rheinberger had the possibility of achieving cantus firmus-like thematic material without invoking a pseudo-sacred atmosphere.30

This statement should be read in the light of the vast quantity of nineteenth-century music that indulged precisely in such ‘pseudo-sacred atmospheres’. Rheinberger’s respect for, and understanding of, the characteristics of the tonus peregrinus is unique for an age when this psalm-tone was most frequently used merely as a cultural tag to be exploited freely by the composer. The latter tendency is best exemplified by the highly peculiar manner in which Allegri’s Miserere mei, in altered form (replete with chromaticism and enharmonic reinterpretation) is used as an atmospheric symbol in the Evocation à la Chapelle Sixtine by Franz Liszt (1811–1886).31 This type of programmatic organ work was cultivated by many composers at a time that coincided with the climax of veneration for the legends surrounding the celebrated Miserere mei. The character is far removed from that of the original, and Liszt’s work could be regarded as yet another reflection of the mystico-romantic interpretation of the tonus peregrinus; only that here the composer adds to that value an increment derived from the mythical status of Allegri’s composition.

Two organ works by the Catholic composer and organist Hermann Schroeder (1904–1984) are based on the tonus peregrinus: one of the Gregorianischen Miniatyren of 1965, and his Variations on the Tonus Peregrinus of 1975.32 The latter work features the tonus peregrinus in fragmented form, and the fragmentation is untraditional in that it cuts right through the different sections of the psalm-tone. Horatio Parker (1863–1919), whose tuition from Rheinberger possibly may be significant to our investigation, composed A Wanderer’s Psalm, a cantata-like work that defies all liturgical considerations since it reduces the tonus peregrinus to a symbol, just as in Liszt’s case.33 The situation is very similar

30 Martin Weyer, Die Orgelwerke Josef Rheinbergers: Ein Handbuch für Organisten (Wilhelmshaven, 1994), p. 50.

31 Franz Liszt, Evocation à la Chapelle Sixtine (Erfurt, 1865). Liszt also provided a simple homophonic setting of Gott sei uns gnädig to the tonus peregrinus – unpublished in the life-time of the composer, but included in Franz Liszts Musikalische Werke, vol. 7 (Leipzig, 1936).

32 Hermann Schroeder, Gregorianischen Miniatyren (Altötting, n.d.); Hermann Schroeder, Variations on the Tonus Pergrinus (Mainz, n.d.).

33 Horatio Parker, A Wanderer’s Psalm, op. 50 (London, 1900). The work is for orchestra, choir and soloists.


with Everett Titcomb’s Improvisation: Toccata on the Tonus Peregrinus.34 It is interesting to see Parker’s work in the light of modern historiography of the tonus peregrinus (connecting its assumed Judaic origins with theological concepts of pilgrimage) since it tends to use the psalm-tone very deliberately as a symbol. Its text is not Psalm 113, but Psalm 107, and the tonus peregrinus appears first in the instrumental opening and then, with a very distinct entrance to the words ‘And let them wander out of the way’.

Through modern notions of mysticism the tonus peregrinus has won a place not only in para-liturgical choral music but also in purely instrumental concert music. The Ballade for two pianos, op. 3, by Wagner’s biographer Charles Albert Lidgey is a good example of this.35 The psalm-tone was also used by John Beckwith (1927–) in his Peregrine for viola, percussion and orchestra in 1990. Interestingly, the score makes a genuine connection with the tradition of the psalm-tone by prescribing different kinds of processional movement for the performers. It appears that modern research into the tonus peregrinus and mediaeval liturgy has in this instance affected the way in which the chant is used by the composer – something that runs parallel with Mozart’s apparent response to Martini’s and Gerbert’s research into plainchant history.

Conclusion

A fascination with the tonus peregrinus has remained, over the last three hundred years, largely a personal affair for individual composers. The vast majority of those who wrote for the Western liturgy and in doing so frequently connected with the Gregorian tradition did not use the psalm-tone in their music. In fact, the use of the tonus peregrinus is proportionately over-represented in the oeuvres of composers who primarily wrote for the chamber, stage and concert hall and never held an ecclesiastical position. This fact suggests that the tonus peregrinus was appreciated above all for its symbolic value: with certain exceptions (Rheinberger, Ruppel and Berthier), the tonus peregrinus is not really structurally central to the works in which it appears. The instances of the melody are quotations in the established meaning of that term. If anything, composers who employ it tend to be conservative – not necessarily musically, like Rheinberger and Blumner, but rather philosophically: they are united by a tradition of learning that starts with Martini and Gerbert and which has become increasingly evident in parallel with the increasing awareness of the Gregorian repertory as a cultural heritage and of the tonus peregrinus as a possible link to ancient musical practices.

Is this tradition of learning then also a bona fide chain, via which a fascination with the tonus peregrinus was passed on from composer to composer? This definitely seems to have been the case with some of the works discussed here.

34 Everett Titcomb, Improvisation Toccata on the Tonus Peregrinus (New York, 1962).35 Charles Albert Lidgey, Ballade, op. 3 (Travis and Emery, London, n.d.).


