Music for Charles V
 

Chapelle du Roi
directed by Alistair Dixon

Programme

The millennium year of 2000 saw the 500th anniversary of the birth of one of Europe’s most notable leaders, Charles V (1500-1558). Elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519 and inheritor of the Burgundian lands and the Spanish crown, Charles was the son of Philip of Burgundy and Joanna the Mad, and grandson of the great Maximilian I. Over the course of the first twenty years of his life he inherited realms and kingdoms from his relatives such that by 1520 he was undoubtedly the most powerful man in Europe. Charles sought to become leader of a universal Catholic empire, but during his reign he faced three major problems: the Protestant Reformation in Germany; the conflict with King Francis I of France, particularly for supremacy in Italy; and the advance of the Ottoman Turks.

From his accession as Duke of Burgundy in 1515, Charles maintained a chapel served by a musical establishment, modelled closely on the famous Burgundian chapel of his forebears. This chapel employed some of the most notable composers of the period. Of these, most attention has been devoted to Nicolas Gombert, who left the chapel in about 1538, but the later composers are now beginning to receive their musical and scholarly due. Most prominent among them is Thomas Crecquillon, master of the chapel from 1540 until about 1545, when he became court composer.

Closely identified with the order of the Golden Fleece which gave rise to the L’homme armé tradition, Charles V was said to have a musical ear and a great deal of music survives that is associated directly with him and his patronage.

On this disc we present a selection of music which spans Charles’s life and reign, from his early teenage years to his death in 1558.

The Order of the Golden Fleece

The chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece was founded in 1430 by Philip the Good and the members met periodically to undertake their ceremonies and institute new members. The Order evidently commissioned musical settings, among which those based upon the song L’homme armé are particularly noted. The song is surrounded by uncertainty. It is not clear whether it is a tune in its own right or whether it was conceived as the tenor part in a chanson. Was it, as suggested by Pietro Aaron in 1523, written by Anthoine Busnoys (c.1430-1492), a composer of one of the first mass settings based on it, or do we accept it as anonymous?

The clear military theme points towards the great preoccupation of Charles and the western world since the fall of Constantinople: the threat from the Turks. The idea of the Church of Christ arming itself against the enemy dates back to the crusades, and we can easily see how appealing it must have been in the 15th and 16th centuries to celebrate the liturgy with metaphorically ‘armed’ music—essentially sacred battle songs. Musically speaking, it is equally easy to see how the tune L’homme armé, with its flowing line and engaging rhythmic points, makes an ideal cantus firmus or model for a musical setting. Many of the major composers of the Renaissance period composed settings of the mass on the L’homme armé tune; it was evidently an important rite of passage for composers in establishing their reputation.

The Imperial Wedding

The five-part Missa L’homme armé, by the great Spanish composer Cristóbal de Morales (who shares Charles’s birth year of 1500 and died in 1553) has an uncertain provenance. Its elaborate construction and other stylistic characteristics point towards it being an early work. Alison McFarland, the Morales authority, has suggested that the work could have been written as an offering for Charles’ wedding to his bride Isabella of Portugal.

If this was Morales’ intention he was thwarted by the eventual circumstances surrounding the ceremony. Charles and Isabella were married in Seville on Saturday 10th March, 1526, the fourth weekend in Lent! Ordinarily a marriage in the penitential season was forbidden and it appears that the Holy Roman Emperor only gained permission by agreeing to a ceremony at 1.00am with plainchant as the only musical accompaniment.

Throughout the movements of the mass the L’homme armé tune is dominant, being used as a head motif and in places as a cantus firmus. Morales uses a variety of textures, reducing the number of voices to three for certain passages, and in the final petition of the Agnus Dei increasing the texture to a luxurious six parts.

Surrounding Morales’ polyphony are four of the plainchant Propers from the feast of the Holy Trinity which would have been used had the marriage been held at a more conventional time of the church year.

When travelling to Barcelona in 1519 Charles received news of the death of his grandfather Maximilian of Austria. Within the space of a few days Charles observed the obsequies for Maximilian and held a meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece. There is reason to suggest that part of the famous manuscript Barcelona M454 was copied for this meeting, and it yields a rich repertory of music by international composers. The list is dominated by Netherlanders, many of whom wrote L’homme armé mass settings. The most illustrious name is that of Josquin with his stunning four-part setting of an Ave Maria text. Josquin demonstrates supreme skill in managing the vocal textures: two-voice sections alternate between the higher and lower parts but despite this economy he manages to create a most lustrous texture.

In Barcelona Charles was chosen Holy Roman Emperor to succeed his grandfather, and in 1520 he departed for Germany.

Much of Charles’s reign was taken up with fighting within Europe, particularly with Francis I of France over possession of Italy. Gombert's setting of Qui colis Ausoniam was written for the 1533 treaty between the Pope, Charles and the Italian rulers. Although it subsequently turned out to be short-lived, the subsequent truce with Francis in 1538 was a further cause for great celebration. At the request of his employer, Pope Paul III, Morales wrote Jubilate Deo, an expansive six-voice motet. It employs a canon in the tenor part and, despite the specific nature of the text, the motet was popular well into the latter half of the century, appearing in at least two prints. Certainly it must have been in circulation when Victoria, a later Spaniard in Rome, chanced upon it and composed a mass, the Missa Gaudeamus, using Morales’s material as a starting point.

