Ockeghem [Okeghem, Hocquegam, Okegus etc.], Jean de [Johannes, Jehan]

(b Saint Ghislain, nr Mons, c1410; d ?Tours, 6 Feb 1497). Franco-Flemish composer. A native of Hainaut, he spent most of his active career in the service of the French royal court. Alongside Binchois, Du Fay, Busnoys and Josquin, with whom his name is linked in documents of the time, he is considered one of the greatest composers of the 15th century. Of the many forms in which his name appears, ‘Ockeghem’ has been given modern preference on the basis of a supposed facsimile of his signature published by Giraudet (1885) from a document now apparently lost. However, ‘Okeghem’ is the spelling most often found in the payment registers and other documents stemming from the French court and in the sources most central to the area in which he lived.

1. Early life and career.

2. Service at the French court.

3. Reputation.

4. Masses.

5. Motets.

6. Secular works.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LEEMAN L. PERKINS

Ockeghem, Jean de

1. Early life and career.

A recently discovered reference to Ockeghem in the payment records of the parish church of St Martin in Saint Ghislain, near Mons, identifies him as a ‘natif’ of that place and records the establishment of an obit that was celebrated continuously from the 16th century until the end of the ancien régime (van Overstraeten, 1992). As the name suggests, the family may have originated in the town of Okegem on the Dendre, less than 50 km to the north in East Flanders. Persons so named can be traced to nearby Ninove as early as 1165, and to Termonde [now Dendermonde], about 25 km to the north of Okegem, from 1381. These include a certain Jan van Ockeghem who is cited in documents of Termonde from 1385 until 1416 (Bovyn, 1970). It is yet to be determined, however, whether any of them is directly related to the composer. The documents in Saint Ghislain confirm, instead, the assertion made in 1511 by the poet and historiographer Jean Lemaire de Belge, himself a proudly self-proclaimed ‘natif de Haynault’, that Ockeghem was his neighbour (‘voisin’) and countryman (‘de nostre mesme nation’). Latin verses by Pierre Paul Vieillot (Senilis), secretary at the court of Louis XI, also stress the composer’s origins in Hainaut (Strohm, 1997).

Given his place of birth, it is possible that Ockeghem began his musical training in Saint Ghislain itself, conceivably as a choirboy in the parish church where he founded the obit. It seems more probable, however, that he received most of his early education in nearby Mons at one of the churches with a musical establishment capable of providing such instruction. These include – significantly, in view of the circumstances linking Ockeghem to Binchois – those of St Germain and Ste Waudru, which were probably both served by the same group of choristers.

The date of Ockeghem’s birth has yet to be established, and in the absence of unequivocal documentation estimates have ranged from 1410 (or earlier) to 1430. A clear preference for about 1420 seems to have emerged in the biographical literature (Plamenac; RiemannL12; van den Borren, 1948–51; Picker, 1988), but Ockeghem could have been born as much as a decade earlier. A personal and affectionate relationship with Binchois, attested by Ockeghem’s déploration on Binchois’s death in 1460 and his compositional reference to a Binchois chanson (Gallagher, 1995), may go back to a period when both were still resident in Hainaut. If so, the two may have become acquainted even before Binchois, who served as organist at Ste Waudru from 1419, left Mons for Lille in 1423. That would suggest, in turn, that Ockeghem, if a choirboy at the time (hence between 7 and 15 years of age), could have been born as early as 1405 and hardly later than c1415.

The earliest documentation of Ockeghem’s activity as a musician is for the year beginning 24 June 1443, when he was numbered among the vicaires-chanteurs at the church of Our Lady, Antwerp. The nature of that appointment indicates that his training was by then fully completed. At the same time, his irregularity in attending the services in which the choir was involved and the lack of evidence for subsequent contact with the city or any of its churches suggest that his ties to Antwerp were neither close nor lasting.

His next known appointment was at the court of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, whose principal residence was in Moulins. In the accounts for 1446–8 Ockeghem is listed first among the seven singers of the ducal chapel, preceded only by the premier chapelain and three priests (Vayssière, 1891), indicating that he was by then an accomplished musician whose skills and gifts were fully recognized. Because the payment records of the court are fragmentary, it is unclear whether, as seems likely, he entered the duke’s service directly after his stay in Antwerp, in the summer of 1444, or somewhat later. Similarly, there is no way to determine from the documents currently known, whether he continued as a member of the ducal chapel until he joined the musical establishment of Charles VII at the French royal court some time in 1451, as seems most plausible, or had an interim appointment elsewhere. Since Binchois was employed at the ducal court of Burgundy from the 1420s until he retired to Soignies in 1453, it is perhaps worth noting that the Duchess of Bourbon was Agnes of Burgundy, the sister of Duke Philip the Good; Ockeghem’s appointment to the Bourbon chapel may therefore have been facilitated in some way by that connection.

Ockeghem, Jean de

2. Service at the French court.

Ockeghem is first mentioned by name among the chapel singers of the French court in the payment records for the fiscal year ending 30 September 1453, implying that he had been there at least since the previous October. The accounts for 1452 do not list the chapel singers individually, but the total number of chaplains was unchanged, and an 18th-century copy of the original documents specifies that Ockeghem was ‘new in 1451’. When his name first appears on the chapel rolls, he is already listed first among the singer-chaplains who were not priests, a clear indication that his reputation as both singer and composer was by then already solidly established. Moreover, during the years of royal service that followed (nearly half a century), his situation only improved. In January 1454 Ockeghem presented his royal patron with a book of music as a New Year’s gift and received in return four ells of scarlet cloth worth 44 livres. The account in which the exchange is recorded refers to the composer as premier chapelain of the royal chapel, the first known use of that title. The fiscal summary drawn up the following September indicates that later in the year he had also been awarded a special gift of 180 livres, the equivalent of his annual salary, and a similar supplement was apparently granted regularly in subsequent years (Perkins, JAMS, 1984).

Ockeghem again offered Charles VII a New Year’s gift in 1459, this time a chanson ‘most richly illuminated’, and the king reciprocated with the sum of 44 livres (33 écus). However, the single most generous mark of Charles VII’s evident esteem for his first chaplain came, it would seem, between November 1458 and July 1459. As nominal abbot of the wealthy collegiate church of St Martin, Tours, where Ockeghem had already been installed as prévôt de la Varenne some time prior to 21 March 1458 (Higgins, 1987), the king named Ockeghem to the high and richly remunerated office of treasurer of the church – perhaps prompting the composer’s gift. As was usual in such cases, there was initial resistance from the canons in Tours. But hearings on the matter before the Parlement of Paris seem to have simply petered out some time in 1462, possibly due to the influence of the crown (by then Louis XI), and there is no further indication of a challenge to Ockeghem’s possession of the dignity from any side. Charles died in July 1461, having just previously decreed Ockeghem’s release from the usual requirement of residence in Tours in connection with his new dignity, and Ockeghem was among the officers of the royal household for whom black robes and hoods were made for the king’s obsequies.

During the long reign of Louis XI, Ockeghem’s service in the royal chapel continued without interruption, and his favour at court seems only to have increased. As the king was increasingly in residence at his favorite hunting lodge at Plessis-lez-Tours, Ockeghem must have been able to reconcile more easily his functions in the royal chapel with his duties as treasurer of St Martin. In addition he was named to a canonry at the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, in 1463, a benefice that remained in dispute in the courts for more than four years. As Ockeghem was apparently never present for deliberations of the chapter nor involved in any meaningful way with either the musical or the administrative life of the cathedral, it has been suggested that his nomination was largely a ploy of Louis XI’s ecclesiastical politics (Wexler, 1997). Whatever Ockeghem’s purpose in the matter, he relinquished his claim to the canonry at Notre Dame in 1470 in a three-way permutation that gave him instead a chaplaincy at the collegiate church of St Benoît, Paris, a prebend he also appears to have held in absentia.

Relatively good relations between Louis XI and Philip the Good of Burgundy at the beginning of Louis’s reign, apparently made it possible for Ockeghem to visit his homeland. The records of Cambrai Cathedral indicate that while in the area he paid a visit to Du Fay, whom he may have known since his youth and met on earlier occasions (1452 and 1455) during formal meetings between the royal court of France and the ducal court of Savoy while Du Fay was still in the service of Duke Louis. Ockeghem is known to have been in Cambrai on 2 June 1462, when the cathedral’s Office du Four et du Vin recorded a gift to him of six loaves of bread, but there is nothing to suggest how long he might have stayed. In 1464 he was again in Cambrai, having travelled north with the court of Louis XI, and between 20 February and 5 March he was a guest in Du Fay’s house (Wright, 1975).

