Ockeghem: Prince of Music - Cappella Nova, Richard Taruskin, director

CAPPELLA NOVA PRINCE OF MUSIC liner notes

Johannes Ockeghem (d. 1497) was the greatest musician of the late 15th century. On this judgment both the modern historian and the composer's contemporaries concur, for no one enjoyed greater prestige among practitioners, patrons and students of music in the Renaissance. To Desiderius Erasmus, the greatest of the northern humanists, Ockeghem was "Prince of Music.'" To Antoine Busnois, foremost composer at the court of Burgundy, he was to be compared only with Pythagoras, the legendary inventor of the art. To a whole generation of Netherlandish musicians--Josquin, Brumel. La Rue, Compere, Agricola, Ghiselin, Prioris and Gaspar van Weerbecke--he was the 'Maistre et bon Pere,' perhaps in some cases actually their teacher, certainly to all of them a model. To three successive French kings of the house of Valois--Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VII--he gave over forty years' service not only as choirmaster but as chaplain, and for 35 of those years he was concurrently treasurer of the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours. Ockeghem may have been the pupil of the Burgundian court musician Gilles Binchois (d. 1460), upon whose death he composed a deploration, or lament. He knew and may even have influenced his senior, the great Guillaume Dufay (d. 1474). And in a spirit of friendly rivalry with Busnois, he may have been the initiator of the centuries-long tradition of composing Masses on the French popular tune L 'Homme Armné.