The lavish provision for music in 16th-century royal courts was not just a matter of taste, but a public display which went to the heart of the role of royalty. Unsurprisingly, the music composed for rulers frequently mixed the heavenly with the secular. Considering the very fine corpus of his surviving music, Charles’s court composer Thomas Crecquillon is greatly underrated today and, furthermore, has suffered from a number of misattributions of his music to composers such as Morales and Clemens non Papa. However, Crecquillon’s music was particularly appreciated by Charles, who referred to him as ‘the truest Orpheus of the age’.

At the very beginning of 1546 another great meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece took place at Utrecht, attended, among others, by Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. Records of the occasion show how sumptuous an event it must have been, with ceremonial services and lavish banquets. It seems certain that Crecquillon’s fine eight-part motet Andreas Christi famulus, addressed to the patron saint of the Order, must have been written for the occasion.

By the 1550s Charles’s reign was nearing an end, but the young composer Orlandus Lassus was still at the start of his career and seeking preferment. Lassus evidently had hopes of joining Charles’s prestigious Capilla Flamenca, for in the secular and ‘political’ motet Heroum soboles he addresses Charles directly. Alas, he was not successful, but Charles’s minister, Bishop Granvelle of Arras (later archbishop of Mechelen), to whom Lassus had sent the motet, included it in his first collection Il primo libro de motetti, and thus helped Lassus secure his position at the court of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria—a musical establishment that was no less magnificent.

Charles’s abdication and his ‘official’ retirement in 1556 were hardly under circumstances of the greatest glory. He had manifestly failed in his attempt to bring the Protestants back into the Roman Catholic church and, by dividing his empire and passing it to Philip, his son and Ferdinand, his brother, he failed in his attempt to create a unified, Catholic, Europe.

If his last two years of life in retirement were troubled by these thoughts then perhaps it is not too fanciful to imagine that death came as a welcome relief? His obsequies were held throughout the Empire, and Don Fernando de las Infantas, a courtier of Charles’s son Phillip II of Spain, wrote a setting of Parce mihi Domine, the best-known of the texts from Matins pro defunctis.

Alistair Dixon, March 2004

Texts and Translations

[1] Cantus: L’homme armé

L’homme armé doibt on doubter
On a fait partout crier
Que chascun se viegne armer
D’un haubregon de fer.

The armed man should be feared
Everywhere it has been proclaimed
That each man should arm himself
With a habergeon of iron.

[2] Introit: Benedicta sit sancta

Benedicta sit sancta trinitas atque indivisa unitas: confitebimur ei: quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.

Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum Sancto Spiritu: laudemus et super exaltemus eum in secula.

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto: sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper: et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Blessed be the Holy Trinity and undivided unity: we will give glory to him because he has shown his mercy to us.

Let us bless the Father and the Son with the Holy Ghost: let us praise him and exalt him above all forever.

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost: as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be: world without end Amen.

[3] Kyrie

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

Lord have mercy upon us.
Christ have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.

[4] Gloria

Gloria in excelsis Deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. Domine Deus, rex coelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.

Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.

Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu, in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.

Glory be to God on high, and in earth peace, towards men of goodwill. We praise thee. We bless thee. We worship thee. We glorify thee. We give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly king, God the Father almighty.

O Lord, the only-begotten Son Jesu Christ; O Lord God, lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.

For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

[5] Credo

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terre, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum: et ex Patre natum ante omnia secula. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem patri per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria virgine: et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato. Passus, et sepultus est.

Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum scripturas, et ascendit in celum, sedet ad dexteram Patris.

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi seculi. Amen.

I believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds. God of God, light of light, very God of very God. Begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary; and was made man. And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.

And I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

[6] Alleluia: Qualis Pater

Alleluia. Qualis Pater: talis Filius: talis est Spiritus Sanctus.

Alleluia. What the Father is, the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is.

[7] Offertory: Benedictus sit Deus

Benedictus sit Deus Pater unigenitusque Dei Filius sanctus quoque Spiritus: quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.

Blessed be God the Father and the only begotten Son of God and the Holy Spirit; because he has shown his mercy upon us.

[8] Sanctus

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis.

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest.

[9] Benedictus

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis.

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

[10] Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

[11] Communion: Benedicimus Deum

Benedicimus deum caeli, et coram omnibus viventibus confitebimur ei: quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.

We bless the God of heaven and will praise him in the sight of all that live; because he has shown his mercy upon us.

[12] Ave Maria

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum virgo serena.
Ave coelorum Domina, Maria plena gratia, coelestia, terrestria, mundum replens laeticia.
Ave cuius nativitas nostra fuit solemnitas, ut lucifer lux oriens, verum solem praeveniens.
Ave pia humilitas, sine viro foecunditas, cuius annunciatio, nostra fuit salvatio.
Ave vera virginitas, immaculata castitas, cuius purificatio nostra fuit purgatio.
Ave praeclara omnibus angelicis virtutibus,  cuius fuit assumptio nostra glorificatio.
O mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.

Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee, O virgin serene. Hail, mistress of the heavens, Mary, full of grace. Thou fillest the heavens and earth, the whole world with joy.
Hail, thou whose birth was as a feast for us,  light rising like the morning star, preceding the true sun.
Hail, O holy humility and fertility without a man, whose annunciation was our salvation.
Hail, true virginity, immaculate chastity,  whose purification was our purgation.
Hail, thou who art illustrious with all the qualities of angels, whose assumption was our glorification.
O mother of God, remember me. Amen.

[13] Qui colis Ausoniam

Qui colis Ausoniam glebae felicis arator
qua Bacchi et Cereris munera sponte fluunt,
qui toties fatis genuisti pressus iniquis
orbe alio assidue dum novus hostis adest,
pone aras, accende focos, pia thura cremato
gaudia vox lytui cornua sistra sonent.

Perpetuum Clemens foedus cum Caesare pacis
sanciit ut fessae ferret opem patriae,
bifrontisque dei Iani conclusit in aede,
tranquillo aeternum regnet ut haec Latio.
Quam Caroli sanctique patris concordia corda!
Quam bene nunc gemino tutus es imperio!

Thou that dwellest in Italy, tiller of fertile soil,
where the gifts of Bacchus and Ceres flow of their own accord,
who hast so often groaned oppressed by unjust Fates,
while the new enemy threatens unremittingly from another continent, set up your altars;
light your fires; burn the pious incense;
and let voice, trumpets, horns and bells resound your joys.

Clement has ratified this perpetual treaty of peace with Caesar
to bring aid to his exhausted land,
and has concluded it in the temple of the two-faced god Janus,
that this peace may reign for ever in tranquil Latium.
How concordant are the hearts of Charles and the holy father!
How truly safe you are now under their twin rule!

[14] Jubilate Deo

Jubilate Deo, omnis terra, cantate omnes, jubilate et psallite quoniam, suadente Paulo, Carolus et Franciscus, principes terrae, convenerunt in unum et pax de caelo descendit.

O felix ætas, O felix Paule, O vos felices principes qui christiano populo pacem tradidistis. Vivat Paulus. Vivat Carolus. Vivat Franciscus. Vivant, vivant simul et pacem nobis donent in aeternum.

Rejoice in the Lord, all ye lands, sing all of you, rejoice and make music, since, persuaded by Paul, Charles and Francis, the princes of the world, have reached agreement and peace has descended from Heaven.

O happy age, O happy Paul, O ye happy princes, who have handed down peace to the Christian people. Long live Paul! Long live Charles! Long live Francis! Long may they all live, and may they give us peace for eternity!

[15] Andreas Christi famulus

Andreas Christi famulus, dignus Deo apostolus, germanus Petri, et in passione socius.

Dilexit Andream Dominus in odorem suavitatis. O Jesu Christe, Fili Dei, ora pro nobis. Sanctus Andreas gaudet in caelis. Amen.

Andrew, a servant of Christ, a worthy apostle of God, brother of Peter and companion in his suffering.

The Lord loved Andrew, like a sweet smelling perfume, O Jesus Christ, Son of God, pray for us. Saint Andrew rejoices in heaven. Amen.

[16] Heroum soboles

Heroum soboles, amor orbis, Carole, nostri solus es, afflicto Musarum tempore alumnos qui colis et facili largiris munera dextra: propterea celebrat te musica diva libenter, laudibus et meritis ad sidera tollere gestit: vive diu, Austriacae spes optima maxima gentis.

Offspring of heroes, love of the world, Charles, you alone look after and with generous gifts enrich your nurslings: for that reason divine music celebrates you willingly, and delights to exalt you with praise and honour to the stars:
live long, best and greatest hope of the Austrian race.

[17] Parce mihi Domine

Parce mihi Domine nihil enim sunt dies mei.
Quid est homo, quia magnificas eum?
Aut quid apponis erga eum cor tuum?
Visitas eum diluculo, et subito probas illum?
Usquequo non parcis mihi, nec dimittis me, ut glutiam salivam meam?
Peccavi, quid faciam tibi, O custos hominum?
Quare me posuisti contrarium tibi et factus sum mihi metipsi gravis?
Cur non tollis peccatum meum, et quare non aufers iniquitatem meam?
Ecce nunc in pulvere dormiam; et si mane me quaesieris, non subsistam.

Spare me, Lord, for my days are as nothing.
What is man, that you should magnify him?
And why should you set your heart upon him,
visit him every morning and try him every moment?
How long will you not depart from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow my spittle?
I have sinned, what shall I do unto thee, O preserver of men?
Why have you set me as a mark against you, so that I am a burden to myself?
Why do you not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity?
For now I shall sleep in the dust, and if you seek me in the morning, I shall not be here.