It was presumably in Cambrai, and perhaps on this occasion, that Ockeghem, who was identified as a sub-deacon as late as 1463, was ordained a priest; Vatican registers dating from 1472 refer to him as presbyter Cameracensis diocesis (a priest of the diocese of Cambrai), indicating that he had been ordained during the intervening years (Roth, 1994). Since Cambrai was his home diocese, it is not surprising that he would have gone there for the ordination, but his reasons for waiting until so late in his life before postulating for the higher office remain unclear. It has been suggested that he did so, finally, to assure the peaceful possession of his dignity as treasurer of St Martin (Roth, 1994), but this seems unlikely so long after all resistance had apparently evaporated. It is also possible that he sought the ordination in order to be able to assume the office of maître de chapelle, which was usually reserved for an ecclesiastic of elevated rank, and thus enter the inner circle of the king’s council; significantly, he is first identified by this title in court records in 1465 (Perkins, 1997). Interestingly, Ockeghem’s ongoing attachment to his home diocese is apparent in his support for the Collège de Cambrai in Paris; he is listed 11th in a printed necrology (undated, but probably 18th-century) among the three founders and 14 benefactors for whom students there were instructed to pray daily.

Through this same period, from 1460 at the latest until at least 1465, Ockeghem must also have had frequent contact with Antoine Busnoys. An entry in a papal register for 28 February 1461 refers to Busnoys as holding a chaplaincy in the cathedral of St Gatien, Tours, in circumstances indicating that he had already been there for some time (Starr, 1992). By 1465 he was a choir clerk and heurier at St Martin, where he was made a sub-deacon on 13 April (Higgins, 1986). Given Busnoys’ long stay in the city of Tours and his association with the church where Ockeghem held one of the principal dignities, it is virtually certain that the two musicians were well acquainted. Moreover, in light of Busnoys’ encomium to Ockeghem in the motet, In hydraulis (text and commentary in Perkins, JM, 1984), which was probably completed between 1465 and 1467, it appears likely that Ockeghem played a significant role in the musical development of his younger colleague.

In January 1470 the king’s treasury paid Ockeghem 275 livres tournois to cover expenses for a trip to Spain. It seems likely that this disbursement was authorized in connection with one or both of the diplomatic embassies sent by Louis XI to the court of Henry IV of Castille under the direction of Cardinal Jean Jouffroy, Bishop of Albi. The mission of the first, which reached Córdoba in late May or early June 1469, was to dissuade the Castilians from joining an alliance with England and Burgundy against France. Friendly relations were to be cemented by means of a marriage between Louis’ brother, Charles, Duke of Guyenne, and Henry’s sister Isabella, who had just been declared heir to his throne. Isabella, who preferred a union with Ferdinand of Aragon, was more than reluctant. She eluded Henry’s attempts to take forcible custody of her person and resisted the arguments of the eloquent Jouffroy, who sought her out for a face-to-face interview at her retreat in Madrigal before leaving Spain in August.

The news of Isabella’s marriage to Ferdinand on 18 October prompted Louis XI to send the cardinal back to the court of Castile, this time to wed the Duke of Guyenne by proxy to the eight-year-old Juana la Beltraneja (the queen’s daughter), who was to be declared heir to the throne of Castile in Isabella’s place. The embassy reached Burgos towards the end of July 1470, and the nuptials were celebrated (with a proxy standing in for the duke) during the week of 20–26 October 1470 (Märtl, 1996). It is not clear from the lapidary entry in the account books if Ockeghem participated in both embassies or just one of them, and if only one then which of the two. It is still uncertain whether his role was primarily a musical one. It is possible that in those circumstances he was expected to function as a member of the royal council; in a document of 1477 he is referred to as a conseiller to the king and he may have been entrusted with other matters as well.

Whatever Ockeghem’s part in these diplomatic initiatives, the most intriguing evidence of his presumed involvement is musical: his reworking of Johannes Cornago’s canción, ¿Qu’es mi vida preguntays?. However, even though the principal source for Ockeghem’s sacred works, the Chigi Codex (I-Rvat Chigi C.VIII.234), was on the Iberian peninsula from some time after 1514 through to the end of the 16th century, his music seems generally not to have been well known in Spain; aside from the Cornago arrangement, Spanish sources include only his Missa ‘Au travail suis’, the tract of his Requiem, Sicut cervus, and the widely travelled combinative chanson, S’elle m’amera/Petite camusette (Russell, 1979).

A letter in flattering terms addressed by Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan to ‘Domino Johanni Oken’ on 3 November 1472, requesting assistance with the recruitment of singers for the ducal chapel, gave rise to speculation that the composer may have spent time in Italy just before his appointment at the royal French court (VanderStraetenMPB). Ockeghem was undoubtedly the intended recipient of Galeazzo’s letter, but he would not have needed to cross the Alps in order to make the duke’s acquaintance. Sforza had taken an auxiliary troop of soldiers to Louis XI’s aid in 1466 (Brenet, 1911) and may have made a point, given his musical proclivities, of becoming acquainted with the king’s distinguished maître de chapelle. Alternatively, the letter may have resulted from another diplomatic mission of Cardinal Jouffroy, whom Louis XI sent in early 1471 for private discussions in his name with Galeazzo (Märtl, 1996). There is, in any case, nothing in Ockeghem’s known works to suggest that he was familiar with the indigenous musical traditions of northern Italy.

In the summer of 1484 Ockeghem visited Bruges and Dammes. Brenet (1911) suggested that the primary purpose of the journey was again to assist with the negotiations undertaken by the French court that resulted in the alliance, concluded on 25 October 1484 between Anne of France and her consort Pierre de Bourbon (as regents for the 14-year-old Charles VIII) on the one hand, and the Three Members of Flanders – Ghent, Bruges and Ypres – (acting on behalf of the 6-year-old Philip the Fair) on the other. That may well have been the case, but her main argument, that because Ockeghem was not travelling alone, he must have been on royal business, is not convincing; a person of his rank and class would not have gone any distance without a retinue. In any case, his visit to Bruges may have been for more personal reasons: Busnoys had recently been named maître de chapelle at the city’s church of St Saviour. In addition, the banquet at St Donatian in honour of his presence suggests that Ockeghem may have had earlier contacts with its clergy. It is perhaps significant that Binchois, with whom Ockeghem may have become acquainted while still in his youth, had held a prebend there in 1430–31.

Following the death of Louis XI in 1483, Ockeghem’s place and role in the royal chapel are difficult to determine; the payment registers for the chapel musicians are missing from 1476 until well after Ockeghem’s death. However, he is identified as usual in the document recording his visit to Bruges as the king’s premier chapelain, and Guillaume Crétin used the same designation in his Déploration. In addition, Ockeghem is identified as prothocapellanus of the royal chapel in one of a series of executorial letters prepared at the papal court for the signature of Innocent VIII on 28 July 1486, apparently at the request of Charles VIII (Roth, 1994). These were requests for benefices in a variety of ecclesiastical institutions made individually on behalf of 20 members of the king’s chapel. Ockeghem was to be given preference for the next prebend available at Bayeux Cathedral (Perkins, JAMS, 1984), but there is as yet no evidence that any of these ‘expectatives’ was ever granted.

The only mention of the composer in court documents relating to the reign of Charles VIII simply indicates that he was among those present when the king observed the ritual of washing the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday in April 1488. By contrast, his name continues to appear regularly in documents drawn up at St Martin, Tours, until 1494. In March 1487 he prepared his testament, bequeathing his property and revenues to the chapter of the collegiate church. His death on 6 February 1497 is known only through the king’s nomination of his successor as treasurer of St Martin, Evrard de la Chapelle, who also served at the royal court.

