(medieval Lat. cappella, capella; Fr. chapelle; Ger. Capelle, Kapelle; It. cappella; Port. capela; Sp. capilla).
A term that, since its first known use in the 7th century, has been appropriated in many different languages and has acquired a great diversity of meanings. By the 13th century the term ‘cappella’ already had several meanings pertaining to music and ritual. It could signify (1) a reliquary, often in the form of a small church, which might contain relics of saints and items associated with the life of Christ, service books, and other valuable articles or archives; (2) its guardian priests or chaplains (cappellani), clerks who were often trained singers in minor orders, and lower-ranking officers; or (3) a place of worship, either a room with its altar within a palace, castle or house (hence privately owned), or an area within a church, cathedral or abbey with its own altar, or a small, separate church building. By the 15th century, the term was restricted to the latter two meanings: the guardian priest-musicians designated as a cappella were usually employed by magnates or popes rather than by individual churches, whose musicians were more often referred to collectively as singers or by their individual canonical or musical functions. In the 16th century, after the institution of the Cappella Giulia at S Pietro in Rome in 1513, many Italian churches formed their own cappelle. In the 19th century the term ‘Kapelle’ for part of a sacred institution ceased to be used in Germany, where it denoted a small dance band or brass ensemble. Correspondingly, the title Kapellmeister was given to the conductor of any ensemble; in some establishments it indicated a lower rank than the chief director (Chefdirigent or Musikdirektor), in others a higher rank. It is now used most often as a derogatory characterization. Similarly, in the late 19th century, Kapellmeistermusik was a term applied to skilfully composed but uninspired music. In France, Spain and Italy, chapelle, capilla and cappella have continued to be used to designate sacred musical establishments, and maître de chapelle, maestro de capilla and maestro di cappella accordingly the titles of their respective directors. Their function remains separate from that of the maître de chant, who was responsible above all for training choirboys.
The cappella as a reliquary had its origin in the Carolingian Empire of the late 8th century. The word was first used in 679 to refer to the cape (cappa) of St Martin of Tours, a relic revered by the Merovingian kings. Under Pippin the Short the men appointed to guard this cape were designated cappellani, and by the time of Charlemagne (768–814) the collection of relics as a whole had acquired the name cappella. By the end of the 8th century the term was applied to the building in which the reliquary was housed, the basilica at Aix-la-Chapelle, and also to the priests serving the reliquary, who were subsumed as a separate organization within the royal household. In the 9th century an archicappellanus led several ranks of cappellani-priests. The members of the royal family had their own reliquaries, also called cappellae, with a similar hierarchy among their cappellani.
The late Merovingian reliquary and its staff were modelled on the idea of the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant and its attendant Levite priests under King David. This deliberate simulation was part of Pippin’s attempt to re-establish the concept of biblical kingship in the Frankish Empire and to model his own authority on that of Moses and David. It is intimately associated with the liturgical acclamations known as Laudes regiae, which have their origin in the period 751–74, and with the anointing of the king with oil at his coronation. The laudes and the cappella were both designed to herald Pippin as ‘priest-king’ rather than as pagan king in the Roman imperial image; and this duality (the king’s ‘two bodies’) was continued with Charlemagne’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Itinerancy was essential to the chapel: like the Ark, the cappella was transported with the king wherever he went, and the chaplains formed his ecclesiastical ‘bodyguard’.
Over the next three or four centuries the right to have laudes sung periodically in their honour was claimed by the pope, archbishops, bishops, princes and dukes. In the same period such men also had private chapels, in the sense of both reliquary and clerical staff (as they had the right to grant ecclesiastical benefices), and eventually also of a room and building. By the 15th century even lower clergy and landed gentry had their own chapel, which became a symbol of social status.
The chapel as a staff of chaplains and clerics functioning permanently in one building developed only as the constant itinerancy of the early medieval courts gave way to residence in a capital city. An architectural and organizational model followed by many was the Ste Chapelle in Paris, dedicated in 1248. In England a permanent group of chaplains staffed the chapels of Westminster Palace during the 14th century, when other royal chapels were established as ‘outposts’ in castles and manors throughout the country. Since such chapels were responsible, above all, for the souls of their patrons, new rulers or patrons and their wives or officers would normally bring their own clerical retinue and dismiss or reappoint members of predecessors’ chapels.