The diagram proposes how the works of some of the more prominent composers may have influenced contemporary and future composers in their use of the tonus peregrinus. If its implications seem far-fetched, one should bear in mind that what is most striking about these works is their high profile: Allegri’s Miserere mei, J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, Mozart’s requiem Mass and Rheinberger’s Fourth Organ Sonata all rank among the most famous works of the (most famous) composers in question. On the left of our chart we find composers whose use of the tonus peregrinus was dictated by dynamic liturgical traditions and/or where their setting reflects the inherent properties of the tonus peregrinus in any of its forms, be it as psalm-tone or chorale.36 On the right, conversely, we find composers who appear to have been interested in the tonus peregrinus primarily as a curiosity – a symbol or even a metaphor. The former group may seem overly pragmatic in its orientation, just as the latter could be accused of lacking sincerity – but the important fact is that both of these ‘schools’ are deeply rooted in the tradition that has been discussed in earlier portions of this study.37 Pragmatic liturgical considerations stimulated the theory and practice of modal classification, Vespers processions and, above all, the special treatment of the tonus peregrinus in a great variety of musical forms and styles. The symbolical ‘school’, on the other hand, represents a view of the tonus peregrinus that is related to the deep-rooted theological symbolism

36 Michael Haydn has been included here; even though he did not use the tonus peregrinus in his requiem, his use of Gregorian quotation seems manifestly to have inspired Mozart to include the tonus peregrinus in the concomitant place of his Mass.

37 This classification has been devised in an attempt to illustrate two main paradigms; the term ‘school’ is not meant to imply any direct teacher–pupil relationship between the composers, even if this was indeed the case with J.S. Bach and C.P.E. Bach, Martini and Mozart, and Herzog, Rheinberger and Parker.


of the covenant and the high veneration of the tonus peregrinus as something exceptional or even unique.

There is evidence that the ‘left-hand’ group in the chart did not necessarily produce uninspired, routine music: settings such as those by Rheinberger or Dupré display no small degree of inspiration and originality. Nor should it be believed that all the composers in the other category fail to capture the essence of the tonus peregrinus: the sensitivity of word-setting in Mozart’s requiem leaves one with the impression – as do several other works written in idioms ‘new’ to this composer – that he had taken many works by other composers as models. Moreover, the use of the tonus peregrinus as a symbolic tag, as in the Romantic era, necessarily presupposes some grasp of its essential characteristics, at least on an aesthetic level: since these composers in all probability had little or no knowledge of mediaeval music theory, they must have responded, at most, empirically to the features that set the tonus peregrinus apart from the other psalm-tones.

During the long period covered in this brief chapter the tonus peregrinus no longer presented a musical problem, but the special treatment it received traced its roots back to earlier musical considerations, where the irregularities of the psalm-tone had lain very much at the forefront of the compositional process. To the composers in the period after 1750 the tonus peregrinus was little more than a melodic ‘motif’, and if one is permitted to generalize (as one must when attempting to define the broad paradigmatic shifts that have shaped the history of music), one may say that the models of composition current in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were first and foremost concerned with reworking melodic material of this kind in a variety of methodological and imaginative ways. Thus we have in our times arrived at a situation where any difference between the tonus peregrinus as a Lutheran chorale and the tonus peregrinus as plainsong recitation has been ironed out. The tonus peregrinus has been drained of its original characteristics, or – to put it less drastically – these characteristics have become crystallized exclusively in the melodic shape of what was once a functioning psalm-tone.


Chapter 14

Conclusions

The development of the tonus peregrinus within the Western Church can effectively be described in terms of the theories of the German philologist Anton Baumstark (1872–1948). From a combination of philological analysis, historiography and conjecture Baumstark drew the conclusion that at times of high devotion Christians have always returned to what they experience as ‘traditional’ and ‘ancient’.1 The concepts of the ‘primordial’ and the ‘familiar’ are linked precisely via the concept of the ‘traditional’. While a ‘Baumstark effect’ certainly manifests itself in the survival of the tonus peregrinus in Western liturgy as a whole, it is especially marked in relation to the Vespers office. Baumstark noted in Christian tradition a greater conservatism, the higher the solemnity of the ceremony. Outside the monastic Officium Vespers was normally perceived as the most fundamental liturgical hour, containing the Magnificat and, on Sundays, Psalm 113. We have further observed a tradition, disappearing back into the mists of time (as regards musical source material) before Gregory the Great, of special Easter celebrations employing the tonus peregrinus, differing from period to period but centred around the group of psalms prescribed for Sunday Vespers in secular orders, with Psalm 113 as the theological core and raison d’être of the observance. Baumstark offered two generalizations that both seem appropriate to this book: (1) that liturgy evolves from variety to uniformity and (2) that liturgy evolves from simplicity to complexity.2 The first axiom illuminates the fact that the earliest deviations and vagaries of the tonus peregrinus crystallized into one standardized version with two different variants, but also how the national varieties, covered in Chapters 5–8, amalgamated into the pan-Catholic practices described in Chapter 11. The second axiom may help us understand the process behind the ever more ambitious musical applications of this basic recitation formula.

1 Anton Baumstark, ‘Das Gesetz der Erhaltung des Alten in liturgisch hochwertiger Zeit’, Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, 7 (1923): 1–23; Anton Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, ed. B. Botte, trans. F.L. Cross (Westminster, Md., 1958).

2 Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, p. 27. These generalizations have also been supported by those twentieth-century scholars who criticized Baumstark on other accounts (see Robert F. Taft, ‘How Liturgies Grow: The Evolution of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 43 [1977]: 8–30; Robert F. Taft, ‘Comparative Liturgy Fifty Years after Anton Baumstark (d. 1948): A Reply to Recent Critics’, Worship, 73 [1999]: 521–540, as well as Paul Bradshaw: ‘Ten Principles for Interpreting Christian Liturgical Evidence’, in P. Bradshaw and L.A. Hoffman [eds], The Making of Christian Worship [Notre Dame, Ind. and London, 1991], pp. 3–21, at pp. 5–6).


