L'homme armé by Josquin
We started our projects this week with Monteverdi's great 'Sestina', an exploration of utter grief and loss. As a sort of counterpoise to this beginning, here at the end of the week I offer the Agnus Dei III from Josquin's
'Missa L'homme armé sexti toni
L’homme armé is a popular tune which emerged from Burgundian circles in the mid-15th-century. It may have been composed by Antoine Busnois (c.1430—1492), and seems to have arisen in association with the capture of
Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, and with subsequent European fears of invasion. Some scholars connect
L’homme armé with the Order of the Golden Fleece, the chivalrous order founded by Philip the Good of Burgundy.
The seemingly bellicose lyrics of the song were no doubt often interpreted in a figurative rather than literal sense, as to say: ‘Each of us should don our spiritual armor.’ I am including the tune and its lyrics in the text-translation document.
The tune took Europe by storm. It appears in a number of ‘combinative chansons’, and in a series of
‘Naples masses’, as a cantus firmus to supply a unified structural backbone for settings of the ordinary of the mass.
Over 40 L’homme armé masses were produced over the next 150 years, with a great flowering in Vatican
manuscripts beginning in the late 15th-century.
Josquin wrote two masses based upon 'L'homme arme': the 'Missa 'L'homme armé super voces musicales', in which the tune appears beginning upon successive notes of the musical scale; and the piece from which today's project is drawn, in the sixth tone. (The sixth tone is much like our modern major mode.) The composer's manipulations and adornments of the tune are amazing in both pieces, but perhaps never more so than in the 'Agnus Dei III' of our mass.
Here he expands from four to six voices, and creates a rock-solid foundation for the texture by presenting the tune in long notes in both the tenor and bass--but with some twists: The bass has the opening melody of the song, but in retrograde (backwards) form, while the tenor has the bridge in normal form. At the exact center of the piece, the two parts perform exactly what they just sang, but now backwards: The tenor now sings the bridge in retrograde, while the bass sings the opening melody in normal form.
Whew! And this all fits somehow fits together perfectly, creating a continuous, slowly evolving and changing matrix of 'L'homme armé'.
Above this foundation, the upper voices are paired into two canons, the second voice of each pair following only a half-beat after the other. The pairs themselves also mirror each other and together form a sort of continuous wash of ascending or descending sound, a sort of crowd-depiction of emotional supplication in this cri de coeur:
'Grant us peace!'
It's unforgettable and so healing and I offer it to you with much love and with hope for better times to come.
We started our projects this week with Monteverdi's great 'Sestina', an exploration of utter grief and loss. As a sort of counterpoise to this beginning, here at the end of the week I offer the Agnus Dei III from Josquin's
'Missa L'homme armé sexti toni
L’homme armé is a popular tune which emerged from Burgundian circles in the mid-15th-century. It may have been composed by Antoine Busnois (c.1430—1492), and seems to have arisen in association with the capture of
Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, and with subsequent European fears of invasion. Some scholars connect
L’homme armé with the Order of the Golden Fleece, the chivalrous order founded by Philip the Good of Burgundy.
The seemingly bellicose lyrics of the song were no doubt often interpreted in a figurative rather than literal sense, as to say: ‘Each of us should don our spiritual armor.’ I am including the tune and its lyrics in the text-translation document.
The tune took Europe by storm. It appears in a number of ‘combinative chansons’, and in a series of
‘Naples masses’, as a cantus firmus to supply a unified structural backbone for settings of the ordinary of the mass.
Over 40 L’homme armé masses were produced over the next 150 years, with a great flowering in Vatican
manuscripts beginning in the late 15th-century.
Josquin wrote two masses based upon 'L'homme arme': the 'Missa 'L'homme armé super voces musicales', in which the tune appears beginning upon successive notes of the musical scale; and the piece from which today's project is drawn, in the sixth tone. (The sixth tone is much like our modern major mode.) The composer's manipulations and adornments of the tune are amazing in both pieces, but perhaps never more so than in the 'Agnus Dei III' of our mass.
Here he expands from four to six voices, and creates a rock-solid foundation for the texture by presenting the tune in long notes in both the tenor and bass--but with some twists: The bass has the opening melody of the song, but in retrograde (backwards) form, while the tenor has the bridge in normal form. At the exact center of the piece, the two parts perform exactly what they just sang, but now backwards: The tenor now sings the bridge in retrograde, while the bass sings the opening melody in normal form.
Whew! And this all fits somehow fits together perfectly, creating a continuous, slowly evolving and changing matrix of 'L'homme armé'.
Above this foundation, the upper voices are paired into two canons, the second voice of each pair following only a half-beat after the other. The pairs themselves also mirror each other and together form a sort of continuous wash of ascending or descending sound, a sort of crowd-depiction of emotional supplication in this cri de coeur:
'Grant us peace!'
It's unforgettable and so healing and I offer it to you with much love and with hope for better times to come.