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The ''Missa prolationum'' is a musical setting of the
Ordinary of the Mass The ordinary, in Roman Catholic and other Western Christian liturgies, refers to the part of the Mass or of the canonical hours that is reasonably constant without regard to the date on which the service is performed. It is contrasted to the ''pr ...
by
Johannes Ockeghem Johannes Ockeghem ( – 6 February 1497) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of early Renaissance music. Ockeghem was the most influential European composer in the period between Guillaume Du Fay and Josquin des Prez, and he was—with hi ...
, dating from the second half of the 15th century. Based on freely written material probably composed by Ockeghem himself, and consisting entirely of mensuration canons, it has been called "perhaps the most extraordinary
contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
achievement of the fifteenth century", and was possibly the first multi-part work written with a unifying canonic principle for all its movements.


Music

The mass is for four voices, and is in the usual parts: #
Kyrie Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek , vocative case of (''Kyrios''), is a common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, also called the Kyrie eleison ( ; ). In the Bible The prayer, "Kyrie, eleison," "Lord, have mercy" derives f ...
# Gloria #
Credo In Christian liturgy, the credo (; Latin for "I believe") is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed – or its shorter version, the Apostles' Creed – in the Mass, either as a prayer, a spoken text, or sung as Gregorian chant or other musical sett ...
#
Sanctus The Sanctus ( la, Sanctus, "Holy") is a hymn in Christian liturgy. It may also be called the ''epinikios hymnos'' ( el, ἐπινίκιος ὕμνος, "Hymn of Victory") when referring to the Greek rendition. In Western Christianity, th ...
and
Benedictus Benedictus may refer to: Music * Benedictus (Song of Zechariah), ''Benedictus'' (''Song of Zechariah''), the canticle sung at Lauds, also called the Canticle of Zachary * The second part of the Sanctus, part of the Eucharistic prayer * Benedictus ...
#
Agnus Dei is the Latin name under which the " Lamb of God" is honoured within the Catholic Mass and other Christian liturgies descending from the Latin liturgical tradition. It is the name given to a specific prayer that occurs in these liturgies, and ...
(in three sections: I, II, III) A typical performance takes 30 to 35 minutes. Like
Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pre ...
's "Missa Repleatur os meum" (Third Book of Masses, 1570) and the canons of
J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...
's ''
Goldberg Variations The ''Goldberg Variations'', BWV 988, is a musical composition for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, it is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may also hav ...
'' more than two centuries later, the ''Missa prolationum'' uses progressive canon in all its movements. Most of the movements feature pairs of mensuration canons. The interval separating the two voices in each canon grows successively in each consecutive movement, beginning at the unison, proceeding to the second, then the third, and so forth, reaching the octave at the "Osanna" section in the
Sanctus The Sanctus ( la, Sanctus, "Holy") is a hymn in Christian liturgy. It may also be called the ''epinikios hymnos'' ( el, ἐπινίκιος ὕμνος, "Hymn of Victory") when referring to the Greek rendition. In Western Christianity, th ...
. The four voices each sing in a different mensuration. For instance, in the first "Kyrie", the four voices sing in the meters 2/2, 3/2, 6/4, and 9/4 respectively (in modern notation). Thus, the second voice, in 3/2, sings the same tune as the first voice, in 2/2, but half again as slowly, so the voices gradually pull apart. The same occurs between the second pair of voices, in 6/4 and 9/4 respectively. In the score, only one voice was written out for each canon, with the mensuration marks (approximately equivalent to a modern
time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note va ...
) given alongside, so the singers would understand that they are to sing in those proportions, and thus at different speeds; in addition, the intervals between the voices are given in the score by the positions of the C clefs. What has so astonished musicians and listeners from Ockeghem's age to the present day is that he was able to accomplish this extraordinarily difficult feat. Ockeghem was the first composer of canons at the second, third, sixth, and seventh (the "imperfect" intervals), and the ''Missa prolationum'' may have been the first work to employ them. Its format, with the interval of
imitation Imitation (from Latin ''imitatio'', "a copying, imitation") is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our culture. ...
expanding from the unison up to the octave, was used by Bach in the ''Goldberg Variations'', but it is not known whether Bach knew Ockeghem's work (which was generally unavailable in the 18th century). Another unusual feature of this mass is that the melodies used for its canons were all apparently freely composed; none have been identified as from other sources. In Ockeghem's time, composers usually built masses on preexisting tunes such as
Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainsong, plainchant, a form of monophony, monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek (language), Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed ma ...
or even popular songs.


Source and dating

There are two sources preserving the mass. One is the Chigi Codex (f.106v to 114r), which was copied for
Philip I of Castile Philip the Handsome, es, Felipe, french: Philippe, nl, Filips (22 July 1478 – 25 September 1506), also called the Fair, was ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands and titular Duke of Burgundy from 1482 to 1506, as well as the first Habsburg K ...
sometime between 1498 and 1503, shortly after Ockeghem's death. The other is the Vienna manuscript (Wien,
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek The Austrian National Library (german: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) is the largest library in Austria, with more than 12 million items in its various collections. The library is located in the Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg in center of Vi ...
, Handschriftensammlung, MS 11883, f.208r to 221r). The ''Missa prolationum'''s exact date of composition is not known, and there is no evidence other than what can be inferred from its internal characteristics, or from a comparison with other Ockeghem works that have tentative dates (Ockeghem's output is notoriously resistant to precise dating, even for a composer of the
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
; not only did he have an unusually long career, possibly spanning 60 active years as a composer, but there are few records tying specific pieces to events). No dates more precise than "mid-15th century" or "second half of 15th century" have been established for this piece.Mann/Wilson/Urquhart, Canon, Grove online


Notes


References

* Leeman Perkins, "Johannes Ockeghem." ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. London, Macmillan, 1980. (20 vol.) . * Leeman Perkins, "Johannes Ockeghem." Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 31, 2007)
(subscription access)
* Alfred Mann, J. Kenneth Wilson, Peter Urquhart, "Canon." Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 31, 2007)
(subscription access)
*
Lewis Lockwood Lewis H. Lockwood (born December 16, 1930) is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postw ...
, Andrew Kirkman, "Mass." Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 31, 2007)
(subscription access)
* Allan W. Atlas, ''Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe, 1400–1600.'' New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
Edition
of this mass on the site of Goldberg Stiftung


External links


Scores of the Missa Prolationum at IMSLP
{{Authority control Compositions by Johannes Ockeghem Renaissance music Masses (music)