Ockeghem, Jean de

3. Reputation.

Ockeghem’s passing was lamented by some of the most celebrated poets and musicians of the time: Crétin, his colleague in the court chapel, wrote a lengthy déploration in French; Jean Molinet, perhaps in response to Crétin’s exhortation to join in the poetic expression of grief, wrote similar poems in both the vernacular and Latin. His French lament, Nymphes des bois, was later given a poignant musical setting by Josquin, who may have added a descriptive verse of his own (Lowinsky, 1968). The humanist Erasmus, perhaps at the request of his patron, Henri de Berghes, Bishop of Cambrai, composed a Latin naenia, Ergone conticuit, that was subsequently set to music by Johannes Lupi (see Lupus) (Margolin, 1965). Ockeghem is also included among the musicians for whom supplication is made to the Virgin in Compère’s famous motet, Omnium bonorum plena.

The man described in these various works is exceptionally engaging: honest, virtuous, kind, generous, charitable and pious. Francesco Florio, writing in Tours in the 1470s, long before Ockeghem’s death, declared:

I am sure you could not dislike this man, so pleasing is the beauty of his person, so noteworthy the sobriety of his speech and of his morals, and his graciousness. He alone of all the singers is free from vice and abounding in all virtues.

At about the same time, apparently, Pierre-Paul Vieillot (Senilis), secretary to Louis XI, penned in Latin an epigram and a curious series of epitaphs in honour of the composer in similarly laudatory terms (Strohm, 1997). Crétin, some two decades later, praised Ockeghem’s wise and just administration of his dignity at St Martin, his charitable generosity and his exemplary Christian virtues.

His reputation as a singer of extraordinary skill (Milsom, 1997) and a master among composers was well established during his lifetime. Johannes Tinctoris dedicated to him (and to Busnoys) his Liber de natura et proprietate tonorum of 1476, and the following year, in his Liber de arte contrapuncti, he listed Ockeghem first among the most excellent composers of his generation, those whose works were distinguished by exceptional sweetness and beauty. In his De inventione et usu musice of 1481 Tinctoris also praised Ockeghem’s bass voice as the finest he knew. Florio, similarly, asserted that Ockeghem was superior to all of his colleagues in the royal chapel as both singer and composer. Molinet, who was himself both poet and musician, praised the ‘subtle songs, the artful masses and the harmonious motets’ of Ockeghem, Du Fay, Binchois and Busnoys, placing Ockeghem first among them.

In his elaborate lament Crétin had a personified Musique refer to Ockeghem as her son, the ‘pearl of music’. He put in the mouth of Orpheus the expression ‘flower of musicians’, in that of Pan the epithet ‘pillar of music’ and he caused Tubal, ‘the ancient father’, to praise him for having mastered ‘all the secrets of subtlety’. The poet also spoke of Ockeghem’s ‘elevated style, in which no imperfection is found’. Jean Lemaire de Belges, in a letter published in 1513, credited Ockeghem with having ennobled music just as Crétin himself had enriched and exalted the French language. Nicole le Vestu, in a chant royal written in 1523 for the Rouen puy, described Ockeghem as ‘most learned in the mathematical arts, arithmetic, geometry, astrology and music’; he praised his motet for 36 voices, which he termed a chef d’oeuvre of nature, for its ‘sweetness’ and its ‘delicate harmony’. As late as 1567 the Italian humanist Cosimo Bartoli declared, in his Ragionamenti accademici (published in Venice), that Ockeghem was ‘almost the first in these times to rediscover music, which was nearly dead, just as Donatello rediscovered sculpture’. It is not certain that Bartoli knew any of Ockeghem’s music first hand, but the composer’s reputation was clearly such that the Italian author did not hesitate to place him at the fons et origo of the cultural reawakening that, in accordance with the common historical view of that age, has come to be called the Renaissance.

Ockeghem’s reputation among the composers of his age is perhaps best illustrated neither by the encomia of poets nor the praise of theorists, but by the numerous works of the 15th and early 16th centuries either based directly on an earlier piece of his or quoting substantively from his music in ways both technically and symbolically significant (Jas, Picker, 1997). These include the masses that derive a tenor cantus firmus (and more) from one of his chansons (e.g. Au travail suis, D’ung aultre amer, Ma bouche rit, Malheur me bat) as well as the numerous reworkings of Au travail suis and Fors seulement (Picker, 1981). Of particular significance in this connection for developments in the Low Countries are the borrowings in the masses of Obrecht and La Rue.

As Ockeghem’s music disappeared from the practical sources in daily use, knowledge of his existence, and of his extraordinary contrapuntal skills, came to be transmitted solely by the theorists of the 16th century. Writers from Aaron to Zacconi, and in particular German schoolmasters such as Heyden, Ornithoparcus and Wilfflingseder, commented on the exceptional achievements of the Missa cuiusvis toni, the Missa prolationum and the canonic chanson, Prenez sur moi. This tradition was carried into the 17th century with the publications of the Italian theorists Rossi (1619) and Liberati (1685), undoubtedly long after any of the authors had occasion to hear in performance either those works or others by the 15th-century composer.

This distorted perspective caused Ockeghem’s music to be viewed rather negatively by 18th-century scholars such as Charles Burney and Nicolaus Forkel. Although they appreciated Ockeghem’s contrapuntal genius, they were clearly put off by what seemed to be an excessive emphasis on contrapuntal ‘artifice’; Burney opined that ‘learning and labour seem to have preceded taste and invention’ and Forkel characterized Prenez sur moi as ‘unsingable’. As critics they were clearly insensitive to Ockeghem’s suavitas, the sweetly agreeable sonorities that had so charmed Ockeghem’s immediate contemporaries, fellow musicians and patrons alike.

Not until the 19th century did historians such as A.W. Ambros begin to rehabilitate Ockeghem’s reputation, refuting the negative judgments of the previous age in the light of romantic aesthetics and focussing on his ‘inherent musicality’ and ‘singing soul’. More recent assessments by Pirro (1940), Van den Borren (1948–51) and especially Plamenac (MGG1) have been based on a broader knowledge of Ockeghem’s compositions and a more balanced appreciation of his role in the development of the musical genres and styles of the 15th century. Nevertheless, attempts to define and characterize his contributions have led to strikingly different, even contradictory views (Bernstein, 1994). Ockeghem has been variously seen as the inventor of the imitative style (Riemann, 1907–13), as an arch-cerebralist with little or no interest in musical expression, and as a profound mystic whose music supposedly reflected the religious fervour and the aesthetic attitudes of northern Europe, in particular those of the devotio moderna as espoused by the Brethren of the Common Life, and expressed in the De imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis (Besseler, 1931).

Although lacking any historical foundation, this notion has led to the widely held but highly questionable view that Ockeghem’s compositional procedures are ‘irrational’, his melodies ‘unpredictable’ in their rise and fall and his counterpoint without easily discernible contours and seams. Bukofzer (1950) went so far as to assert that Ockeghem ‘renounces with amazing consistency all customary means of articulating a composition: cadences, profiled motives, symmetrical phrase structure, lucid interrelation of parts, imitation, sequences, prominence of one voice over others, and so forth’ (Bernstein, 1997).

It is increasingly clear, Bukofzer notwithstanding, that close study of Ockeghem’s music inevitably reveals the presence and carefully planned use of all of these elements, however subtly treated or – at times – carefully disguised. While certain of the features mentioned are much more in evidence in some works than in others, his composition is invariably grounded in some rational, usually ingenious conception, the most striking examples of which are the Missa prolationum and the Missa cuiusvis toni. In their execution, however, his underlying designs are usually artfully concealed in accordance with two of the principal aesthetic ideals of the period, as articulated, for example, by Tinctoris: subtilitas and varietas. Consequently, the ‘unfamiliar features of Ockeghem’s style’ that, in the words of Bukofzer, ‘baffled past generations’, continue to pose problems for the present as well, and these difficulties will only be resolved by means of a deeper, fuller understanding of the conceptual matrix and the aesthetic ideals that inform this composer’s music generally.

