Jacquet of Mantua: Missa Surge Petre & motets - The Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice

Jacquet of Mantua (1483-1559) Missa Surge Petre and motets The Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice (conductor) Recorded at Church of St Michael and All Angels) Summertown, Oxford, 2014 Booklet includes texts and translations

Surge Petre [9:16] Missa Surge Petre [32:54] Ave Maria a 3 [2:29] O vos omnes [10:44] In illo tempore … Non turbetur [8:02] O pulcherrima inter mulieres [2:56] Domine, non secundum peccata nostra [10:12]

Both the Missa Surge Petre and Jacquet’s own motet on which it is based (the latter published by the Parisian printer Pierre Attaingnant in 1535) are scored for six voices. Perhaps this unusually sumptuous scoring reflected the dedication of Mantua Cathedral to St Peter: one can well imagine either piece being performed at patronal festivals there. According to its printed source (Paris: Le Roy and Ballard, 1557), the Mass divides the Altus voice as well as the Bassus, but in reality Le Roy and Ballard’s Secundus Altus has the same range, if a slightly higher tessitura, than the Tenor, meaning that the motet and Mass are both effectively scored SATTBB. As is customary in the genre of the imitation or ‘parody’ Mass, the composer takes themes from the motet as structural points for imitation throughout the cycle. The opening motif from the motet, which illustrates the text ‘Arise Peter’ with an upward leap of a fourth or fifth, provides the initial material for four out of the five Mass movements, almost conforming to the ‘head motif’ principle of Mass organization dating back to the previous century. The Sanctus, however, adopts instead a melody based on the final theme of the motet ‘claves regni caelorum’ (‘the keys to the kingdom of heaven’), which is placed against the rising fifth of ‘Surge Petre’ in the bass part. Moreover, Jacquet’s treatment of the motet material is more subtle and varied than that of his fifteenth-century predecessors. None follows the precise order of entries of the motet, nor do the voices ever enter at the same temporal distance. Jacquet thus recreates the imitative nexus of the polyphony anew in each Mass movement, while preserving a strong feeling of unity between all of the movements and the model.

Other melodic elements of the motet which reappear in the Mass include the opening of the secunda pars, ‘Si diligis me, Simon Petre’ (‘If you love me, Simon Peter’), which is used at the ‘Et in Spiritum Sanctum’ (‘And in the Holy Spirit’) section of the Credo, and most tellingly at the final section of the Agnus Dei, in both cases making use of the motet material’s gentler feeling to contrast with the generally more forceful opening material. The setting of the name ‘Simon Petre’ with the two highest voices rising in thirds is particularly beautiful, and is heard again at the very end of the Mass, to the phrase ‘dona nobis’. As mentioned, the ‘claves regni’ motif begins the Sanctus, though in a version significantly altered such that the triumphant syncopations of the original motif are transformed into quiet rejoicing.

Jacquet based five of his Mass settings on his own motets, retaining in each case the same number of voices between model and Mass (in contrast to the practice of Gombert, who generally reduced the voice count by one, for instance in his Mass/motet pairs Beati omnes a5/Missa Beati omnes a4 and Media vita a6/Missa Media vita a5). All Jacquet’s other Masses, in common with the great majority of his works generally, are for five voices.

--from notes by Stephen Rice

You can read full Stephen Rice's Programme Notes here

---

From MusicWeb Review:

This is a real discovery. Jacquet or Jachet of Mantua is almost unknown, though John Milson in an article in the ‘Oxford Companion to Music’ names him as one of the most important composers of church music in the generation before Lassus and Palestrina. Palestrina employed at least two of Jacquet’s motets as the basis for his own masses: Aspice Domine and Salvum me fac. He seems to have failed to gain due recognition because he was confused with his contemporary Jacquet de Berchem, to whom In illo tempore (track 9) has also been attributed.

To the best of my knowledge everything here is receiving its first recording. Certainly there are no other recordings dedicated wholly to Jacquet’s music in the current UK catalogue, although there was a Calliope recording of his Lamentations, performed by the eponymous Ensemble Jachet de Mantoue, in 2003. His 6-part Dixit Dominus and 4-part Lætatus sum and Nisi Dominus, all in collaboration with Adrian Willaert, feature on a very fine Ricercar recording of Willaert’s Vespers for the Virgin Mary (RIC325 – review and DL Roundup September 2012/2).

The 6-part Missa Surge Petre is a parody mass based on Jacquet’s own motet of that name, also in six parts, a performance of which opens the proceedings. There are five other such parody masses: if they are all as fine as this, I very much hope that someone, perhaps Hyperion, will give us more, though half of them have not yet been edited. In order for that to happen it would first be necessary for this recording to sell like hot cakes. If that sounds as if I’m plugging it, I am, though my interest in doing so is purely on altruistic and artistic grounds.

The motet and mass are particularly sumptuous works, perhaps because they both relate to Saint Peter, the patron saint of Mantua Cathedral where Jacquet was first a singer from around 1526, then maestro di cappella. The text of the motet is a conflation of passages from Acts – Peter’s escape from prison following an earthquake, the epistle for the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul – and Jesus’s words to him in the Gospels. The treatment is luxurious rather than dramatic: though by no means divorced from the meaning, like most settings before the reformation and counter-reformation, the music takes precedent over the words. Especially in the six-part settings on this recordings, it’s by no means easy to distinguish the words anyway.

Nor does Jacquet’s Passiontide motet O vos omnes attain the sheer power of Gesualdo’s setting of those words, but few works from this period can match the passion of Gesualdo. It is, however, as befits the occasion, a much sparer work than Missa Surge Petre, in four parts only, and it would certainly be effective as sung in Mantua Cathedral during the Reproaches on Good Friday.

The following In illo tempore also makes its effect economically. More economic still are the two works on texts connected with the Virgin Mary: Ave Maria and O pulcherrima inter mulieres, the latter taken from the Song of Songs where the poetic outpourings of two lovers have been interpreted as Jesus and his Church or Jesus and Mary. Both of these three-part works are sung by sopranos and altos only, two upper parts and one lower, with a restricted vocal range and sounding appropriately ethereal rather than sumptuous.

Another six-part work rounds off the programme but here again the style is quite different from both the sumptuousness of the Mass and the ethereal nature of the Marian texts. This text for Ash Wednesday asks God to forgive our sins and judge us not on merit but according to His mercy. The setting, though dense, is appropriately earthbound, wearing metaphoric sackcloth and ashes. Two decades before the time that Jacquet composed this work, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther had pinned his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, one of which asserts that the whole life of a Christian should be one of penitence. I’m sure that Luther would have approved of this motet, though the music does rise in line with the hopeful prayer of the last third of the text.

The performances are all that we have come to expect of The Brabant Ensemble and Stephen Rice. Inevitably in such elaborate unaccompanied music the tone slips occasionally but not so that you would notice – I didn’t, but a few listeners with absolute pitch may. That apart, only those who insist on all-male performances of music of this period will object. Again, though I would like to hear a male choir such as Christ Church Oxford – Nimbus, perhaps – or Westminster Cathedral record some of Jacquet’s music, I would also very much like to hear some more from this source.