The question of whether the origins and antiquity of the tonus peregrinus could be ascertained with any degree of reliability has to be answered humbly in the negative.3 We have no other explanations for when the psalm-tone appeared for the first time in the Frankish sources than those offered by the Frankish theorists themselves. The hypotheses advanced in later periods have given us an increased understanding of early chant was and was not (especially as regards its liturgical applications), but as long as there is a lack of sources, long periods of discontinuity of knowledge or, as is sometimes the case, the theories advanced are remote from what the earliest sources tells us, we must be cautious. As Dom René-Jean Hesbert has remarked in relation to chant research:

It is one thing to fail to attack the problem at all and to remain in the ignorant necessity of saying ‘We do not know’; and another to be in the position, after broaching and investigating the problem, of being able to say ‘We know that we don’t know’. If doubt persists, it is an informed doubt, an absolutely positive conclusion.4

This is a strong statement, but it seems to fit our case rather well and links up with one of the questions posed in the beginning of the of the present book: the rich and disparate views encountered in the historiography of our psalm-tone have influenced considerably the way it was used in liturgy and in polyphonic music. And addressing what we do not know about the tonus peregrinus now, we can at least identify why we do not, or indeed cannot, know it. What can be deduced with considerable certainty from the material collated in this study is that the tonus peregrinus represented a liturgical practice that persisted, for various reasons, until the decline of Western liturgy in the eighteenth century, and, under somewhat new and altered circumstances, even beyond that point. Its importance in music after the middle of the eighteenth century rests mainly on the new interest in historiography of Western liturgy and chant which, initiated by scholars and soon reflected in the works of composers. As a symbol, the tonus peregrinus continues to attract the interest of new generations of composers, then representing different aspects of its history but perhaps especially its presumed roots in pre-Christian music, its liturgical functions and its problematic modality.

The best way to encapsulate the multitude of compositional approaches encountered would be to recognize the way in which the tonus peregrinus connects monophony and polyphony. The psalm-tone demonstrates perhaps more than any other frequently recurring item of plainsong the inseparable synthesis between linear melody and harmonic organization that was, and to some extent still is, unique to music in the Western tradition: the evident acoustic contrast between plainsong and polyphony really finds no equivalent in musical theory or practice. This is clear in several ways, some relating to the centrality of the tonus

3 See also Lundberg, ‘Tonus Peregrinus’, pp. 36–51.4 René-Jean Hesbert, ‘The Sarum Antiphoner: Its Sources and Influence’, Journal of

the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 3 (1980): 49–55, at p. 52.

Conclusions 291

peregrinus, that is its guiding principles of polyphony appearing as a cantus firmus or other type of modal or tonal axis, others relating to the tonus peregrinus as building blocks not necessarily guiding the entire polyphonic structure, but instead acting as its fabric. If there is any surprising outcome of our analysis it is perhaps the fact that the perceived peculiarities of the tonus peregrinus foreshadowed a greater stability and uniformity in the linear–harmonic synthesis – what we now understand by the conception of tonality. The role of the psalm-tone in this respect, as investigated specifically as regards theoretical concepts in Chapter 4, should not be exaggerated, but nor should it be neglected. It needed, in fact, less ‘tonalization’ than was typical for the psalm-tones.

Liturgical and musical differences between different regions have shaped the way in which the tonus peregrinus was treated polyphonically. There are, besides those discussed here, naturally polyphonic settings that have either been identified but only rudimentarily analysed, or not identified at all. Considering the number of works studied and occurrences of tonus peregrinus identified, it is unlikely that there are any works unaccounted for which could change the results much. The tonus peregrinus in many instances preserved a distinctly conservative musical and theological conception even during periods of drastic liturgical reform. The psalm-tone and its circumstances are not unique in this respect alone – it is rather the intensity of endeavour that makes the treatment of the tonus peregrinus stand out. Tasks for future scholars would include a closer comparison of tonus peregrinus settings with larger amounts of works in specific genres of psalmody (for example falsobordone or the psalm motet) and a systematic analysis of the use of the psalm-tone in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One would also like to encourage similar studies based on other liturgical chant items with comparable technical problems and with a similar clear-cut nature and character.

Many out of the polyphonic applications of the tonus peregrinus which were scrutinized were initially answers to inherent voice-leading perceptible in the psalm-tone itself. Over time, composers occasionally departed from this for artistic or circumstantial reasons. The defining factors remained, however, those of incipit, mediatio, terminatio and two recitation pitches, no element of which could be removed without losing either the voice-leading effect or the clear-cut melodic character of the psalm-tone. It was on account of this uncommon and exceptionally condensed essence that the tonus peregrinus was rarely to be altered in the course of twelve hundred years of well-documented polyphony and music theory. In meanings reinterpreted from mediaeval terminology it thus remained firmus in polyphonic methods and approaches, planus in its connection with antiphony, fauxbourdon, chorale and ‘familiar style’, and prius factus by virtue of the mysteries surrounding its alleged ancient origins.


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Index

Aaron, Pietro 43, 293accent 30, 44, 78, 137, 166accidentals 21, 51, 69acoustics 290ad equales 63, 120, 149–53, 160,

228–230, 232Advent 249, 281aesthetics 117–18, 252, 287Affekt 246, 252Agricola, Martin xi, 59, 124–29, 131,

137–41, 144, 157, 159, 293 Alia musica (treatise) 11, 15 Alighieri, Dante 24–25, 30, 293Allegri, Gregorio xii, 92, 186–91, 193,

196–97, 276, 281, 284, 286Alleluia 15–16, 19, 24, 29–30, 33–34, 177,

306alternatim principle 25, 29, 33, 45, 83, 86,

97–98, 105–106, 111, 115–16, 121, 131, 151, 154–55, 157, 160, 171, 177, 186, 188, 193, 198, 204, 222, 230, 260, 264, 266

antiphons (other than Nos qui vivimus) 4, 8–10, 14–17, 19, 46–47, 50–51, 53, 83, 84–85, 94, 98, 143–44, 146, 148, 166, 282

antiphonales x, 14, 19, 21, 31, 84, 98, 176, 293

Ambrose, St 83–84Amner, John 169Anerio, Giovanni Francesco 186augmentation (rhythmic) 60, 67, 78, 155,

