Brumel [Brummel, Brommel, Brunel, Brunello], Antoine

(b c1460; d ?1512–13). French composer. He was prominent among a group of composers who ranked, after Josquin des Prez, as the most eminent masters of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. He was praised by numerous writers: Crétin, Eloy d’Amerval, Gaffurius, Ornithoparchus, Heyden, Rabelais, Glarean, Coclico, Hermann Finck, Zarlino and Morley. He was perhaps the first of the great Renaissance composers of French rather than Netherlandish origin.

1. Life.

2. Works.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BARTON HUDSON

Brumel, Antoine

1. Life.

Brumel may have been born at Brunelles, near Nogent-le-Rotrou, west of Chartres, about 1460. A famous passage in Crétin’s déploration on the death of Ockeghem has often been interpreted to mean that Brumel was a pupil of the great master of Tours:

Agricolla, Verbonnet, Prioris
Josquin Desprez, Gaspar, Brumel, Compère,
Ne parlez plus de joyeulx chantz ne ris,
Mais composez ung Ne recorderis,
Pour lamenter nostre maistre et bon père.

However, nothing in Brumel’s early works points to a close connection with Ockeghem. The earliest mention of the composer is found at Chartres, where the cleric Anthonius de Brumel became an horarius et matutinarius (singer at the day and night Office) at Notre Dame on 9 August 1483. Because of his abilities, he was granted the larger stipend of the church. By 4 October 1486 he had become Master of the Innocents at St Pierre, Geneva, where he remained until 1492. Meanwhile he was given leave for a period during 1489–90 to visit the court of the Duke of Savoy at Chambéry. Although offered a position there, he returned to Geneva, where relations with the chapter authorities became so strained that he suddenly left in August 1492. His immediate destination remains unknown, but in 1497 he was a canon at Laon Cathedral. At some time he became a priest, probably during that interim.

On 5 January 1498 Brumel was placed in charge of the education and musical training of the children at Notre Dame, Paris. In September 1500 he was given two weeks’ vacation to visit his birthplace, which, although unnamed, must have been in the general vicinity. Later the same year a controversy arose over the appointment of a new choirboy, so that again Brumel resigned in unpleasant circumstances. From 1 June 1501 to 1 July 1502 he was employed at Chambéry as a singer at the ducal court.

In July 1505 Alfonso I d’Este of Ferrara entered negotiations through an intermediary, Sigismondo Cantelmo, Duke of Sora, then at Lyons, to employ the composer as maestro di cappella. The lifetime contract offered provided a benefice valued at 100 ducats a year, an annual salary of 100 ducats, a house in Ferrara and 50 ducats toward the expenses of travel to Ferrara. Brumel began his duties in August 1506 and remained at Ferrara until the chapel was disbanded in 1510. A document of 11 May 1512 indicates that Brumel was then archpriest of the united churches of S Johannes in Libia and S Sabina outside Faenza, and that he was probably in Mantua at about this time. Circumstances surrounding the document suggest that the composer was then quite ill and may have died soon after. At least one important work, the Missa de beata virgine, seems to have been composed after Brumel left Ferrara.

Vincenzo Galilei wrote a treatise (I-Fn Anteriori Galilei, vol.i, f.138) in which he listed a number of French and Netherlandish composers, including Brumel, who he said assembled in Rome in 1513, when Leo X was elected pope (see Lowinsky). Nothing has been found to confirm Brumel’s activities there. Since Galilei was born at about the time Brumel died, he could have had no direct knowledge of the event, and his report may be incorrect.

Brumel, Antoine

2. Works.

Brumel lived during a period of profound changes in style, as his music exemplifies. Elusive, meandering lines gave way to sensuous, harmonically orientated textures; abstract melismatic polyphony following purely musical precepts relatively independent of text was replaced by word-orientated, increasingly syllabic settings with growing care for text underlay. Varied mensurations and irregular rhythmic patterns were progressively eliminated in favour of a more predictable flow, most often in duple measure. Simultaneous rather than successive composition of voice parts became the norm and greater harmonic direction was achieved. The reasons for the reorientation were at least partly geographical: Franco-Flemish masters who emigrated to Italy developed a new musical language resulting from the fusion of traditional northern contrapuntal prowess and elements of native Italian music. Brumel was one of the masters who played a leading role in effecting this transformation.

Brumel was primarily a composer of sacred music. Most prominent among his works are the masses, not only because of their quantity and bulk, but also because of the frequency with which they occur in the sources. It was to them that theorists turned most often for music examples. Petrucci devoted an early volume to five of Brumel’s masses, and later publications regularly featured masses and motets. Andrea Antico’s celebrated Liber quindecim missarum (1516) contains three masses by Brumel, including his Missa de beata virgine, which opens the volume.

