Feast of the Swan – The Den Bosch Choirbooks vol. 4

The Feast of the Swan A Renaissance brotherhood at table The present program presents the kind of music that might have been heard at the Feast of the Swan, an annual banquet held by the Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady in ’s-Hertogenbosch, sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century. We have taken the documentary traces of such occasions as the basis for our interpretive decisions. The combination of “sacred” and “secular” pieces might come as a surprise. However, the border between what we in the twenty-first century might imagine as two different musical realms was actually quite porous in the sixteenth. Many manuscript sources of the time include ostensibly sacred and secular pieces indiscriminately. For example, the four manuscript partbooks copied by the Bruges merchant Zeghere van Male in 1542 (Cambrai, Le Labo MSS 125–128) contain a variety of pieces, from secular songs in Flemish to Latin motets and complete masses, including several by internationally famous composers such as Adrian Willaert, and by local masters like Gheerkin de Hondt, choirmaster of the Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady in ’s-Hertogenbosch. Such mixed sources suggest that sixteenth-century music lovers did not necessarily consider “sacred” and “secular” music as mutually exclusive categories. This program thus presents pieces belonging to a variety of genres – vernacular songs, motets, mass movements – to suggest something of the mixed repertory that might have been sung at events such as the Feast of the Swan, an event hosted by a clerical organisation that had strong aristocratic and burgher representation. The music chosen reflects the taste of the mid sixteenth century, when features of the so-called Parisian chanson, characterised by memorable, eminently singable melodies and clear-cut harmonies, had transformed the ways in which composersconceived of other genres, including motets and masses. In formulating thisprogram, we have drawn on the work of Albert Smijers, Godfried C. M. van Dijck,Eric Jas and Véronique Roelvink, who have all contributed to our understanding of the Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady.

ANTOINE BRUMEL (c.1460-c.1512)

[1] Sicut lilium inter spinas

PLAINCHANT

[2] Ave Maria

PLAINCHANT/TIM BRAITHWAITE (polyphonic extemporisation)

[3] Ave Maria

JACOBUS CLEMENS NON PAPA (?) (c.1510-c.1555)

[4] Ave Maria

LOŸSET COMPÈRE (c.1440/45-1518)

[5] Le grant désir d’aymer m’y tient #:##

BENEDICTUS APPENZELLER (c.1480-1558)

Missa Benedicti (Ick had een boelken uutvercoren)

[6] Kyrie

[7] Gloria

TIELMAN SUSATO (c.1510/15-1570)

[8] Myns liefkens bruyn ooghen

JHERONIMUS VINDERS (fl.1510–1550)

[9] Missa Myns liefkens bruyn ooghen - Sanctus

LOŸSET COMPÈRE

[10] Dictes moy toutes voz pensées

MATTHAEUS PIPELARE (c.1450-c.1515)/PIERRE DE LA RUE (c.1452-1518)

[11] Een vroulic wesen (instrumental) #:##

BENEDICTUS APPENZELLER

[12] Missa Benedicti (Ick had een boelken uutvercoren) - Agnus Dei

ANONYMOUS (melody) /MARC BUSNEL (arrangement) /ERIC ALINK (text)

[13] Ick had een boelken uutvercoren (Oeverloos)

JACOBUS CLEMENS NON PAPA

[14] Ave Maria

Bonus Track

With the special participation of Vincent Bijlo

ANONYMOUS (melody) /MARC BUSNEL (arrangement) /ERIC ALINK (text)

[15] Ick had een boelken uutvercoren (Oeverloos