239, 253, 270, 283Augustine, St 85, 294Augustinian order 111Aurelianus of Réôme 15, 294authentic modes 39, 47–48, 50–52Avignon, France 94Aquinas, Thomas St 127–28

Babst, Valentin 147, 153, 294Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel 279, 286Bach, Johann Christoph xiii, 264, 265,

268, 272Bach, Johann Ludwig 147Bach, Johann Michae 268Bach, Johann Sebastian xiii, 147, 212,

227, 231–32, 248–60, 264, 268–71, 273, 278, 280, 286, 294

Bai, Tommaso 186–87Baïf, Jean Antoine de 75Banchieri, Adriano 46–48, 294 Baptism 175bar form 272Baumstark, Anton 289Beckwith, John 285Benedicite xii, 3, 8, 17, 164–67, 174,

183–84, 282–83Benedictian order 34–35, 81, 83Benedictus 8, 143, 145, 150, 168–74, 184 Berlin, Germany 78, 279Bermudo, Juan 13, 294Berno of Reichenau 42, 55Berthier, Paul 281–82, 285bicinia 33, 64, 76, 140, 157Binchois, Gilles x, 25–32, 36, 59, 61, 65 Blumner, Martin Traugott 279, 285Bohemian brethren 147, 150Bologna, Italy 89, 268, 276Boluda, Ginés de 102, 116–17 Bonavia-Hunt, Henry George 282Bononcini, Giovanni Maria 200–01Booke of Common Praier 164, 295Booke of Common Praier noted xii, 43,

165–66, 283Bovicelli, Giovanni Battista 91, 295breviaria 81–82, 116–17, 166, 190, 197Brito, Estêuãu de 105–6Bruges, Belgium 87Bugenhagen, Johann 144, 146


Bull, John 262Bullinger, Henry 165Burney, Charles 169, 187, 296Burtius, Nicolaus 91, 296Buxtehude, Dieterich xiii, 253, 266–70,

273Byrd, Thomas 175Byrd, William xii, 175–77, 179–84, 196,

262, 280

calvinism 75 Calvisius, Sethus 45, 153, 296cambiata figure 111, 174Campion, Thomas 54, 56, 296Canon 65, 74, 89, 97–98, 126–28, 131,

177–78, 205, 281cantatas 231, 239, 247–48, 252–53,

260, 271, 273, 284 (see also Kirchenstücke)

canticles, see biblical canticlescantillation (recitation and recitation

degrees) 7–8, 11, 14–16, 23, 28–34, 42, 52, 65, 69, 71. 76, 78, 84–85, 99, 106, 111, 116, 121, 137, 143, 145–46, 151, 153–54, 157, 160, 166–168, 173, 180, 186, 188–89, 192, 196–98, 200–201, 203, 212–13, 224–25, 230, 232, 236–38, 242, 249, 258, 262–63, 265–68, 270, 272, 278–279, 284, 287, 289, 291

cantional style 63, 120, 149–53, 160, 228–230, 232

Cantone, Serafino xii, 193–94, 201cantus firmus technique 76, 79, 99, 86–87,

89, 97, 118, 124, 128, 131, 137, 155, 157–59, 178, 189, 217, 221, 223, 246, 249, 260, 262, 264, 273

cantus prius factus vii, 99, 110, 114, 126, 224, 291

Capuanus, Nicolaus 13–14, 296Cardano, Girolamo 94, 296Carpentras, Elzéar Genet xi, 52, 70, 94–97Castiglione, Baldassare 94, 296Caustun, Thomas xii, 168–74, 176, 184Cavalli, Francesco 198Cerone, Pietro 46, 50, 53–55, 297Certon, Pierre 59–60, 63, 65, 72, 75, 79

Charles I, King of Sicily 73Charles VIII, (‘the Affable’), King of

France 70, 73Charles Martel 73Chiete (Theate), Italy 82chorales

polyphonic settings of 119–20, 129, 149–50, 152, 155, 228, 230, 232, 246–47, 249, 266, 268, 271, 273, 280–83

in relation to plainchant items 146, 148–51, 154, 160–61, 184, 227, 265

tonus peregrinus treated as chorale melody 229, 249, 260, 270, 271–73, 279, 281, 286–87, 291

Choralkonzert 201, 228, 237, 239, 242–48, 263, 272

Christmas 168, 248–49, 279–80church orders 148–50, 154, 266Cistercian order 53, 190clausulae 43–44, 48, 50–51, 53–56, 96,

191–92, 201, 203–4, 230clefs 53–54Clement VII (Pope) 82, Cochlaeus, Johannes 44, 297Coclico, Adrian (Petit) 64, 297Coimbra, Portugal 111–12, 192comes 51, 252, 265Commemoratio brevis de tonis et psalmis

modulandis (treatise) ix, 8, 11–12, 14, 297

commixtio 43, 56, 102Compline 144compound intervals 116, 267concertato style 197, 201–5, 212–13,

224–25, 258consonance 20, 22, 26, 116, 122, 174, 177Confessio Augustana 147–49, 304congregational singing 17, 147, 149,

150–54, 160, 167, 227, 229, 232, 249, 260, 268, 271, 281, 282–83

consecutive motion of intervals 20–23, 37, 65, 71, 86, 116, 159–160, 171, 267

concertus sacer 239–241, 246contrafacta 160, 169Corelli, Arcangelo 200

Index 317

cori spezzati 83, 87–88, 189, 198, 230, 232, 236˗37

Coventry and Lichfield (diocese) 34Councils and synods

Toledo (653) 19Trent (1545–63) 81–82, 166Second Vatican (1962–65) 82, 281

counter-reformation 101, 190countersubject 252Cranmer, Thomas 163, 165–66, 173, 297Credo 148Cristo, Pedro de xi, 110–15, 117Cruciger, Caspar 146Crusius, Martin 49Crüger, Johannes 45–46

daseian notation 20–22Day, John xii, 168–69, 171Demantius, Christoph 45Des Prez, Josquin x, 41, 53–54, 59, 63–66,

