Quietly Awaiting Resurrection

Of Flemish background, Ockeghem was born about the year 1430, most probably in Termonde, where a family by the name of Ockeghem was residing at that time. There are myriad spellings of the composer's last name, although nowhere near as many versions, thankfully, as there are of the name Shakespeare. Okeghem, Ockenheim, Hoquegan, Okekem, and Okenghem are also found. Of these variants “Ockenheim” was first used by the Swiss musical theorist Glarean in his Dodekachordon published in 1547, some fifty years after the composer's death. As is often perversely the case with such corruptions of a name, it is the one which for a long time was the “standard” form. “Hoquegan,” the most curious and seemingly most farfetched of the various spellings, is a French phonetic version that appears in a document dated 1454, during the initial years of Ockeghem’s service at the French court.

The earliest documentary evidence of Johannes Ockeghem dates from 1443-1444, when his name appears among the list of the choirboys of the Cathedral in Antwerp. From 1446 through 1448, he was in the service of Duc Charles de Bourbon in Moulins. Beginning in 1449, Ockeghem spent a year or two in the city of Cambrai, where he studied with the justly renowned Guillaume Dufay (1400-1474).

In 1454, Ockeghem became “premier chapelain” at the court of King Charles VII of France, and five years later, when he was about 30, he was appointed additionally to the prestigious position of treasurer at the Abbey of St. Martin in Tours, a job he retained until his death. Ockeghem also continued in the service of the French crown until his death. Like many of the musicians of the period, Ockeghem was adept at holding down two jobs at once. Ockeghem’s name is specifically included among the musicians who performed in the funeral services for King Charles VII, and he continued to work for Charles’ successor Louis XI, the rather evil looking but extremely effective and, for his era, quite benign monarch who figures in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Despite his employment in the Royal Chapel, Ockeghem spent most of his time at Tours, his position as Treasurer of the Abbey of St. Martin having been reconfirmed by Louis XI. Ockeghem probably died late in 1495 or very early in 1496, since on February 9, 1496, his place in the Abbey was filled by a musician named Evrard, reference to Ockeghem's death having been specifically made in the court records.

Ockeghem was one of the foremost teachers of his day, influencing many of the composers who followed him. Certainly the most important of these was the renowned Josquin des Pres, perhaps the best and certainly the most famous of the Netherlandish composers active at the time of Da Vinci and Raphael. Many of des Pres's most startling techniques and formal advances would scarcely have been possible had it not been for the training which he received from Johannes Ockeghem.

Yet, despite the esteem in which he was held during his own lifetime and the regard that his followers had for him, Ockeghem was ignored and in fact ridiculed by succeeding generations. This regrettable occurrence, it is surmised by Cappella Nova’s director Richard Taruskin, was the completely unanticipated and unintentional result of the decision by one of Ockeghem’s most ardent fans, the above- mentioned Swiss theorist Glarean, to single out for particular praise some of Ockeghem’s few “bizarrely ostentatious” pieces which were undoubtedly composed for the rarified amusement of his star pupils and admirers. This group of works include puzzle canons (invariably sloppily and incorrectly solved by Ockeghem’s detractors), a 36 part canon for four nine-part choruses (unfortunately lost), and the Missa cuiusvis toni, an extraordinary tour-de-force that is singable in any mode and therefore is written without the indication of any clefs.

It has only been since the middle of the 19th century and the revival of interest in all things medieval that musicologists have bothered to take a first hand look at Ockeghem’s compositions and thereupon begin to completely revise the general opinion of his output. But, as Maestro Taruskin points out in his liner notes for the Cappella Nova recording of Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum (MHS 4026), “It is a job that remains in progress for, sad to say, Ockeghem’s music remains in part unpublished to this day.”

What is still more lamentable is that so much of Ockeghem’s music has been lost, destroyed during such upheavals as the Imperial invasion of 1527 and the religious unrest that unsettled 16th century France as it did much of the rest of Europe. Ockeghem was of a generation or two too early to benefit from the dissemination of music via the “new” method of printing that was to aid composers like Josquin des Pres.