Ockeghem Arion

One year after winning the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music for the fifth album in its series Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, and just one month after releasing the world premiere recording of Cipriano de Rore’s I madrigali a cinque voci, Blue Heron announces the release of the first in a new series of recordings dedicated to the music of Johannes Ockeghem and his contemporaries. Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, vol. 1 is the first of two releases which will present all of Ockeghem’s songs in a complete set; the second is planned for release in 2022. The songs have not been recorded complete since the early 1980s.

Although there are only four securely authentic motets attributed to him, Johannes Ockeghem (c.1420-1497) makes a definite impact on this style. The three settings of standard Marian texts, Alma Redemptoris mater, Ave Maria, and Salve Regina show Ockeghem's amazing array of 4-point counterpoint in what would otherwise be fairly typical settings of the era (aside from the lack of a cantus firmus in Ave Maria, also the one non-antiphon of the group). The massive 5-voice Intemerata Dei Mater uses a composite text, rather than a liturgical one, apparently put together by Ockeghem himself. It has a particularly low scoring, and an even more forceful impact, quoting motives he also used in the 5-voice mass torso Fors seulement and the 4-voice Missa Mi-Mi. Finally, Ut heremita solus is a probable work, surviving without a text, and showing some idiomatic instrumental thinking.

The Franco-Flemish composer, Johannes Ockeghem, sang at Antwerp at the Bourbon court before joining the French royal chapel in 1451. Ockeghem spent most of his professional life at the French chapel and his output was quite prolific. He composed 14 settings of the Mass, including one of the earliest polyphonic versions of the Requiem. Ockeghem also composed numerous motets and secular songs. He was one of the most original voices in early Renaissance polyphony and his music dazzles with its ingenuity and beauty.

For a long time Johannes Ockeghem (ca.1420-1497) was one of the most famous Unknown Persons in music history. There is no doubt about his position as the most important representative of the second generation of Franco-Flemish composers.

Intimacy, intensity, passion this album explores the unfamiliar idea that fifteenth-century songs might cause us to sigh, weep, or laugh out loud. In bringing to life a world in which crying in public was not just acceptable but required, we have to take seriously the crushing despair of a line like My only sorrow is that I am not dead, or the undisguised sarcasm of This is how she chopped and cooked me up. In Johannes Ockeghem's (d. 1497) roughly two-dozen songs we find not only unparalleled compositional prowess, but feelings that range from happiness to loss, anger to despair, and bitterness to merriment. The album's all-vocal, fully texted, close-mic'd performances are rooted in a flexible, full-blooded vocal technique that aims to capture the music's technical brilliance and emotional depth.

La Main Harmonique was founded to promote mediaeval and Renaissance music. The term refers to a mnemonic device which takes its name from the early theoretician, Guido d'Arezzo. One starts by feeling encouraged that yet another small, independent, group is dedicated to furthering polyphonic and solo music from the period. It doesn't take very long for that encouragement to be justified. Theirs is singing of great poise, delicacy and precision as they work their way sensitively through small-scale works from the courts of the Château de Moulins and Duke of Bourbon during the reigns of Anne and Pierre II of Beaujeu in the later fifteenth century.

On Naxos the soaring opening Ave Maria, gloriously sung, immediately sets the seal on the inspirational power of Ockeghem’s music. It is followed by the plainchant, Alma redemptoris Mater, and they its polyphonic setting, simple and flowing and harmonically rich. The robust ballad, L’Homme armé, follows (‘The armed man must be feared’), sounding vigorously jolly, like a carol. It must have been hugely popular in its day since so many composers used it as a basis for a Mass. While the polyphony in the Gloria and Credo moves onward inventively, the work’s dramatic and emotional peak is readily found in the extended Sanctus (by far the longest section) and resolved in the sublime melancholy of the Agnus Dei.

Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497) stands as perhaps the greatest of the Franco-Flemish composers of the 15th century. Digitally recorded in 1992, this disc presents a world-premiere release of his two surviving 3-voice masses; Missa Sine Nomine and Missa Quinti Toni. They are presumably early works by the composer and are among his most masterful creations. Complete program notes on the works and general issues of performance practice, along with the mass texts and translations, are enclosed. Produced by Gerald Gold.