Ockeghem, Jean de

4. Masses.

Although the number of known works attributed to Ockeghem is surprisingly small in view of the length of his life and the esteem in which he was held, his masses constitute an imposing repertory. In addition to the earliest surviving polyphonic requiem and an isolated Credo, there are 13 cyclic Ordinaries, of which three appear to be partial settings. Unfortunately, it is rarely possible to date Ockeghem’s compositions with any precision, either from biographical details or from the evidence of the sources. One of the two masses for three voices may, however, be among the earliest; the cyclic structure produced by similar voice ranges, modal finals and mensural patterns recurring from one section to the next is reinforced by a head-motif rather than the tenor cantus firmus that tended to dominate continental mass composition beginning in the 1440s. Also noteworthy is a surprisingly consistent use of imitation, more so than in the presumably later four-voice masses. The implication is that if Ockeghem mastered imitative techniques early in his career, he made a conscious decision to employ them less predictably in subsequent works. The other three-voice cycle, the Missa quinti toni, which is characterized by exclusively binary mensurations and homogeneous textures, may date instead from the early 1470s, like its putative twin in the Vatican manuscript San Pietro B 80 (now attributed to Colinet de Lannoy), and reflect a renewed interest in three-voice mass composition during that decade (Wegman, 1987; Kirkman, 1997).

The remaining masses fall into two separate categories. The first and larger group consists of cyclic Ordinaries based on pre-existent material, either sacred or secular. The smaller group – equally important historically – comprises masses that seem to have been primarily freely composed. Turning first to the cantus-firmus compositions, one of the earliest is undoubtedly the Missa ‘Caput’, which Ockeghem modelled on the presumably English mass, once thought to be by Du Fay. With the exception of the Kyrie, the successive sections follow closely the structure of the earlier mass. But while Ockeghem adopted the rhythmicization of his model for the cantus firmus, he shifted it to the lowest voice, thus displaying his contrapuntal skills (and perhaps a special affection for his own voice register).

Perhaps his most straightforward treatment of a cantus firmus is deployed in the Missa ‘L’homme armé’. The mensural rhythms given to the famous tune in its polyphonic setting as a combinative chanson with Il sera pour vous are taken over into the mass with only minor differences. The borrowed tune is thus easily recognized even when, as in the Osanna and the third Agnus Dei, the values are prolonged in comparison with the movement of the other voices. The clarity of presentation of the cantus firmus makes even more effective its abandonment at the end of each major section as all four parts join to accelerate into the closing cadence. The cantus firmus is transposed (as in the ‘Caput’ mass) – to the lower 5th in the Patrem and to the lower octave in the Agnus Dei – reflecting again the composer’s tendency to favour the bass register. Ockeghem’s choice of range also provides a relatively early indication of the downward extension of the vocal registers that is one of the notable innovations of his musical style. In addition, Ockeghem appears to have imbedded into his counterpoint, as a kind of musical gloss on the pre-existent melody, references not only to the cantus of the combinative chanson but also to his own rondeau, L’autre d’antan, presumably in both cases because of the military imagery of the vernacular texts (Perkins, JM, 1984).

In what are probably later works, Ockeghem varied the treatment of the cantus firmus, assimilating it increasingly to the rhythmic and melodic activity of the other voices and thus moving towards a homogeneity of texture among the parts that was ever more characteristic of his mature style. In the Missa ‘De plus en plus’, for example, each movement opens with a literal quotation of the tenor of Binchois’ rondeau in extended values, but the borrowed melody is then paraphrased so freely as to make it virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding voices. (In this case, interestingly, Ockeghem repeated the first phrase of his cantus firmus at the end of each statement, probably in order to retain the orientation towards mode 8 on G with which the chanson opens rather than to follow its change to mode 2 on D.)

For the Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’, the only surviving cyclic Ordinary by Ockeghem to use a plainchant melody as its tenor cantus firmus, the composer followed essentially the same pattern as in the Missa ‘De plus en plus’. In addition, this mass makes use of two innovative compositional procedures that anticipate the practice of following generations. One is the brief but quasi-systematic sequential treatment of the rising figure for the Amen at the conclusion of the Gloria, which helps to convey a sense of closure. The other is recourse to mimetic gestures not unlike those that were to become so common in the secular music of the next century to illustrate individual words and conceits of the text. In the Credo, for example, ‘et ascendit in celum’ is set to a steadily rising line, ‘sedet ad dexteram Patris’ to a descending one that settles into a cadence.

Ockeghem’s treatment of the cantus firmus in the Missa ‘Au travail suis’ (based on the tenor of a rondeau ascribed to both Ockeghem and Barbingant) is more original still. Whereas he presented the borrowed melody completely and with reasonable fidelity in the Kyrie (even though he altered its mensuration), in the following sections reference to it is reduced to little more than a head-motif. In addition, his extensive reliance in this work on homophonic textures removes it even further from the traditional pattern for cantus-firmus masses.

The incomplete cycle for five voices (sine nomine), which is based on plainchants for the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo, makes even more extensive use of syllabic declamation on repeated pitches (in the manner of the chants themselves). The liturgical melody is heard most frequently in the tenor, but it permeates the polyphony through imitation in the Kyrie, and in the Credo by migrating from voice to voice.

Ockeghem’s two other partial cycles, the Missa ‘Ma maistresse’ and the Missa ‘Fors seulement’, are both based on chansons of his own and appear to be late works as well. In these masses the voices take over material from more than one part of the model simultaneously and keep the borrowed lines in their original relationship to one another as other voices weave new counterpoints against them. Ma maistresse, a virelai, begins with a short mensuration canon between cantus and tenor that becomes a head-motif between superius and contratenor in the mass. The Kyrie is based primarily on the tenor of the chanson, carried by its bass, while its tenor quotes short excerpts from the cantus of the model. By contrast, the Gloria (the only other surviving section) borrows from the cantus for its contratenor, while its bass draws upon the virelai’s tenor. The resulting permeation of the part-writing by material derived from the chanson is greater than in any other of Ockeghem’s masses except the Missa ‘Fors seulement’. Here the tenor of the chanson has been adopted as a fundamental cantus firmus throughout, but the other voices are quoted extensively as well. Ockeghem may not have been the first to have quoted from several voices of a polyphonic model at once, but his ingenious and original use of these procedures clearly helped to prepare the way for the widespread adoption of similar procedures in the ‘imitation’ or ‘parody’ masses of the 16th century.

Ockeghem’s polyphonic Requiem has special historical significance as the earliest surviving setting. Each section is based on the corresponding plainchant, and the melodies, which are carried in the superius and only lightly embellished, are treated in the manner that had become conventional early in the 15th century for liturgical polyphony such as hymns, Magnificats and psalm settings. The numerous subsections for two or three voices give an impression of sober simplicity, but their skilful alternation with full four-voice textures achieves the cumulative effect that is characteristic of much of Ockeghem’s music. The work culminates with the offertory in which a more consistent use of full textures, together with more recondite mensural schemes and contrapuntal procedures, contributes to a sense of climax and closure.

The small group of masses that were apparently freely composed includes the compositions made famous over the centuries by the recurring discussions of fascinated theorists. Each is unique in its own way and without clear historical precedent; consequently their place in the development of the genre, individually and collectively, is difficult to determine. The Missa cuiusvis toni is not unduly complex in its contrapuntal style despite the practical problems involved in reading the work as notated with each of several modal finals as the determinant of scalar structure and modal orientation. The mass is designated by the composer as ‘in any mode’; Glarean categorized it as a ‘catholicon’, meaning it ‘might be sung in many modes, almost at the will of the singers’. Most discussions interpret the mass as intended to exemplify the four regular finals, re, mi, fa and sol (see Houle, 1992; Perkins, 1993), but an interpretation on three finals, ut, re and mi, was suggested by Glarean (see van Benthem, 1996; Dean, 1996). Since such a mass could have been used repeatedly and, if performed from changing finals, still have sounded somehow different from one time to the next, it may have been intended for ferial use. By contrast, the Missa prolationum may well be the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the 15th century; using all four of Philippe de Vitry’s prolations simultaneously, it presents a series of canons whose interval of imitation expands from the unison progressively through to the octave in accordance with a complex combination of verbal instructions, rests and mensural signs. Surprisingly, the result is a graceful, euphonious composition that gives the listener no hint of the intricate technical problems it embodies.

Ockeghem’s purpose in writing such a pair of masses may have been didactic as well as musical. Taken together, they constitute a practical exemplification of the modal and mensural doctrine of 15th-century theory, a musical counterpart to treatises such as those written by Tinctoris. If the (much more modest) canonic chanson, Prenez sur moi, is seen in a similar light as a thorough-going exercise in solmization, the three compositions cover in a comprehensive and engaging way the fundamentals of music as taught at the time: hexachordal and modal systems, notation, mensural usage and of course composition (Perkins, 1990).

