Transcript CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 24
MUSIC IN THREE GERMAN CITIES:
THE PROTESTANT-CATHOLIC
CONFRONTATION
During the late Middle Ages and
Renaissance, German-speaking
lands belonged to a loose
confederation of two hundred
principalities and city-states called
the Holy Roman Empire. It
included members of the Roman
Catholic faith and, after the advent
of Protestantism, the Lutheran and
Calvinist faiths as well.
EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I
• During the early years of the sixteenth century the
spirit of the Renaissance belatedly arrived in
German speaking lands during the rule of Emperor
Maximilian I (1459-1519). Maximilian effectively
governed disparate lands that extended from the
English Channel to Hungary, and he was a great
patron of music.
Emperor Maximilian I stands in the music room of his
court surrounded by musicians and musical instruments
This woodcut by Hans Burgkmair the Elder was executed in about 1514.
INNSBRUCH, AUSTRIA
• The beautiful Alpine city of Innsbruch, along with
Augsburg and Vienna, served as one of three
centers of government from which Emperor
Maximilian governed his far-flung lands. At
Innsbruch Maximilian installed his Hofkapelle
(German for “court chapel”).
• To Innsbruch Maximilian lured the illustrious
composer Heinrich Isaac in 1496.
HEINRICH ISAAC AND THE TENORLIED
• Heinrich Isaac’s frequent travels to and from
Innsbruch apparently caused him to set in
polyphony the beautiful tune Innsbruch, ich muss
dich lassen (Innsbruck, I must now leave you).
Indeed he did so twice, once as a Tenorlied (a
polyphonic song with a pre-existing tune in the
tenor) and then again with the beloved tune in the
cantus.
The beginning of Heinrich Isaac’s setting of Innsbruch, ich muss dich
lassen with the tune in the tenor thereby forming a Tenorlied.
The beginning of Heinrich Isaac’s setting of Innsbruch, ich muss dich
lassen with the tune in the cantus.
PAUL HOFHAIMER
• Also based in Innsbruck with the imperial court was
organist Paul Hofhaimer (1459-1537). His
arrangement of the antiphon Salve, Regina for
organ makes use of alternatim technique—the
verses of the text are alternately assigned to the
organ to play polyphonically and then to voices to
chant monophony.
The beginning of Paul Hofhaimer’s setting of the antiphon Salve,
Regina with the chant set as a cantus firmus in the range of the tenor
voice.
MUSIC IN AUGSBURG
• Situated two hundred miles to the north of
Innsbruck, Austria, is Augsburg, Germany, a citystate that became predominantly Protestant. It
was here that the Diet (or Reichstag; the imperial
legislature) often met, and for this reason Emperor
Maximilian I was frequently in residence in
Augsburg.
Emperor Maximilian I hears Mass in his
chapel at Augsburg around 1518
In the center right,
Maximilian kneels in
prayer; in the lower right,
the singers of the
Hofkappelle group before
a large music manuscript;
and to the left seated at
the organ, is imperial
court organist Paul
Hofhaimer.
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
• The Protestant Reformation was led by Martin
Luther (1483-1546). On October 31, 1517, Luther
nailed his Ninety-five Theses (objections to
current church practices) to the door of the castle
church in Wittenberg, Germany.
LUTHER OBJECTED TO THE FOLLOWING
ASPECTS OF CATHOLICISM
• The selling of indulgences—a forgiveness of sin sold by the
church with the promise that the buyer, and members of his
family, might thereby spend less time in Purgatory after death
• The selling of church services (such as last rites and funeral
services)
• The selling of church offices to the highest bidder
• The excessive veneration of saints, which was seen as idolatry
• The growth of religious holidays, especially saints’ days, on
which commercial activity could not take place
• The use of writings other than the Bible (medieval legends of
the saints, for example) as sources of religious truth
• The insistence that leaders of the church remain celibate
(unmarried)
• The existence of monks and nuns and thus monasteries and
convents
HOW LUTHER CHANGED THE LITURGY OF THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH TO MAKE IT DISTINCTLY LUTHERAN
• The Mass and the canonical hours were reduced to
just the Mass and an evening service
• The vernacular language was allowed to replace
Latin within the service
• The congregation, and not just the trained choir,
was expected to sing during the service
• The Gloria of the Mass was omitted
• Simple hymns replaced several parts of the Proper
of the Mass
• Sermons were regularly preached at both Mass and
the evening service
THE CHORALE TUNE
• To provide a body of melodies to serve the worship of
the new Protestant church, Martin Luther instituted
the chorale, a monophonic spiritual melody, or
religious folksong, what many Christian denominations
today would call a “hymn.” Luther derived chorales
from three sources:
– 1) his own musical invention
– 2) from popular tunes, substituting religious words for
the previously profane text
– 3) from existing Gregorian chants, substituting German
texts for the older Latin ones.