In the late 14th and early 15th centuries the priests of royal and princely chapels began to include known composers as well as singers of renown. The author of the mid-14th-century musical treatise Quatuor principalia complained of certain malpractices in the application of musica ficta by singers who, when asked why they committed them, ‘allege that their authority and reason are the singers in the chapels of magnates [cantores de magnatorum capellis]; they say that they would not do this without reason, since they are the best singers’ (CoussemakerS, iv, 250). The status of ecclesiastical and noble chapels thus came to be determined by the number and reputation of the singers in the group, although they did not necessarily sing together at the same time.
Influential court chapels were established throughout Europe. The Chapel Royal of Henry V and VI of England had about 30 chaplains, clerks and boys, and the chapels of the Burgundian-Habsburg dukes included composers such as Fontaine, Binchois, Du Fay and Busnoys (see Burgundy). Fine musicians were in great demand and were better paid than in the churches, so musicians often moved from chapel to chapel, a phenomenon largely responsible for the dissemination of different musical styles.
‘International’ chapels included the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle, which was in existence by the early 15th century and was fundamentally reorganized by Maximilian I in 1498, whereupon it became one of the most famous and influential in Europe. King René employed minstrels, performers and composers of all nationalities in his court chapel at Aix-en-Provence which, according to Louis XI who was there in 1481 to recruit musicians for the Ste Chapelle in Paris, had the best singers to be found anywhere, including Josquin Desprez.
During the second half of the 15th century many wealthy court chapels (cappelle ducali) were established in Italy on northern models, for example in Naples by the 1450s and in Milan and Ferrara during the 1470s. These cappelle paid high wages, which encouraged many young men to undertake musical study. Tinctoris, in the preface to his Proportionale (1476), attributed the current upsurge of music to the initiative of ‘Christian princes’ who
founded chapels … in which at extraordinary expense they appointed singers to sing pleasant and comely praise to our God … and since the singers of princes, if their masters are endowed with the liberality which makes men illustrious, are rewarded with honour, glory and wealth, many are kindled with a most fervent zeal for this study.
There were three royal chapels (capillas reales) in Spain (Catalonia-Aragon, Castile, Navarra) until the death of Isabella. Ferdinand V then selected the best singers from the royal chapel of Castile and incorporated them into his (that of Aragon) in 1504, forming a single royal chapel which had 32 singers in 1508.
The rising wealth and splendour of the chapels of secular rulers encouraged the establishment of papal chapels, which in turn supported the more extensive cultivation of polyphony and competed with the courts for the best singers from throughout Europe. The papal schola cantorum was suppressed by Pope Urban V in 1370 and replaced in function by the cappella that had been instituted in 1334 by Pope Benedict XII. The papal cappella returned to Rome in 1443 under Pope Eugenius IV and moved into the Cappella Sistina under Pope Sixtus IV. The separate Cappella Giulia was instituted at S Pietro by Pope Julius II in 1513, whereafter the two cappelle were complemented by others in the churches of Rome.
Kapellen, responsible for the performance of both secular and sacred music, were formed at many German courts during the first half of the 16th century (see Germany, §I, 1), usually comprising several different groups. Clerics and choirboys of the court Kapelle were initially responsible for religious services (Duke Albrecht IV took two cleric members of the Chapel Royal to found his Kapelle at Munich in the late 15th century), but after the Reformation the Protestant Kapelle was remodelled on the Kantorei, in which professional singers and choirboys took the place of clerics. The Capella Rorantistarum (see Kraków, §2), a Polish religious and musical establishment founded in 1540 by King Sigismund I at Wawel, the Kraków royal castle, comprised nine priest-singers under the direction of a praepositus; they performed the works of such composers as Palestrina, Lassus and Goudimel, as well as of Polish composers of vocal polyphony. This chapel was active until the partition of Poland in 1795.
Although instrumentalists (other than the organist) increasingly came to be included in 15th- and 16th-century chapels (particularly in Italy), the papal chapel did not use an organ. Its purely vocal style, also cultivated at Cambrai Cathedral, came to be known by the 19th century as the a cappella style, a term that has since become common. In England, however, the Chapel Royal continued to comprise only singers and an organist; the instrumentalists remained a distinct group and eventually became known as the King’s Band of Music (see London, §II, 2). Elsewhere it is impossible to determine when or where the word ‘chapel’ (in each language) came to mean the whole of the musical establishment of a church or court including the instruments.