Perhaps nowhere does Ockeghem show more clearly his mastery of the cyclic mass as a polyphonic genre, nor the genius of his own style, than in the Missa ‘Mi-mi’. Here he has reduced the head-motif to the most concise of gestures, the falling 5th (E to A, mi in the natural and soft hexachords, respectively) in the bassus. If that figure refers at the same time to the tenor of his virelai, Presque transi, as has been claimed (Miyazaki, 1985), the allusion is both brief and characteristically subtle; for most of its substance the work seems to be essentially freely composed. Ockeghem deployed a typical pattern of changing mensurations throughout, mostly involving perfect and (diminished) imperfect tempus, coupled with skilfully wrought contrasts in texture and sonority. Internal cadences are often concealed by the continuous flow of interlocking melodic lines, and the ends of major sections are approached with lively rhythms and dotted figures that generate a strong sense of climax. This mass also has a surprising number of text-related compositional devices, such as contrasting registers – low for ‘suscipe deprecationem nostram’ and high for ‘Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris’ (Gloria); superius and altus for ‘Pleni sunt celi’ followed by tenor and bassus for ‘et terra’ (Sanctus) – strict imitation for ‘Et unam sanctam catholicam’ and black notes in extended values for ‘mortuorum’ (Credo). It exemplifies in full measure the ‘varietas’ and ‘subtilitas’ that characterize Ockeghem’s artistic aesthetic. It may also give some indication of the extent to which the humanistic passion for epideictic oratory – intended more to move than to persuade – had begun to influence Ockeghem’s compositional manner. A close relationship with Cardinal Jean Jouffroy, as is suggested by the shared embassy to the court of Castile and by the cardinal’s central role in procuring papal benefices for Ockeghem and his companions in the royal chapel, could have acquainted Ockeghem with the growing enthusiasm for rhetorical studies in humanistic circles. Jouffroy completed his education at the University of Pavia, where he studied rhetoric with Lorenzo Valla (who became his lifelong friend), and was himself both a scholar and an accomplished orator (Perkins, 1997).

Ockeghem, Jean de

5. Motets.

Ockeghem’s motets, though few in number, display perhaps even greater inventiveness than his masses, no doubt because the genre was itself in a state of stylistic redefinition during much of the 15th century. For most of the known repertory, Ockeghem followed a growing tradition in setting Marian texts, either liturgical (in which case the plainchant melody is usually adopted as well) or devotional. The Salve regina that appears to be securely attributed to him presents the chant with melodic coloration, but in the bass (as in the Missa ‘Caput’) rather than, as conventionally, in the tenor. In his Alma Redemptoris mater the antiphon melody is heard in an upper voice, as in a treble-dominated plainsong setting, but with the addition of a fourth part in an unusually high range above it.

By contrast, neither Ave Maria nor Intemerata Dei mater shows any trace of a borrowed melody. Nonetheless, the latter, like both the plainsong settings and the cantus-firmus motets, reflects the influence of the polyphonic masses; it is divided into sections with contrasting mensurations, and the structure is further articulated (especially in the 2nd and 3rd sections) by introductory duos or trios in changing combinations of voices. In addition, its syllabic declamation and homophonic textures are much more common in Ockeghem’s masses than in his motets. Exceptional, however, even for Ockeghem, who was to become famous for his exploration of modal relationships and possibilities, is the succession of finals to the sections of Intemerata from D through A to E (on which all three sections begin).

Ockeghem’s motet-chanson, the déploration on the death of Binchois, has an archaic flavour; in ballade form, it combines the treble-dominated style, polytextuality and cantus-firmus-based structure that were all characteristic of the medieval motet tradition. Though clearly not the first of its kind, the work appears to have defined in significant measure the functional and compositional conception of the genre for subsequent generations (Meconi, 1997). Ut heremita solus is analogous in a sense to the Missa cuiusvis toni and the Missa prolationum in its use of a complex puzzle canon to generate the tenor and regulate its manipulation, but stylistically it stands apart from the other motets of Ockeghem’s known authorship (see Lindmayr, AcM, lx, 1988, for explanation of its resolution). It makes consistent use of short motifs sequentially elaborated in a manner most unusual for him, suggesting that it was – paradoxically for a motet – intended for instruments. It is, in addition, so idiosyncratic in style that Ockeghem’s authorship has been questioned (Lindmayr-Brandl, 1997). The attribution to Ockeghem is implied in Crétin’s Déploration; the work may have been Ockeghem’s reply to Busnoys’ ‘In hydraulis’.

Celeste beneficium and Gaude Maria, which are found only in a set of mid-16th-century part-books in the Proske Musikbibliothek, Regensburg, are now thought to be by another, later composer, despite their ascription to ‘Johannes Okegus’. This is not only because of the lateness of the source and the unusual form of the name (although also used by Erasmus), but more importantly because the sub-genre of the responsory-motet with its aBcB pattern apparently did not become current until the 1530s. Nevertheless, Celeste beneficium, the text of which is probably a contrafactum, recalls Ut heremita by the treatment of its cantus firmus and, even more particularly, by the character of its melodies and counterpoint. Gaude Maria is perhaps less typical of Ockeghem because of its systematic use of syntactic imitation, but some of the traits of his mature style are present, most notably the customary sweep of the melodic lines, the energy of the rhythmic figures and the imaginative freedom with which the cantus firmus has been treated. By contrast, the Salve regina (ii), a relatively conventional plainchant setting with the liturgical melody in the superius, is surely a case of mistaken attribution due to speculation concerning the name (Basiron) that was partially trimmed from the margin of I-Rvat C.S.46 (Lindmayr, 1988).

Ockeghem, Jean de

6. Secular works.

Ockeghem adhered most consistently to tradition in his secular works, perhaps in part because the compositional conventions were more firmly established for the chanson than for mass or motet. Even in this well-trodden field, however, his creative imagination asserted itself. More generously represented in the surviving sources than his sacred music, and better contextualized by contemporaneous repertory, his songs can be seen as central to his own artistic development and to his contribution to the evolving styles and genres of the period (Fallows, 1997). The majority of his works on texts in the vernacular follow the formes fixes that had been in use for more than a century. At least 16 are rondeaux; four others, Ma bouche rit, Ma maistresse, Presque transi and Tant fuz gentement resjouy, are virelais with only a single complete stanza (as was customary at the time judging from the works of Busnoys and other contemporaries who adopted the form). Ockeghem apparently wrote in most instances for three parts, but two of his pieces were originally for four parts; they were not merely supplied later with an optional contratenor as was the case for many chansons of the period.

The predominant texture of Ockeghem’s chansons derives from the treble-dominated solo song characteristic of the genre in the 15th century, but there are significant exceptions in addition to the strictly canonic Prenez sur moi: L’autre d’antan was clearly conceived as a duo between cantus and tenor and in Fors seulement l’attente the cantus and tenor share the same range and much of the same material. For Petite camusette the lower three voices are all based on the eponymous chanson rustique. These three works exhibit a good deal of the imitative counterpoint typical of the chanson repertory of the period, but elsewhere Ockeghem restricted imitation to the beginning of just a phrase or two, as in Ma bouche rit, or avoided it entirely, as in the quasi-homophonic Presque transi.

Ockeghem’s treatment of the vernacular poetry was also largely conventional. He set it line by line, providing for each verse a self-contained melodic phrase. When, as at the beginning of both D’un aultre amer and Presque transi, he weakens the effect of the articulating cadence, it is usually in response to the syntax or sense of the text, which bridges the verses in an enjambment. Conversely, when the verse is cast in decasyllables with a clear caesura after the fourth, he often breaks the melodic line as well, as for the fourth verse of the refrain in Ma maistresse and the first of the second section, or for the second and third verses of Ma bouche rit, where both the caesura and the enjambment are respected. Most of the time the opening rhythms of a melodic phrase allow for a syllabic declamation of the text. In a few instances, however, such as Les desléaux and Quant de vous seul, the subsequent melismatic development of the line sometimes assumes a scope and an energy more like the melodic writing in the masses and motets.