69–76, 79, 86, 88, 159devotio moderna 4, 72, 98Dietrich, Sixtus 120, 273differentiae 9, 12, 14, 16, 23, 85, 128, 146,

182–83diminution (rhythmic) 60, 67, 76, 117,

124, 131, 156–57, 176, 236, 246, 261, 267, 273

dissonance treatment 24, 238, 246distonatio 177–78, 263, 266, 272division at the fifth (in modal theory) 42,

46, 52, 55Dowland, John 166, 298doxology 29, 61, 75, 89, 94, 105–6,

122, 131, 156–57, 173–74, 183, 193, 197, 203, 231, 236, 252–53, 258–59, 271

Draeske, Felix 277dramatic music 91, 212, 248Dresden, Germany 212–213Dressler, Gallus 42, 131, 298Dufay, Guillaume 59Dupré, Marcel 280, 287dux 51, 252, 265

East, Michael 169Easter 15, 17, 19, 23, 29–30, 33, 36,

175–176, 289

Eberlin, Johann Ernst 223Eccard, Johannes 152–53Edward VI (King of England) 163, 166,

169, 171elevatio (in psalmody) 7Elerus, Franciscus x, 46–48Elgersburg, Germany 282–83Elizabeth I, Queen of England 164, 166Ely, England 182Erasmus of Rotterdam 110Erbach, Christian 49Erfurt, Germany 150Este, Thomas 184Ett, Caspar 278Exodus theology 251, 275–76

‘familiar’ style 230–31, 271, 291fauxbourdon 5, 25–30, 34–37, 59, 65, 72,

86, 167–68, 232, 291Faberthon 168 fabordón 36, 103–6, 111, 115–18, 168 faburden 33–34, 37, 167–79, 182–84falsobordone 35–36, 59–60, 67, 83,

86–87, 89, 91–92, 96–97, 103, 114–17, 119–24, 129, 131, 149–53, 160, 167–69, 174, 176, 186, 189–194, 196–98, 228–30, 239, 242, 246, 291

figured bass 182, 201, 212, 224, 230–31, 232, 241–42, 246–47, 252–53, 260, 268, 271–72, 279, 281

finalis (as modal concept) 7, 21–22, 44, 53, 64, 115, 156, 170, 180, 182–83, 222, 237, 258

Finck, Hermann 131Fischer, Johann Caspar Ferdinand xiii,

204–5, 211–13, 224, 258form (sectional structure) 8, 12, 15, 19,

29, 32–33, 61, 71, 76, 86, 104–5, 118, 131, 134–35, 155–156, 160, 173, 177, 180, 185, 188, 197, 205, 211–12, 217–18, 221, 225, 236–37, 242, 252, 258–62, 266–67, 272, 281

Franciscan order 73, 89Franck, Melchior xiii, 237–38, 241–42Frederick II, Prince of the Palatinate 135Frescobaldi, Girolamo 52


Froberger, Johann Jakob 262fugue 51, 223, 242, 247, 252–53, 264–65,

270–72, 278–79, 283Fulda, Adam de 44funeral liturgies 25, 30Fux, Johann Joseph 185

Gafurius, Franchinus xi, 26, 28, 51, 84–85, 88, 102, 299

Galilei, Vincenzo xi, 92–94, 96, 196Galuppi, Baldassare 200Gassendi, Pierre 45, 299Gerbert, Martin 276, 285Gesius, Bartolomäus 228Glareanus, Henricus 10, 39–57, 70, 103–4,

110, 146, 165, 223–24, 247, 299Goes, Damião de 110Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 186Gonzaga, Ercole (Cardinal) 87Graduale 97Grandi, Alessandro 50, 198Granjon, Robert 166, 299greek music theory 39–40, 42, 93Gregor, Christian xiii, 232Gregory I ‘The great’ (Pope) 289Gregory XIII (Pope) 97 Grell, Eduard 277Grocheio, Johannes de 127, 299Guarda, Portugal 192Guerrero, Francisco xi, 4, 105–13, 116–18Guerson, Guillaume ix, 11, 299Guidetti, Giovanni Domenico 166Guido of Arezzo 22, 299Gumpelzhaimer, Adam 229Gyffard partbooks 175–77gymel 31, 171, 174–75

Hagius, Conradus 45Halle, Germany 252–53hallel Psalms 24Hamburg, Germany 46, 228, 239, 266Händel, Georg Friedrich 213, 252Hassler, Hans Leo 49, 228, 232, 242Haydn, Johann Michael 277, 279, 286Heilbronn, Germany 150Hemmel, Sigmund 152, Henri IV, King of France 75Henry V, King of England 175–76

Henry VIII, King of England 163–65Hermann, Nicolaus 150–51Herzog, Johann Georg 283, 286hexachordal structure 26, 28, 31–32, 41,

71, 116, 128, 182Hieronymus of Moravia ix, 12, 300Hilsey, John 171, 300Historiae 229Holinshed, Raphael 175–76Hooper, John 165huguenot music 74–75humanism, scholarly 39, 42–43, 51, 57,

