Ockeghem & Josquin des Prez: Masses - Capella Alamire

The early music 'movement" of the last efforts of instrument builders and players; however, most of the music written before 1600 was primarily vocal in conception. As a result, in the 1960s and '70s, early music ensembles tended to use a great variety of instruments -- sackbuts, shawms, recorders cornetti, and even crumhorns -- in their performances of sacred music of the Renaissance. The old "a cappella” ideal, the norm for the performance of sacred music by Palestrina and Lassus since its revival in the 19th century, was reversed for Franco Flemish composers such as Josquin, Ockeghem, and Obrecht. More recently, there has been a swing back to the a cappella ideal; musicology has been at work, dispelling the idea that the panoply of Renaissance instruments took part in church services at all. The swing continues today, as even the notion of the choir is being questioned in favor of soloists. 

Perhaps the swing away from instrumental use has gone too far, since there are many pieces from the 15th century in which one line of the texture seems well-suited for instrumental performance, or simply ill-suited for vocal performance. Cantus firmus construction abounds in 15th-century music in which one voice stands out from the rest, generally quoting a preexisting melody, often in slower note values. In the L’homme armé Mass by Ockeghem, the notes of the tenor, the cantus firmus-bearing voice, are so few in number that it is not possible to fit the entire text if it were sung. Alejandro Planchart (1981) suggested that the organ and slide trumpet were used in the court of Savoy for such lines in Masses by Dufay and Ockeghem. For our recording of Ockeghem's Mass, we have chosen to use a sackbut, a relative of the modern trombone and a late 15th-century advance on the slide trumpet.