• Transforming a secular tune into sacred one (or vice
versa) is called making a contrafactum (pl.
contrafacta).
Martin Luther’s newly composed chorale Ein feste
Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress is Our God)
THE TEXT OF LUTHER’S
EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
A
Ein gute Wehr und Waffen.
Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not
A
Die uns jetzt hat betroffen.
Der alte böse Feind
B
Mit Ernst er’s jetzt meint,
Gross Macht und viel List
Sein grausam Rüstig ist,
Auf Erd’ ist nicht seins Gleichen
A mighty fortress is our God
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper he amid the flood
Our mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Does seek to work us woe,
His craft and power are great
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
JOHANN WALTER’S
GEISTLICH GESANGBÜCHLEIN
• To spread the new music among the Protestants,
Luther encouraged his colleague Johann Walter
(1496-1570) to publish a hymnal with chorale tunes
set in polyphony. In 1524 Walter issued his
Geistliche Gesangbüchlein (Little Book of
Spiritual Songs), a collection of thirty-eight
Protestant hymns and five Latin motets, to which
other hymn settings were added in subsequent
editions.
MUSIC AT THE COURT OF MUNICH
• Innsbruck remained steadfastly Catholic; Augsburg
became a stronghold of Lutheranism, while Munich,
Germany, found itself somewhere in the middle,
both in terms of religion and geography (see SLIDE
24.1). In the 1560s the leader of the Munich court
chapel, Ludwig Daser, was a Protestant; its
foremost composer, Orlande de Lassus, was a
Catholic; and the leader of the court, Duke Albrecht
V, vacillated between the two religions, ultimately
siding with the Catholics.
ORLANDE DE LASSUS
• Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594) was the most
famous composer of the sixteenth century—
certainly more of his works were published in
Europe than those of any other musician. Lasso
was born in the Low Countries south of Brussels
and in 1558 was recruited to serve in the chapel of
Duke Albrecht of Bavaria, where he remained until
his death. Lasso wrote over 2,000 works of every
current genre, including more than 1,000 motets.
The banquet hall built by
Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria
Lassus is seated at the
harpsichord and behind
and around him are the
instrumentalists of the
court and the chapel
singers.
LASSUS’S PENITENTIAL PSALMS
• The Penitential Psalms were seven particular
remorseful psalms that had been thought of as a
unit for more than a thousand years in Lassus’s
day. Yet Lassus was the first composer in the
history of music to set all seven of the Penitential
Psalms as a group.
LASSUS’S DE PROFUNDIS
• In the sixth of the seven Penitential Palms (Psalm
129) the anguished soul cries out to the Lord from
its depths: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine:
Domine, exaudi vocem meam (From the depths I
cried to you, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice). Each of
the ten verses of this psalm receives its own
polyphonic setting, but they are unified because all
make use of a single psalm tone.
The beginning of Lassus’s Penitential Psalm 129 (De
profundis) with the psalm tone in the tenor voice
Notice the bass line as it falls to the depths of that voice and then
rises back up.
The soprano and bass parts of Lassus’s De profundis
in a sumptuous manuscript produced for the Munich court about 1560
The illustrations
accompanying the music
depict events in the lives of
the heroes of the Christian
biblical history. Lassus’s
esoteric music preserved in
this manuscript was kept as
the private preserve of Duke
Albrecht. Members of the
Munich court called it
musica reservata, textsensitive music reserved for a
small circle of connoisseurs.
THE GENEVA PSALTER
• Some extreme branches of Protestantism banned
all music from the church. Protestant reformer
John Calvin (1509-1564), founder of what is still
called Calvinism, allowed music in the sanctuary,
but limited it exclusively to psalm singing. Calvin
published what is called The Geneva Psalter
(1539 and revised 1551), named after the city in
which the Frenchman Calvin had taken refuge. It
contains a translation into rhyming French verse
of all 150 psalms. Many of the psalms were
supplied with simple melodies that might serve
several different psalms.
A French psalm tune composed
by Louis Bourgeois (c1510-c1560)
When the Geneva Psalter was translated two decades later into
English to serve those of the Puritan faith Louis Bourgeois’s melody
was used to accompany Psalm 100 and it is still known to the Englishspeaking world as “Old Hundreth” (All people that on earth do dwell).