60, 63–64, 72, 74–75, 81–83, 94, 98, 104, 110, 120, 190–91

Husduvius Modderanus, Gabriel 228hymnals (Lutheran) 147, 153, 227–28, 232hypotyposis 106, 239

imitationpolyphonic technique 52, 61, 67,

69, 76, 88–90, 96, 110, 112, 125, 128, 131, 155, 157, 159, 183, 191, 193–96, 213, 231, 239, 246–47, 260, 267

based on pre-existent model (parody) 49, 79, 97, 160, 221

improvisation (and ex tempore performance) 20–21, 28, 34, 36, 103, 113, 168, 171, 173–74, 183, 187, 196, 222, 230, 285

inganno 115, 128Introitus 8, 275, 277invertible counterpoint 221, 253invitatory psalm-tones 8, 16Isaac, Henricus 59, 159Isaiah (Old Testament) 148Isidorus of Seville 15, 23, 301

Jachet of Mantua xi, 59, 86–90, 97–99Jacobsthal (Bohemia) 150–51Jacobus of Liége ix, 8, 10–11, 301Jena choirbooks 53, 120–21, 129, 152Jesaja dem Propheten (Luther) 148Johann Friedrich III, Duke of Saxony

144–45Johannes of Affligem (Cotto) 24–25, 32,

301Johannes of Olomon ix, 301

Index 319

Johannes of Szydlow 11, 301Johannes of Tewkesbury 14, 20, 167, 301Jonas, Justus the elder 146

Kaminski, Heinrich 280Kiel, Friedrich 277Kindermann, Johann Erasmus 50, 223Kirchenstücke 231, 239, 247–48, 252–53,

260, 271, 273, 284 (see also cantatas)

Kircher, Athanasius 46, 302Klug, Joseph 143, 138, 152–53Komplementärfiguration 197, 262, 267Kropfreiter, Augustinus Franz 281Kuckuck, Felicitas 280Kugelmann, Johann xi, 129–131Kyrie xiii, 46, 48, 54, 97, 217–18, 221

La Rue, Pierre de x, 59, 75–78, 86Ladislaus of Zalka ix, 14, 302latin language

in relation to vernaculars 7–8, 23–24, 119, 145, 151, 155, 157, 161, 164–65, 184, 237, 246–49, 270, 279

taught through music 149Lassus, Orlandus 47–49, 51, 53, 56, 59,

124, 139, 152, 160Lauds 17, 165, 283Lateinschulen 110, 124, 260Le Jeune, Claude 45, 74–75Lechner, Leonhard 47–49, 51Legrenzi, Giovanni xii, 198–201Leighton, William 169Leipzig, Germany 137, 147–48, 157,

248–49, 282Libanus, Georgius xi, 5, 126–29, 157, 159Lidgey, Charles Albert 285ligatures 97, 139, 152–53, 166, 192, 213,

232, 237, 252Liszt, Franz 284A litil tretise acording to the ferst tretise of

the sight of Descant (treatise) 34, 167, 303

liturgical drama 24Louis XI, King of France 73Louis XII, King of France 70, 74Lowe, Edward 54, 282Luke (New Testament) 143, 230, 253

Lüneberg tablatures 263–64Lusitano, Vicente 110lute, music for 60, 92–94Luther, Martin 135, 144–46, 149, 151–53,

251lutheran orthodoxy 248, 251Lübeck, Germany 268

madrigals 88, 91, 96, 273Magdeburg, Germany 124, 144Mageirus, Samuel 47–49 Magirus, Johannes 49, 303Maillart, Pierre 48, 303Mantua, Italy 87Marcello, Benedetto 213Maria of Antioch (pretender to the throne

of Israel) 73Marshall, William 171Martini, Giovanni Battista (Padre) xi, 90,

185, 260, 268, 276, 281, 285–86, 304

Mary I, Queen of England 164, 166, 174–76

Marx, Karl 279Mass 8, 16, 23, 25–26, 53, 60, 78–79,

96–97, 102, 105, 127, 143–44, 147–48, 153, 163, 217–222, 225, 275, 277, 281, 286

mathematics 40, 43, 46, 52Mattheson, Johann 211–12, 248, 304Matins 8, 144, 165mediant (harmonic relationship) 122–123mediante (in psalmody) 7medium (in psalmody) 7, 44Melanchthon, Philipp 120, 135, 146, 149,

281, 304melisma 67, 180Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix 186,

277–78Merbecke, John xii, 165–67, 184, 282–83,

304Mersenne, Marin 55Merulo, Claudio 47Mettenleiter, Bernhard 278Michael, Rogier 229–30Milan, Italy 70, 81, 83–85modulation 211Moe, Daniel 283


Monody 91, 194, 197, 228, 260, 279Monte, Philippe de 78–79Monteverdi, Claudio 50, 99, 246Morales, Cristóbal de 101, 105Morley, Thomas 41, 168, 305motivic techniques 10, 42, 49, 63, 64, 67,

71, 88–89, 137, 156–57, 191, 217, 236–37, 242, 246–47, 249, 271–73, 287

Mouton, Jean x, 41, 59–65, 67, 69–75, 79, 86–87

Mozart, Leopold 186, 276Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 186, 275–77,

281, 285–87Mundy, William xii, 175–76, 196Munich, Germany 124, 205, 283Murschhauser, Franz Xavier Anton xiii,

205–11, 224–25, 258Musculus, Wolfgang 151music publishing 49–50, 60, 69, 75, 79,

120–21, 129, 137, 145, 147–48, 150, 165, 196, 232, 237, 239, 263, 284

musica ficta 26, 28, 50–51, 115, 177

Nasco, Giovanni (Jan) 87Nassarre, Pablo 13Navarro, Juan (the elder) 101, 116–17Naylor, Edward Woodall 280Neuenrade, Germany 148Nivers, Guillame Gabriel 222Nos qui vivimus (antiphon) 17, 20, 29, 46,