Brumel’s masses may conveniently be divided into three stylistic periods. The first is represented by the five in the Petrucci publication (‘Berzerette savoyenne’, ‘Je nay dueul’, ‘L’homme armé’, ‘Ut re mi fa sol la’ and ‘Victimae paschali’) as well as by Missa ‘Bon temps’. All depend primarily on a cantus firmus for their formal design, though Missae ‘Berzerette savoyenne’ and ‘Je nay dueul’ occasionally draw material from several voices of their models, indicating an incipient parody technique. Missa ‘Ut re mi fa sol la’ is a kind of fantasy in which the hexachord material not only provides the sole material of the tenor but also pervades the surrounding voices. Characteristic of all the earlier masses are irregular, unpredictable rhythms and lengthy overlapping phrases lacking pronounced internal divisions. Often there seems to be little relationship between music and text. On the other hand rapid declamatory passages, which seem to be peculiar to Brumel, are occasionally encountered (ex.1). Ternary mensuration, variety of mensuration and occasional simultaneous use of different mensurations are evident. Of special interest is the final Agnus Dei of Missa ‘Bon temps’. The cantus firmus is disposed in half-blackened breves, so that an implied quintuple metre results.

The masses of the middle period (‘Descendi in hortum’, Missa dominicalis, Missa ‘Et ecce terrae motus’ and the first untitled mass) show a tendency towards greater regularity of rhythm – sometimes very pronounced, as in Missa ‘Descendi in hortum’ – more flexible and thinner textures and more concise phrases. Greater interest is shown in apt text-setting. Vertical sonorities are clearer and the harmonic progressions more predictable. Occasionally considerable vocal virtuosity is required, as in ex.2.

The most striking of these masses is Missa ‘Et ecce terrae motus’ for 12 voices, which foreshadows polychoral writing. A work of such proportions must have been a distinct novelty at the time. The Easter antiphon which serves as the cantus firmus is often skilfully moulded into a three-part canon. Very slow harmonic movement is offset by vigorous rhythmic movement, with triadic motifs overlapping one another in quick succession. The rather close grouping of the lower voices sometimes produces a thick, heavy texture, perhaps reflecting the composer’s inexperience with large forces.

Among the later masses is a Missa pro defunctis, one of the earliest extant requiem settings, and the oldest that includes the Dies Irae. Brumel’s love of canon, exemplified in numerous earlier masses, is most evident in Missa ‘A l’ombre d'ung buissonet’; like Josquin’s chanson, on which it is based, it consists entirely of canons, mostly double canons. It also represents the extreme of the trend in the later works towards concentration and brevity; the entire Kyrie, for example, is only nine bars long. A work from which Glarean drew several examples is the Missa de dringhs, whose title he gave in Greek letters. Although the title has never been satisfactorily explained, the mass is now known to be a parody of the composer’s own chanson Tous les regretz. Both are characterized by a strongly chordal style, reminiscent of the contemporary Italian lauda. Probably the most famous of Brumel’s works is the Missa de beata virgine, which Glarean found ‘worthy of a great man’. He compared it, not entirely favourably, with Josquin’s mass of the same title, and said that both had been written when their composers were ‘verging towards extreme old age’. Both are in a learned, somewhat retrospective style.

Numerous bicinia by Brumel are found in 16th-century collections. All but one of these prove to be mass sections, usually excerpts from complete masses, such as ‘Pleni sunt caeli’, Benedictus or the second Agnus Dei.

Brumel’s motets include a wide variety of types: sequences, antiphons, hymns, prayers, psalms and the like, as well as those composed to texts compiled from a variety of sources. The greatest number are devoted to Marian themes, somewhat fewer to feasts of the Temporale, and the remainder to various saints or unspecified liturgical use. Three of what appear to be the older motets are bitextual, one voice bearing the cantus firmus with its text, the others composed to different words. One of these, Nativitas unde gaudia, can be dated with reasonable certainty from Brumel’s years at Chartres and may well be his oldest extant work.

Motets which do not have a cantus firmus in long note values frequently do present a borrowed melody in one or more voices, skilfully paraphrased and in a style indistinguishable from the surrounding voices. Such is the case with nearly every liturgical text which has a well-known melody, such as Haec dies, Regina caeli laetare and Sub tuum praesidium. Sequences, prayers and rhymed metrical antiphons, however, seem to be without borrowed material.

Magnificat settings use material from the plainchant tones. Settings vary from only six verses to all 12, with a single work usually appearing in two or three distinct versions. Especially noteworthy is an Exemplum octo modorum, which occurs singly and also as the ‘Sicut erat’ of a dubious Magnificat octavi toni. Each voice paraphrases a different tone, so that all eight modes are in use simultaneously. The Magnificat secundi toni is attributed in E-Bc M.454 to ‘Fr. Benito’ or ‘Fr. Venito’, and the three other works carrying this ascription may also be Brumel's.

Secular works are of secondary importance. Several incorporate recognized borrowed material; others are probably settings of unidentified pre-existing melodies. The later ones are clearly of a popular nature (e.g. Dieu te gart and Le moy de may). Four-voice pieces have texts whereas, with one exception, the three-voice ones are purely instrumental.