During the 15th century throughout Europe those musicians who were in charge of the various chapels, both sacred and secular, came to be known as ‘masters’: Kapellmeister (or Hofkapellmeister) in Germany, maestro di cappella in Italy, maître de chapelle (or sous-maître) in France, kapelmeester (or zangmeester) in Flemish areas, maestro de capilla in Spain, mestre de capela in Portugal and so on (‘chapelmaster’ is not customarily used in English). Such a position was usually separate from that of organist but was at least comparable in stature. As the chapels in various countries developed along different lines, the Latin countries tended to retain this function, but the titles of the directors gradually assumed different meanings.
In the 17th century the most famous composers and musicians were employed in ecclesiastical chapels as well as at courts. S Marco in Venice and S Petronio in Bologna became centres for some of the most important developments in vocal and instrumental composition. All the large churches included instruments in their musical chapels, but the courts remained predominant and their musical establishments grew in size and stature. In France, as in Spain, however, the royal chapel retained its sacred function, with the maître de chapelle often being a cleric (see Paris, §§II and VI).
In 17th- and 18th-century Germany ‘Kapelle’ could mean either the singers and organist of a church, or the singers and instrumentalists of a court. Soon the term encompassed all the musicians and all the musical activities of a court, including opera and orchestral concerts, all of which were generally served by the same orchestra. The Dresden Hofkapelle, founded in 1548 by Moritz of Saxony, is an example of this development. It was at first a group of 11 singers, but as the court became increasingly secularized it expanded to include an orchestra and an opera; it continues in all these capacities as the Dresden Staatskapelle.
The musical repertories of chapels always included sacred music for the Mass, Office, votive services and the Mass for the Dead, as well as occasional works. Most chapels kept their own libraries of choirbooks or music books.
Further information and bibliography on specific chapels may be found in articles on cities and countries.
MGG1, MGG2 (‘Kapelle’; M. Ruhnke)
J. Chifflet: Aula sacra principum belgii sive Commentarius historicus de Capellae Regine in Belgio principijs, ministris, ritibus atque universo apparatu (Antwerp, 1650)
H.M. Schletterer: Studien zur Geschichte der französischen Musik, i: Geschichte der Hofcapelle der französischen Könige (Berlin, 1884)
E.H. Kantorowicz: Laudes regiae: a Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley, 1946/R)
J. Fleckenstein: Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige (Stuttgart, 1959–66)
B.L. Trowell: Music under the Later Plantagenets (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1960)
P. Gorissen: ‘La chapelle palatine des souverains carolingiens’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, lvi (1961), 465
W. Ullmann, ed.: Liber regie capelle: a Manuscript in the Biblioteca Publica, Evora (London, 1961)
I.D. Bent: The Early History of the English Chapel Royal, ca. 1066–1327 (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1969)
R. Branner: ‘The Sainte-Chapelle and the capella regis in the Thirteenth Century’, Gesta, x (1971), 19–22
D. Fallows: ‘Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400–1474’, Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music: New york 1981, 109–59
A. Tomasello: Music and Ritual at Papal Avignon, 1309–1403 (Ann Arbor, 1983)
M.C. Gomez: ‘Musique et musiciens dans les chapelles de la maison royale d’Aragon (1336–1413)’, MD, xxxviii (1984), 67–86
J. Dean: ‘The Repertory of the Cappella Giulia in the 1560s’, JAMS, xli (1988), 465–90
A. Wathey: Music in the Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England: Studies of Sources and Patronage (New York, 1989)
V. Crowther: ‘A Case-Study in the Power of the Purse: the Management of the Ducal cappella in Modena in the Reign of Francesco II d’Este’, JRMA, cxv (1990), 207–19
P. Higgins: ‘Tracing the Careers of Late Medieval Composers: the Case of Philippe Basiron of Bourges’, AcM, lxii (1990), 1–28
C. Page: ‘The English a cappella Heresy’, Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. T. Knighton and D. Fallows (London, 1992), 23–9
L. Robledo: ‘Questions of Performance Practice in Philip III’s Chapel’, EMc, xxii (1994), 198–218
J. Havard de la Montagne: ‘Le maître de chapelle dans l’histoire de la musique’, Musica et memoria, xvii (1997), 2–20
B. Haggh and M. Huglo: ‘The Liturgical Books of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris’, Scriptorium (forthcoming)
ADELE POINDEXTER/BARBARA H. HAGGH