51, 60–61, 65, 67, 83–85, 94, 111, 134, 139–41, 166, 282

Nucius, Johann xii, 190–94Nunc dimittis 8, 143, 150, 171, 173, 182,

184, 228, 282Nuremberg, Germany 25, 223

Ockeghem, Johannes 59, 65organum 20–26, 28, 36–37Orihuela, Pedro x, 35–37, 61, 86ornamentation 7, 26, 60–61, 91, 94, 99,

103, 117–18, 122, 157, 159, 176, 186–87, 189, 196–97, 239, 253

Ornithopharcus, Andreas 69, 166, 298, 306

Osiander, Lucas 49, 152

Ostinato 71, 176, 268, 271Othmayr, Caspar xi, 119, 135–37overlap

of phrases or sections 65, 88, 125, 131, 140, 159, 236, 263

Pacheco, Francisco 4, 105, 110, 306Pachelbel, Johann 147, 222–23, 268Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 96, 186parallel motion 20–23, 37, 65, 71, 86, 116,

159–60, 171, 267parallelismus membrorum 15, 71, 145,

221, 278Paris, France 24, 60, 64–65, 70–72, 78,

87, 177, 222Parker, Horatio 284–86parody technique 49, 79, 97, 160, 221passacaglia 135passaggi xii, 91–93, 118, 157, 196–97,

201, 267, 273, 295Pasquale, Bonifacio xi, 89–92, 99Paul III (Pope) 82Paul IV (Pope) 82Paumann, Conrad 25–26pedal-notes 266permutation fugue 252–53, 271–72Pépin III (‘the short’), King of the Franks

73Phinot, Dominique 87phrasis 42–46, 51pietism (Lutheran) 229, 248, 251Pinellus, Giovanni Battista xii, 154–58,

160Pius V (Pope) 82, 307Piutti, Karl 282–83plagal cadence 51, 120, 140, 242, 270plagal mode 39, 47–48, 50, 52, 69,

115–16, 196polychoral music 83, 87–88, 189, 198,

230, 232, 236–37Pontac, Diego de xiii, 217–221, 225Pontio, Pietro 88–89, 307Porpora, Nicola 200Christoph Praetorius 55Praetorius, Hieronymus 262Praetorius, Jacob (the younger) 262–63,

273

Index 321

Praetorius, Michael xiii, 55, 230–42, 246, 249

Prague, Czech Republic 124prefatio 16preludes 266, 268, 271–72, 281, 283primers (for the Anglican Church) 171processions 17, 24, 29–30, 33, 175–76,

285–86processo 43–44Psalms other than Ps. 113 (as referred

to in each passage, according to Vulgate and Masoretic numbering respectively)

46 14650 186–9051 14755 17964 275–7667 3, 17, 143, 147–48, 28294 897 94–96107 285109 82, 197111 82, 148, 157–60, 197112 19, 33, 82, 197, 227114 3, 19, 75, 121, 141, 144, 147, 179115 3–4, 19, 75, 121, 141, 197116 19117 19118 19, 70–71, 74119 5, 179, 184, 246129 74146 75–78

psalm motets 59, 70, 74, 76, 86–87, 89, 94, 97–98, 137, 178, 291

psalm-tonesother than the tonus peregrinus (in

general) 3, 5, 7–10, 13–16, 19, 23–24, 32, 41, 43–51, 55–56, 71, 79, 84, 86, 88, 92, 93, 96–99, 102–103, 111, 116, 121, 143, 146, 154, 156, 168, 174, 184–85, 200, 211, 221–24, 262, 266, 284, 287, 291

I 8, 10, 23, 29–32, 53–54, 84–85, 157, 266, 277

II 224, 277III 48, 116, 143, 224

IV 48, 193, 224V ix, 7, 48, 224VI 48, 184, 224VII 49, 84–85, 103, 105, 143VIII 102, 119, 222, 224with more than one recitation degree

8, 16Puerto, Diego del x, 13, 307Purcell, Henry 253

Quercu, Simon de 53, 307Quiñones, Francisco de los Ángeles

(Cardinal) 82Quod a nobis (papal bull of 1568) 82, 166,

307quodlibet techniques 135, 139–40

Radulphus of Rivo 81, 307Ramis de Pareia, Bartolomeo 91, 307Ramoneda, Ignacio 13, 102, 307range (of voices or parts) 65, 96, 115–16,

130, 187, 230, 241 Raselius, Andreas 45Reda, Siegfrid 280reformation

Lutheran 143–44, 146, 149–51, 182, 227, 249, 273

Anglican 163–67, 169, 174–75Rego Pedro Vaz 4, 102, 197Reinken, Johann Adam 253René I (Le bon roi), Duke of Anjou 73repercussa 7, 11Requiem 275–77, 281, 286–87Resinarius, Balthasar xii, 157–60responsorial psalmody 14–15Revelation (New Testament) 82ricercar 45, 49Rhau, Georg ix, xi, 10, 120–21, 152–53,

308Rheinberger, Joseph Gabriel 283–86rhetoric 64–65, 88–89, 110, 140, 180–81,

191, 203, 205, 212–13, 225, 239, 246, 260

Rinck, Johann Christian Heinrich 282–83risposte 88, 97–99Robledo, Melchor 116Rome, Italy 81, 83, 94, 101, 164, 197, 276Rosenmüller, Johann 253


Rosenplüt, Hans 25Rouen, France 223Rovetta, Giovanni 198Ruppel, Paul Ernst 281, 285

salmi spezzati 87, 198Sanctus xiii, 16, 148, 167, 169, 220–21Sandrin, Pierre (Regnault) 60Sarum liturgy x, 14–16, 24, 29, 31, 33,

163–67, 174, 176–77, 184, 282, 293

Schaffen, Henricus 87Scheidemann, Heinrich 263Scheidt, Samuel xiii, 239–47, 249, 260,