Although Ockeghem generally adhered to the musical structures traditionally derived from the poetic formes fixes, he repeated the first line of L’aultre d’antan as the last, text and music, thus imposing on the rondeau an over-riding formal order that, like the light tone of the verse and the lively tempo of the music, anticipates characteristics of the chanson in the early 16th century. His setting of Petite camusette represents another significant departure from the courtly tradition. All four voices carry text: the lower three have the words of the chanson rustique upon which they are based, and the cantus has a related poem. In both style and substance Petite camusette is typical of the combinative chanson that became fashionable towards the end of the 15th century (Maniates, 1970).

Ockeghem also appears to have played a role in the development of an important new secular genre: an arrangement, usually florid in character, based on one or more parts from a well-known chanson, that would lead to the instrumental canzona. This is suggested by his composition of a second cantus for O rosa bella, his reworking of Cornago’s ¿Qu’es mi vida preguntays?, and in particular by his use of the tenor of Fors seulement l’attente as the point of departure for the réplique, Fors seulement contre ce qu’ay promis, among the first of the 30 or so compositions to rework in some way the melodic material of that chanson (see Picker, 1981). In his rondeau Au travail suis (attributed to Ockeghem in F-Pn R 57 but to Barbingant in F-Dm 517) at the words ‘ma maistresse’, Ockeghem quoted the opening of his virelai Ma maistresse.

Too little is known still about Ockeghem’s relationships with his immediate contemporaries, but it is evident that he was familiar with musical practices and repertories at both Cambrai Cathedral and the Burgundian court chapel. He must have owed significant aspects of his development to the example of Binchois and may have been exposed to the influence of English composers on the Continent. There was ample opportunity for meaningful contact with Du Fay from the 1450s on, and it is quite likely that Busnoys profited from Ockeghem’s tutelage while both were associated with musical institutions in Tours in the early 1460s. During the more than 40 years that Ockeghem served at the French royal court, however, there was no one else in the chapel who even approached his stature as musician and composer.

Like his contemporaries, he adhered to tradition, but no other 15th-century master seems to have handled with as much freedom compositional procedures such as head-motifs, cantus firmi and canonic imitation, nor to have treated established musical genres (mass, motet and chanson) with such subtly inventive creativity. He seems to have been involved with innovatory developments in a number of significant areas: word painting, modal transmutation, the exploitation of new sonorities (especially in the lower registers) and, perhaps most importantly, the contrapuntal, and hence melodic integration and equalization of the separate voices. In every respect Ockeghem achieved a level of contrapuntal skill and artistic excellence without which the extraordinary accomplishments of the next generation of composers, including such figures as Obrecht, La Rue and Josquin, might not have been possible.

Ockeghem, Jean de

WORKS

Editions:Johannes Ockeghem: Sämtliche Werke (Messen I–VIII), ed. D. Plamenac, Publikationen älterer Musik, Jg.i/2 (Leipzig, 1927); rev. 2/1959 as Masses I–VIII, Johannes Ockeghem: Collected Works, i; Masses and Mass Sections IX–XVI, ed. D. Plamenac, ibid., ii (New York, 1947, 2/1966); Motets and Chansons, ed. R. Wexler with D. Plamenac, ibid., iii (Philadelphia, 1992) [P]Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Mass Sections, ed. J. van Benthem, i– (Utrecht, 1994–) [B]

For other edns of masses, mass sections, motets and chansons, see P i–iii, Editorial Notes, and Picker (1988)

masses and mass sections

motets

motet-chanson

chansons

arrangements of works by others

lost works

questionable and speculative attributions

Ockeghem, Jean de

BIBLIOGRAPHY

early writers

studies on ockeghem

general studies

Ockeghem, Jean de: Bibliography

early writers

VirdungMG

J. Tinctoris: Proportionales musices (MS, c1473–4); ed. in CoussemakerS, iv, 153–77; CSM, xxii/2a (1978); Eng. trans., JMT, i (1957), 22–75; also ed. as Proportions in Music (Colorado Springs, CO, 1979)

J. Tinctoris: Liber de arte contrapuncti (MS, 1477); ed. in CoussemakerS, iv, 76–153; CSM, xxii/2 (1975); Eng. trans., MSD, v (1961)

F. Florio: De Probatione Turonica (c1477); ed. A. Salmon, ‘Description de la ville de Tours sous le règne de Louis XI’, Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Touraine, vii (1855), 82–108

J. Tinctoris: De inventione et usu musicae (Naples, c1487); ed. K. Wienmann, Johannes Tinctoris und sein unbekannter Traktat ‘De inventione et usu musicae’ (Regensburg, 1917)

F. Gaffurius: Practica musice (Milan, 1496/R); Eng. trans., MSD, xx (1968); ed. and trans. I. Young (Madison, WI, 1969)

J. Frappier, ed.: J. Lemaire de Belges: La Concorde des deux langages (Paris, 1947), 112

A. Ornithoparchus: Musicae activae micrologus (Leipzig, 1517/R, 5/1535 as De arte cantandi micrologus; Eng. trans., 1609 as A Compendium of Musical Practice, ed. G. Reese and S. Ledbetter, New York, 1973)

P. Aaron: Thoscanello de la musica (Venice, 1523/R, 5/1562; Eng. trans., 1970)

S. Heyden: Musicae, id est Artis canendi, libri duo (Nuremberg, 1537, 2/1540/R as De arte canendi; Eng. trans., MSD, xxvi, 1972)

H. Glarean: Dodecachordon (Basle, 1547/R; Eng. trans., MSD, vi, 1965)

G. Faber: Musices practicae erotematum libri II (Basle, 1553)

J. Zanger: Practicae musicae praecepta (Leipzig, 1554)

H. Finck: Practica musica (Wittenberg, 1556, enlarged 2/1556/R)

A. Wilfflingseder: Erotemata musices practicae (Nuremberg, 1563)

J. Paix: Selectae, artificiosae et elegantes fugue (Lauingen, 1587, lost, 2/1590)

J. Paix: Kurtzer aber gegruendter Bericht auss Gottes Wort und bewehrten Kirchen-Historien von der Music (Lauingen, 1589)

L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R, 2/1596)

P. Cerone: El melopeo y maestro: tractado de música theorica y practica (Naples, 1613/R)

G.B. Rossi: Organo de cantori (Venice, 1618)

A. Liberati: Lettera (Rome, 1685)

Ockeghem, Jean de: Bibliography

studies on ockeghem

E. Thoinan: Déploration de Guillaume Crétin sur le trépas de Jehan Okeghem, musicien, premier chaplain du roi de France et trésorier de Saint-Martin de Tours (Paris, 1864)

E. Giraudet: Les artistes tourangeaux (Tours, 1885), 312–13

E. Motta: ‘Musici alla corte degli Sforza’, Archivio storico lombardo, 2nd ser., iv (1887), 305–6

A. Vayssière: ‘Fragment d’un compte de Gilles le Tailleur, argentier de Charles Ier, Duc de Bourbonnais en 1448’, Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1891), 54–76

A. de Marsy: ‘Un musicien flamand, Jean de Ockeghem’, Annales du Cercle archéologique de Termonde, 2nd ser., vi (1897), 5–62

P.F. de Maesschalk: ‘Documents inédits sur la maison natale de la famille de Jean Van Ockeghem’, RHCM, ii (1902), 118–19

M. Brenet: Musique et musiciens de la vielle France (Paris, 1911/R)

B. Wallner: ‘Sebastian Virdung von Amberg: Beiträge zu seiner Lebensgeschichte’, KJb, xxiv (1911), 85–106

A. Schering: ‘Ein Rätseltenor Okeghems’, Festschrift Hermann Kretzschmar (Leipzig, 1918/R), 132–5

D. Plamenac: Johannes Ockeghem als Motetten- und Chansonkomponist (diss., U. of Vienna, 1925)

M. Cauchie: ‘Les véritables nom et prénom d’Ockeghem’, RdM, vii (1926), 9–10

D. Plamenac: ‘Autour d’Ockeghem’, ReM, ix/4–6 (1927–8), 26–47

D. Plamenac: ‘Zur “L’homme arme”-Frage’, ZMw, xi (1928–9), 376–83

C. Samaran: ‘Cinquantes feuilles retrouvées des comptes de l’argenterie de Louis XI’, Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité travaux historiques et scientifiques (1928–9), 79–89

C. van den Borren: ‘Le madrigalisme avant le madrigal’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Festschrift für Guido Adler (Vienna, 1930/R), 78–83