Brumel, Antoine

WORKS

Edition:A. Brumel: Opera omnia, ed. B. Hudson, CMM, v/1–6 (1969–72) [H]

masses and mass sections

other sacred

secular vocal

instrumental

doubtful works

Brumel, Antoine

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LockwoodMRF

Vander StraetenMPB, vi

P. Wagner: Geschichte der Messe (Leipzig, 1913/R)

A. Pirro: ‘Dokumente über Antoine Brumel, Louis van Pullaer und Crispin van Stappen’, ZMw, xi (1928–9), 349–53

C. van den Borren: Geschiedenis van de muziek in de Nederlanden (Amsterdam, 1948–51)

E.E. Lowinsky: ‘A Newly Discovered Sixteenth-Century Motet Manuscript at the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome’, JAMS, iii (1950), 173–232

L. Biggle: The Masses of Antoine Brumel (diss., U. of Michigan, 1953)

H.C. Wolff: Die Musik der alten Niederländer (Leipzig, 1956)

C. van den Borren: ‘L'énigme des “Credo de Village”’, Hans Albrecht in Memoriam, ed. W. Brennecke and H. Haase (Kassel, 1962), 48–54

P. Pidoux: ‘Antoine Brumel à Genève (1486–1492)’, RdM, l (1964), 110–12

C. Maas: ‘Josquin – Agricola – Brumel – De la Rue: een authenticiteitsprobleem’, TVNM, xx (1964–5), 120–39

C.J. Maas: Geschiedenis van het meerstemmig Magnificat tot omstreeks 1525 (Groningen, 1967)

M.-T. Bouquet: ‘La cappella musicale dei duchi di Savoia dal 1450 al 1500’, RIM, iii (1968), 233–85

C. Gottwald: ‘Antoine Brumels Messe “Et ecce terrae motus”’, AMw, xxvi (1969), 236–47

H.L. Schmidt: The First Printed Lute Books: Francesco Spinacini's Intabulatura de Lauto, Libro Primo and Libro Secundo (Venezia: Petrucci, 1507) (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1969)

M. Staehelin: Der Grüne Codex der Viadrina: ein wenig beachtete Quelle zur Musik des späten 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Mainz, 1970), 577–644

B. Hudson: ‘Antoine Brumel’s Magnificat 8. Toni: an Erroneous Ascription?’, RBM, xxv (1971), 103–7

B. Hudson: ‘Antoine Brumel’s Nativitas unde gaudia’, MQ, lix (1973), 519–30

E. Russell: ‘The Missa in agendis mortuorum of Juan García de Basurto: Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Brumel, and an Early Spanish Polyphonic Requiem Mass’, TVNM, xxix (1979), 1–37

C. Wright: ‘Antoine Brumel and Patronage at Paris’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. I. Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), 37–60

A.F. Carver: ‘Polychoral Music: a Venetian Phenomenon?’, PRMA, cviii (1981–2), 1–24

H.M. Brown: ‘A “New” Chansonnier of the Early Sixteenth Century in the University Library of Uppsala: a Preliminary Report’, MD, xxxvii (1983), 171–33

R.E. Murray: ‘The Influence of the Cantus Firmus on Modal Structure in the Masses of Antoine Brumel’, Theoria, i (1985), 61–83

H.M. Brown: ‘The Importance of Sixteenth-Century Intabulations’, Lute Symposium: Utrecht 1986, 1–29

B. Hudson: ‘Josquin and Brumel: the Conflicting Attributions’, Josquin Symposium: Utrecht 1986, 67–92 [See also Discussion, 99]

A. van Campen: ‘Conflicting Attributions of Credo Vilayge II and Credo Chascun me crie’, ibid., 93–8

L.T. Woodruff: The ‘Missae de Beata Virgine’ c. 1500–1520: a Study of Transformation from Monophonic to Polyphonic Modality (diss., North Texas State U., 1986)

M.J. Bloxam: A Survey of Late Medieval Service Books from the Low Countries: Implications for Sacred Polyphony, 1460–1520 (diss., Yale U., 1987)

S.F. Weiss: ‘Bologna Q18: Some Reflections on Content and Context’, JAMS, xli (1988), 1–39

C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1500 (Cambridge, 1989)

M.J. Bloxam: ‘La contenance italienne: the Motets on Beata es, Maria by Compère, Obrecht, and Brumel’, EMH, xi (1992), 39–89

E. Ros-Fábregas: The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M.454: Study and Edition in the Context of the Iberian and Continental Manuscript Traditions (diss., CUNY,1992)

R. Sherr: ‘A Biographical Miscellany: Josquin, Tinctoris, Obrecht, Brumel’, Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. S. Gmienwieser, D. Hiley and J. Riedlbauer (Florence, 1994), 65–73

E. Kovarik: ‘Two Instrumental Arrangements from Early Sixteenth-Century Bohemia’, Canadian University Music Review, xv (1995), 91–107