263–64, 272–73Schein, Johann Hermann 147, 149, 230Scheyrer, Bernhard 56, 308Schieri, Fritz 282Schiefferdecker, Johann Christian 268Schofer, Rofus 135Schütz, Heinrich 5, 49, 246–47, 249Schroeder, Hermann 284Scolica enchiriadis de musica (treatise) x,

20–24, 26, 37, 308 secular music 60, 75, 88, 91, 96, 129, 194,

248, 277, 285sequences (liturgical genre) 146, 282Sermisy, Claudin de ix, x, 11, 41, 59, 65,

67–72, 74–75, 79, 86, 88Severi, Francesco xii, 195–97Seville, Spain 105, 113–14Shakespeare, William 176Sheppard, John xii, 169, 175–78, 196sight singing (extemporized polyphony)

28, 34, 173–74solmization syllables 47, 50, 67, 128, 177,

222Spangenberg, Johannes 10, 309Speratus, Paul 146sprezzatura 89Stadlmayr, Johann xiii, 201–5, 212, 225, Stimmtausch (voice exchange) 171, 242Stoltzer, Thomas 119, 273Störl, Johann Georg Christian 268stretto 76, 128, 211, 265, 270strophic forms in hymnody and psalmody

146, 148, 150, 153, 160, 227, 272stylus phantasticus 249, 270

suspension 174, 263, Sweelinck, Jan Pieterszoon 49, 261–62symbola xi, 135–37

tablature xiii, 92–93, 196, 230, 260, 262–63

Tallis, Thomas 168–69Te Deum 83, 165–66, 176, 282Telemann, Georg Philipp xiii, 258–60, tempo 8, 124, 212Tenbury Wells, England 182–83tenebrae 186–87Tenorlieder 129tetrachords 21–23, 52, 128, 271text underlay 33, 120, 124, 134, 163, 168,

228, 252, 273text, treatment in composition and reflected

in music 5, 7–8, 16, 33, 50, 60–61, 64–65, 72–74, 86, 88, 92, 94, 101, 105–6, 110–11, 119–20, 124, 127, 134–35, 137, 139–40, 145–46, 148–51, 154, 156, 160, 190, 204, 212–13, 221, 228, 230, 236, 239, 246–47, 252, 267, 273, 275

texture 37, 60, 65, 76, 78, 92, 106, 116, 125, 127–28, 140, 193, 200–1, 205, 224, 237–38, 278

Thalesio, Pedro xii, 102, 192–93, 224Theile, Johann 253thematic unity 61, 64–65, 127, 140, 176,

193–96, 203, 205, 212, 217, 237, 242, 261, 263, 270, 272

Thompson, Randall 281tierce de Picardie 50, 170–71, 182, 188Tinctoris, Johannes 44, 91, 159, 177–78,

310Titcomb, Everett 285Titelouze, Jean 223toccatas 44–45, 51–52, 223, 285Toledo, Spain 19, 64, 116–17tonality (aspects of tonal space and

centrality) 39, 41, 51, 53–56, 191–92, 194, 200–1, 224, 236, 260, 270, 272, 280, 291

Torgau, Germany 129, 161, 273Torrentes, Andrés xi, 114–17total thematicism 126–29, 159

Index 323

Tractatus de musica plana et mensurabili (treatise) ix–x, 10, 13, 146

Transposition 11, 41, 48, 51–54, 69, 76, 78, 84–85, 96, 115, 121, 128, 134, 159, 174, 176–77, 187, 200, 203, 217, 221–22, 230–32, 236, 239, 242

Trugschluβ 270Tuba 7Turini, Gregorio 124Tübingen, diocese of 47Tye, Christopher 169

Ugolino of Orvieto 69Umbreit, Karl Gottlieb 279University of Coimbra 111, 192University of Leipzig 157University of Milan 84

Vallerius, Harald 228, 311variation technique 65, 98, 106, 139–40,

171, 203, 242, 262, 266–68, 273, 284

Vaughan-Williams, Ralph 283Venice, Italy 39, 50, 87, 167, 198, 232,

238Vespers 4, 17, 19, 23–24, 29–30, 33, 36,

50, 60, 82–83, 86–87, 99, 105, 116–17, 120–21, 143–49, 153–54, 160–61, 175–76, 180, 193, 197–98, 201, 203, 205, 246–48, 252, 278–81, 286, 289

Vicentino, Nicola 110Vidalis, Pierre 281

Vienna, Austria 124, 239Vierne, Louis xiv, 278Villafranca, Luys de 13, 311Villancico 36Vivaldi, Antonio 200, 213Vivanco, Sebastián de 102Vogler, Georg Joseph ‘Abbé’ 278voice crossing 29, 129, 231, 267voice-leading 33, 43–44, 54–55, 67, 78,

96, 130, 173–74, 198, 228, 239, 291

Vorimitation 239, 261, 264Vulpius, Melchior 229, 246

Walter, Johann 129, 140, 145–46, 150, 152–53, 155, 160, 273

Weimar, Germany 270Whitehead, Alfred 283Willaert, Adrian xi, 47, 59, 86–90, 97–99Wittenberg, Germany 120, 129, 144–45,

148–50, 152, 161Wolfrum, Philipp 279–80Wollick, Nicolaus 14, 43, 312Wrocław, Poland 78–79

Zacconi, Ludovici 48, 50, 55, 312Zachow, Friedrich Wilhelm xiii, 248,

252–58, 271–72Zarlino, Gioseffo 5, 39–57, 79, 87, 97–98,

223–24, 312Zelenka, Jan Dismas xiii, 212–17, 252,

259Zimmermann, Heinz Werner 280–81Zoilo, Annibale 96–97