L. Roosens: ‘Werd Jan van Ockeghem te Dendermonde geboren’, Musica sacra, xliii (1936), 13–18

J.S. Levitan: ‘Ockeghem’s Clefless Compositions’, MQ, xxiii (1937), 440–64

W. Stephan: Die burgundisch-niederländische Motette zur Zeit Ockeghems, vi (Kassel, 1937/R)

O. Strunk: ‘Origins of the “L’homme armé” Mass’, BAMS, ii (1937), 25–6

R.G. Harris: ‘An Analysis of the Design of the “Caput” Masses by Dufay and Ockeghem in their Metric and Rhythmic Aspects’, Hamline Studies in Musicology, i (St Paul, MN, 1945), 1–46

V. Seay: ‘A Contribution to the Problem of Mode in Medieval Music’, Hamline Studies in Musicology, i (St Paul, 1945), 47–68

J. du Saar: Het leven en de composities van Jacobus Barbireau (Utrecht, 1946)

E. Krenek: ‘A Discussion of the Treatment of Dissonances in Okeghem’s Masses as Compared with the Contrapuntal Theory of Joh. Tinctoris’, Hamline Studies in Musicology, ii (St Paul, 1947), 1–26

M.F. Bukofzer: ‘Caput: a Liturgico-Musical Study’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 217–310

D. Plamenac: ‘A Postscript to Volume II of the Collected Works of Johannes Ockeghem’, JAMS, iii (1950), 33–40

S. Clercx: ‘Introduction à l’histoire de la musique en Belgique’, RBM, v (1951), 114–31

A. Krings: ‘Die Bearbeitung der gregorianischen Melodien in der Messkomposition von Ockeghem bis Josquin des Prez’, KJb, xxxv (1951), 36–53

E. Krenek: Johannes Okeghem (New York, 1953)

B. Meier: ‘Caput: Bemerkungen zur Messe Dufays und Ockeghems’, Mf, vii (1954), 268–76

I. Pope: ‘La Musique espagnole à la cour de Naples dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1954), 35–61

R. Lenaerts: ‘Contribution à l’histoire de la musique belge de la renaissance’, RBM, ix (1955), 103–20

F. Brenn: ‘Ockeghems spiritueller Rhythmus’, IMSCR VII: Cologne 1958, 73–4

H. Kellman: ‘The Origins of the Chigi Codex’, JAMS, xi (1958), 6–19

N. Bridgman: ‘The Age of Ockeghem and Josquin’, NOHM, iii (1960), 239–302

C. Dahlhaus: ‘Ockeghems “Fuga trium vocum”’, Mf, xiii (1960), 307–10

H.M. Brown: ‘The Genesis of a Style: the Parisian Chanson, 1500–1530’, Chanson and Madrigal, 1480–1530 (Cambridge, MA, 1964), 1–50

R. Lenaerts: Die Kunst der Niederländer, Mw, xxii (1962; Eng. trans., 1964)

J. Margolin: Erasme et la musique (Paris, 1965)

R. Zimmerman: ‘Stilkritische Anmerkungen zum Werk Ockeghems’, AMw, xxii (1965), 248–71

C.A. Miller: ‘Erasmus on Music’, MQ, lii (1966), 332–49

M. Henze: Studien zu den Messenkompositionen Johannes Ockeghems (Berlin, 1968)

E. Lowinsky: The Medici Codex of 1518 (Chicago, 1968), iii, 213–14

G. Reese: ‘Musical Compositions in Renaissance Intarsia’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ii (Durham, NC, 1968), 74–97

J.L. Curry: A Computer-Aided Analytical Study of Kyries in Selected Masses by Johannes Ockeghem (diss., U. of Iowa, 1969)

H. Hewitt: ‘“Fors seulement” and the Cantus Firmus Technique of the Fifteenth Century’, Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac, ed. G. Reese and R.J. Snow (Pittsburgh, 1969/R), 91–126

F. Lesure: ‘Ockeghem à Notre-Dame de Paris (1463–1470)’, ibid., 147–54

E.E. Lowinsky: ‘Ockeghem’s Canon for Thirty-Six Voices: an Essay in Musical Iconography’, ibid., 155–80

Johannes Ockeghem en zijn tijd, Stadthuis, 14 Nov – 6 Dec (Dendermonde, 1970) [exhibition catalogue]

M. Bovyn: ‘(van) Ockeghem’s te Dendermonde’, Johannes Ockeghem en zijn tijd (Dendermonde, 1970), 49–59

M. Maniates: ‘Combinative Chansons in the Dijon Chansonnier’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 228–81

R. Nowotny: Mensur, Cantus Firmus, Satz in den Caput-Messen von Dufay, Ockeghem, und Obrecht (diss., U. of Munich, 1970)

J.-M. Vaccaro: ‘Jean de Ockeghem, trésorier de l’église Saint-Martin de Tours de 1459(?) à 1497’, Johannes Ockeghem en zijn tijd (Dendermonde, 1970), 72–6

E.F. Houghton: Rhythmic Structure in the Masses and Motets of Johannes Ockeghem (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1971)

H. Kellman: ‘Josquin and the Courts of the Netherlands and France’, Josquin des Prez: New York 1971, 181-216

A. Planchart: ‘Guillaume Dufay’s Masses: Notes and Revisions’, MQ (1972), 1–23

L. Lockwood: ‘Aspects of the “L’homme armé” Tradition’, PRMA, c (1973–74), 97–122

E.F. Houghton: ‘Rhythm and Meter in Fifteenth-Century Polyphony’, JMT, xviii (1974), 190–212

H. Huschen: Die Motette, Mw, xlvii (1974; Eng. trans., 1976)

R. Lenaerts: ‘Bermerkungen über Johannes Ockeghem und seinen Kompositionsstil’, Convivium musicorum: Festschrift Wolfgang Boetticher zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen and D.-R. Moser (Berlin, 1974), 163–7

M. Caraci: ‘Fortuna del tenor “L’homme armé” nel primo Rinascimento’, NRMI, ix (1975), 171–204

C. Wright: ‘Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 175–229

D. Fallows: ‘English Song Repertories of the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, PRMA, ciii (1976–7), 61–79

M. Eckert: The Structure of the Ockeghem Requiem (diss., U. of Chicago, 1977)

D. Plamenac: ‘On Reading Fifteenth-Century Chanson Texts’, JAMS, xxx (1977), 320–24

M. Eckert: ‘Ockeghem’s Offertory: Mensural Anomaly or Structural Capstone?’, Abstracts of Papers, AMS XLIV: Minneapolis 1978, 1–2

L. Litterick: ‘The Revision of Ockeghem’s “Je n’ay dueil”’, Le Moyen français, Musique naturelle et artificielle, ed. M.B. Winn (Montreal, 1979), 29–48

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. Dahlhaus: ‘Miszellen zu einigen niederländischen Messen’, KJb, lxiii–lxiv (1979–80), 1–7

J. Cohen: ‘Munus ab ignoto’, SM, xxii (1980), 187–204

M. Picker: ‘More “Regret” Chansons for Marguerite d’Autriche’, Le moyen français, v (1980), 81–101

M. Picker: ‘A “Salve regina” of Uncertain Authorship’, Datierung und Filiation von Musikhandschriften der Josquin-Zeit: Wolfenbüttel 1980, 177–9

C. Santarelli: ‘Quattro messe su tenor “Fors seulement”’, NRMI, xiv (1980), 333–49

R. Strohm: ‘Quellenkritische Untersuchungen an der Missa “Caput’’’, Datierung und Filiation von Musikhandschriften der Josquin-Zeit: Wolfenbüttel 1980, 153–76

E.E. Lowinsky: ‘Canon Technique and Simultaneous Conception in Fifteenth- Century Music’, Essays on the Music of J.S. Bach and other Diverse Subjects: a Tribute to Gerhard Herz, ed. R.L. Weaver (Louisville, KY, 1981), 181–222

M. Picker, ed.: Fors seulement: Thirty Compositions for three to five voices or instruments from the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, RRMMAR, xiv (1981)

A. Planchart: ‘Fifteenth-Century Masses: Notes on Performance and Chronology’, Studi musicali, x (1981), 3–29

A. Planchart: ‘The Relative Speed of “Tempora” in the Period of Dufay’, RMARC, no.17 (1981), 33–51

J. Rahn: ‘Ockeghem’s Three-Section Motet “Salve Regina”: Problems in Coordinating Pitch and Time Constructs’, Music Theory Spectrum, iii (1981), 117–31

