“At first the men were accustomed to donning masks,
mimicking the ladies who customarily went about masked during the celebration
of the first of May. And thus adopting the custom of the ladies and youths,
they donned costumes and sang dance songs.” That’s from an account of
mid-15th-century Florence, published by A.F. Grazzini.
When he became Florence’s ruler in 1469, Lorenzo de’
Medici transformed this scene into a full-blown carnival season. New diverse
songs would be composed; masked men selling pastries would sing. What does all
this have to do with 21st-century Rochester? More than you might think.
Lorenzo de’ Medici invited a composer from Flanders
(North Belgium), Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517, pronounced HI-nrik ee-SOK), to take
up a position in Florence. Like no one before him, and few after him, Isaac
could compose almost any style: German “Tenorlieder,” French chansons, Latin
motets, and — of course — Italian carnival songs.
“Isaac’s music bursts with a seemingly spontaneous
flow of melodic and rhythmic ideas,” says Eastman School musicologist Patrick
Macey, “and this playful quality suggest to me that he must have been highly
proficient as a singer-improviser.”
Rochester is lucky to boast an a cappella choir
devoted expressly to Renaissance music: Musica Spei (Music of Hope). This year
marks Musica Spei’s 10th anniversary, and it has chosen the music of Isaac to
sing in its anniversary concert.
Musica Spei started in the mid-’90s. Local singers
would gather at Saint Anne Church to sight-sing through Renaissance music. At
first, “I warned the group not to expect more than 20 to 25 people in the
audience,” says singer Steve Marcus. “That it would take a long time to build
an audience for such esoteric music. We were astonished to find large,
enthusiastic audiences at each performance.”
Musica Spei gains its repertoire from the vast
resources of Rochester’s Sibley Music Library, which houses “the musical
equivalent of countless undiscovered da Vincis, Michelangelos, Renoirs and
other masterpieces,” Marcus says.
In 1492, while Columbus was
discovering America, tragedy struck in Florence. A lightning bolt brought the
ornate cathedral dome crashing to the floor. Lorenzo de’ Medici died of gout
just days later. Isaac lamented his patron’s death by composing Quis dabit — a work Musica Spei found
“accessible on first reading,” says singer and director Lynnette Blake. “The
group loves the poignant sadness it expresses.” They’ll perform it at the
concert.
Matters worsened in 1494. The remaining Medici
family was banished. A puritanical Dominican friar, Giromalo Savonarola, seized
Florence and instituted bonfires citywide to destroy carnival vanities:
“women’s hats, mirrors, wigs, dolls, perfumes… sculptures, cupids, playing
cards, dice boards, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments,” says
one 1497 account.
Savonarola rejected Isaac’s opulent sort of music,
likening it to the voice of a calf or a howling dog whose words he couldn’t
understand. Isaac sought inspiration and support elsewhere, and found them in
one of Europe’s most powerful men: Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian I. For him,
Isaac composed the nostalgic lyrical Innsbruck,
Ich muss dich lassen, perhaps the most famous Renaissance song — also to
be performed at the concert.
It was for Maximilian’s cathedral in Constance,
Germany, that Isaac undertook one of the most ambitious music projects in all
of history: Choralis Constantinus,
three volumes of choral settings of the Catholic Mass.
For Renaissance composers, the Mass was the most
ambitious genre. Typically Renaissance composers set to music the “Ordinary”
— the Mass text that is the same each day. Yet in Choralis Constantinus Isaac set the Mass Propers: the changing
texts designated as “proper” for each of the major feast days. It’s a total of
99 Mass settings, each one a multi-movement work overflowing with intricate
detail.
Many believe Isaac’s intricate structures influenced
the innovative Viennese modern composer Anton Webern (who in 1909 prepared the
first modern edition of Choralis
Constantinus, volume II). Isaac’s motet O
decus, to be sung Saturday, shows why: It anticipates modern composers’
fascination with additive processes and palindromes. In O decus, one voice sings a rising scale additively — first
singing the lowest first pitch, starting again but adding the second pitch,
starting again but adding the third, and so forth — what the 12 Days of Christmas carol does with
gifts, it does with pitches. Then the process goes backwards.
When the Hapsburg Empire fell in WWI, the
modern edition of Choralis Constantinus remained incomplete. Louise Cuyler picked up the torch in 1948. She prepared
the modern edition of volume III and did her dissertation on it at Rochester’s
Eastman School.
As Musica Spei planned its anniversary, it
approached Macey to “dust off a worthy but unknown piece of music,” says
Marcus. Macey suggested he’d prepare an updated edition of the Mass Propers for
St. John the Baptist from Choralis
Constantinus, volume II.
The update was needed because scholars in Webern’s
time didn’t understand the intricacies of Isaac’s notation. To save paper and
“test the wits of singers,” says Macey, Isaac omitted some voice parts, expecting
singers to derive them from formulas they deciphered.
Musica Spei gave the world premiere on June 3 in
Canandaigua. It was probably the only performance since Isaac’s time and the
only one outside of Constance Cathedral.
“I think the group is greatly enjoying the sense of
wonder and discovery,” says Marcus, “and the feeling that perhaps few people,
if anyone, have ever heard or sung this music in recent times.”
The repeat performance on Saturday is our chance to
join the adventure.
Musica Spei‘s Isaac Project: Angels and Archangels, Saturday, June 11, 8 p.m.,
Saint Anne Church, 1600 Mt. Hope Avenue. Free. 742-1292, www.musicaspei.org.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2005.