L. Trowbridge: The Fifteenth-Century French Chanson: a Computer-Aided Study of Styles and Style Change (diss., U. of Illinois, 1982)

R. Wexler: ‘Which Franco-Netherlander Composed the First Polyphonic Requiem Mass?’, Netherlandic Studies I: Lanham, MD, 1982, 71–6

D. Fallows: ‘Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400–1474’, Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music, ed. S. Boorman (Cambridge, 1983), 109–59

H. Garey: ‘Can a Rondeau with a One-Line Refrain Be Sung?’, Ars Lyrica, ii (1983), 10–21

A. Planchart: ‘Parts with Words and without Words: the Evidence for Multiple Texts in Fifteenth-Century Masses’, Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music, ed. S. Boorman (Cambridge, 1983), 227–51

D. Fallows: ‘Johannes Ockeghem: the Changing Image, the Songs and a New Source’, EMc, xii (1984), 218–30

W. Haass: Studien zu den ‘L’homme armé-Messen’ des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1984)

L. Perkins: ‘The L’Homme armé Masses of Busnoys and Okeghem: a Comparison’, JM, iii (1984), 363–96

L. Perkins: ‘Musical Patronage at the Royal Court of France under Charles VII and Louis XI (1422–83)’, JAMS, xxxvii (1984), 507–66

R. Wexler: ‘On the Authenticity of Ockeghem’s Motets’, Abstracts of Papers, AMS L: Philadelphia 1984, 41–2

H.M. Brown: ‘“Lord, have mercy upon us”: Early Sixteenth-Century Scribal Practice and the Polyphonic Kyrie’, Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship, ii (1985), 93–110

D. Fallows: ‘The Performing Ensembles in Josquin’s Sacred Music’, TVNM, xxxv (1985), 32–64

H. Miyazaki: ‘New Light on Ockeghem’s Missa “Mi-mi”’, EMc, xiii (1985), 367–75

L. Trowbridge: ‘Style Change in the Fifteenth–Century Chanson: a Comprehensive Study of Compositional Detail’, JM, iv (1985–6), 146–70

H.M. Brown: ‘A Rondeau with a One-Line Refrain Can Be Sung’, Ars Lyrica, iii (1986), 23–35

J.J. Dean: ‘Ockeghem or Basiron? A Disputed Salve Regina and a “Very Notable” Minor Composer’, Abstracts of Papers, AMS LII : Cleveland 1986, 46–7

P. Higgins: ‘“In hydraulis” Revisited: New Light on the Career of Antoine Busnoys’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 36–86

K. Kreitner: ‘Very Low Ranges in the Sacred Music of Ockeghem and Tinctoris’, EMc, xiv (1986), 467–79

R. Taruskin: ‘Antoine Busnois and the “L’homme armé” Tradition’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 255–93

W. Elders: ‘Struktur, Zeichen und Symbol in der altniederländischen Totenklage’, Zeichen und Struktur in der Musik der Renaissance: Münster 1987, 27–46

C. Goldberg: ‘Musik als kaleidoskopischer Raum: Zeichen, Motiv, Gestus und Symbol in Johannes Ockeghems Requiem’, Zeichen und Struktur in der Musik der Renaissance: Münster 1987, 47–65

P. Higgins: ‘Antoine Busnois and Musical Culture in Late Fifteenth-Century France and Burgundy’ (diss., Princeton U., 1987), 125–60

B. Hudson: ‘Obrecht’s Tribute to Ockeghem’, TVNM, xxxvii (1987), 3–13

R. Wegman: ‘An Anonymous Twin of Johannes Ockeghem’s “Missa Quinti Toni” in San Pietro B 80’, TVNM, xxxvii (1987), 25–48

C. Gottwald: ‘Johannes Ockeghem: Bericht über den Erzavantgardisten’, Revolution in der Musik: Avantgarde von 1200 bis 2000: Kassel 1988, 55–65

A. Lindmayr: ‘Ein Rätseltenor Ockeghems: Des Rätsels Lösung’, AcM, lx (1988), 31–42

G. Montagna: ‘Johannes Pullois in the Context of his Era’, RBM, xlii (1988), 83–117

M. Picker: Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht: a Guide to Research (New York, 1988)

M. Raley: Johannes Ockeghem’s ‘Gaude Maria virgo’ (diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1988)

C. Goldberg: ‘Militat omnis amans: Zitat und Zitieren in Molinets “Le débat du viel Gendarme et du viel amoureux” und Ockeghems Chanson “L’autre d’antan”’, Mf, xlii (1989), 341–9

C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500-1500 (Cambridge, 1989), 303–5

C. Goldberg: ‘Text, Music, and Liturgy in Johannes Ockeghem’s Masses’, MD, xliv (1990), 185–231

A. Lindmayr: Quellenstudien zu den Motetten von Johannes Ockeghem (Laaber, 1990)

L. Perkins: ‘Ockeghem’s Prenez sur moi: Reflections on Canons, Catholica and Solmization’, MD, xliv (1990), 119–83

D. Randel: ‘Music and Poetry, History and Criticism: Reading the Fifteenth- Century Chanson’, Essays in Musicology: a Tribute to Alvin Johnson, ed. L. Lockwood and E.H. Roesner (Philadelphia, 1990), 52–74

R. Wegman: ‘The Anonymous Mass D’Ung aultre amer: a Late Fifteenth-Century Experiment’, MQ, lxxiv (1990), 566–94

J.M. Raley: ‘Johannes Ockeghem and the Motet Gaude Maria virgo’, AnM, xlvi (1991), 27–55

K. Schweizer: ‘Interpolationen zur Missa prolationum (Ockeghem)’, Dissonance, xxvii (1991), 30–31

D. Fallows: ‘Prenez sur moy: Okeghem’s Tonal Pun’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, i (1992), 63–75

C. Goldberg: ‘Cuiusvis toni: Ansätze zur Analyse einer Messe Johannes Ockeghems’, TVNM, xlii/1 (1992), 3–35

C. Goldberg: Die Chansons Johannes Ockeghems: Ästhetik des musikalischen Raumes (Laaber, 1992)

G. Houle: Introduction to Missa cuiusvis toni (Bloomington, IN, 1992)

D. van Overstraeten: ‘Le lieu de naissance de Jean Ockeghem (ca 1420–1497): Une énigme élucidée’, RBM, xlvi (1992), 23–32

P. Starr: ‘Rome as the Center of the Universe: Papal Grace and Music Patronage’, EMH, xi (1992), 223–62

W. Thein: Musikalischer Satz und Textdarbietung im Werk von Johannes Ockeghem (Tutzing, 1992)

L. Perkins: ‘Modal Strategies in Okeghem’s Missa Cuiusvis Toni’, Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. C. Hatch and D.W. Bernstein (Chicago, 1993), 69–79

L. Bernstein: ‘Ockeghem’s Ave Maria’, From Ciconia to Sweelinck: donum natalicium Willem Elders, ed. A. Clement and E. Jas (Amsterdam, 1994), 75–89.

A. Roth: ‘Anmerkungen zur “Benefizialkarriere” des Johannes Ockeghems’, Collectanea I, ed. A. Roth, Capellae Apostolicae Sixtinaeque Collectanea – Acta – Monumenta, iii (Vatican City, 1994), 97–232

J. van Benthem: ‘“Erratic and Arbitrary” harmonies in Ockeghem’s Missa Cuput?’, Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. U. Günther, L. Finscher and J. Dean (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1996), 247–58

J. Dean: ‘Okeghem’s Attitude towards Modality’, ibid., 203–46

F. Fitch: Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Models (Paris, 1997)

J. Dean: ‘Okeghem’sIntemerata Dei mater’ (forthcoming)

S. Gallagher: ‘After Burgundy: Rethinking Binchois’ Years in Soignies’, Binchois Studies: New York 1995 (forthcoming)

A. Lindmayr: ‘Resiois-toy terre de France/Rex pacificus: An “Ockeghem” Work Reattributed to Busnoys’, Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning and Context in Late Medieval Music (Oxford, forthcoming)

Johannes Ockeghem: Tours 1997

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