Network, ritual, and strife in Claudin de Sermisy’s Missa plurium motettorum
Simon Frisch (The Juilliard School)
Introduction
A seven-volume 1532 series print of Masses by the French royal printer Pierre Attaingnant (RISM 15321-7) includes, in its third volume, one of the most unique Masses in the broader Renaissance imitation Mass repertory: Claudin de Sermisy’s Missa plurium motettorum, the “Mass of many motets.” In his 1960 dissertation on the Masses of Claudin, Gaston Allaire identified five certain models cited by Claudin from the motet repertory and highlighted areas of citation, many localized to particular movements or sections of the Mass (Allaire 1960: 150–160). All told, however, the Mass has been largely untouched since, much of its material unaccounted for, and the purpose of such a distinctive conceit largely unelaborated. The multiple-motet conceit of Claudin’s Missa offers several intersecting paths of inquiry of material, method, and historical context. Material concerns the distribution of musical contents—the sourcing, positioning, and ordering of the melodic and homorhythmic elements, particularly those identifiable as citations—whereas method considers, relative to the model, the treatment of that material by Claudin on a spectrum from heavily reworked compositionally to merely re-texted. With the tools afforded by CRIM and a more detailed inquiry into the period of Francis I’s reign in-which the Mass was written, a revised profile can be drawn of a politically charged work exhibiting a preoccupation—both musical and ritual—with the French king’s status and negotiation of power.
Sourcing and Text
The cover tableau of Attaingnant’s 1532 Mass series, along with its dedication “To the most worthy Cardinal of Tournon,” is an early glimpse of power dynamics at play in the Missa plurium motettorum it transmits (see Figure 1). It shows the royal court and chapel at Mass; all sightlines are lensed toward the central choirbook, which reads “O salutaris hostia.” (This Elevation versicle was originally introduced into Gallican rites by order of the prior king Louis XII in 1512 in response to French military setbacks in the Italian Wars, but dropped in 1517. It was evidently of particular importance to Francis I, who repeatedly requested and offered to finance its restoration at Notre Dame in 1524; see Wright 1989: 220–21.) The woodcut is framed by Francis at left and his wife Eleonor of Portugal at right, both at prayer; on the basis of coats-of-arms, Daniel Heartz has also identified the dedicatee Cardinal Francois de Tournon toward the bottom-left (among other figures; see Heartz 1961: 19–20). Heartz suggests that the dedication to Tournon, one of Francis’s first episcopal appointments as Archbishop of Embrun and titular head of his royal chapel, is an obvious pass at the royal favor of the king himself (Heartz 1961: 20). Tournon was a primary agent of royal policy both in France and abroad; as of the publication of these Masses, Tournon had recently negotiated the release of both Francis himself from captivity by Charles V and subsequently the release of his sons (Knecht 1994: 243–48, 285). The woodcut shows the Mass itself as a dynamic space both sonically and politically, with a highly curated entourage around Francis joining him in a devout expression of unity.
Figure 1. Woodcut cover of the Primus [-septimus] liber viginti missarum musicalium tres missas continens. (Boston Athenaeum: https://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=137332)
The model texts assembled by Claudin are remarkably consistent in their personal, devotional angle, with a particular emphasis on the psalms; dispersed among the texts are excerpts from psalms (in Mass appearance-of-model order) 118(V), 143(V), 46(V), and 53(V). The Mass is thus strongly underpinned, via its motet models, by the voice of King David in particular. An old iconographic and genealogical tradition linked French monarchs to David, but Francis in particular benefited from the elision of their figures (see Smith and Bentley-Cranch 2007). An interesting example of the narrative range of that association is found in the Hours of François I, which includes an illumination of David on his knees before an angel holding a sword, an arrow, and a skull (Figure 2b). This is a rendering of a scene from 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, in which God compels the king to choose between famine, war, or plague (Costley 2004: 1257). As Yassana Croizat-Glazer points out, Bathsheba bathing in the back (a reference to David’s adultery) is not, in fact, the sin for which David is being punished, but serves as proxy for temptation to sin generally in David’s moment of penitence (Croizat-Glazer 2013: 126–7). In the illumination, David’s robes are covered in the French fleur-de-lys, and he also has a marked hook-nose; this is, unmistakably, Francis himself inserted as David into the tableau. Set over the penitential psalm 6(V), Domine ne in furore tuo, the illumination invites Francis—in the intimate context of the Hours—to recognize and enact his own penitence.
Figure 2. a) Detail of Francis at prayer on the cover of Attaingnant’s mass-series; b) Hours of François I, f. 67r (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.353); c) Paraphrase du psaume XXVI, “Dominus Illuminatio mea,” f. 1v (F-Pnm fr. 2088).
Events and circumstances could prompt even more explicit biographical comparison between the French king and David: after Francis’s 1515 victory in Marignano, his mother Louise of Savoy commissioned a translation and commentary of Psalm 26(V) that illustrates every line of the psalm with Francis in an associated event (or pose) from the military campaign (Croizat-Glazer 2013: 130 and 132). An illustration showing Francis on his knees before an armed angel is among several in the psalm translation evoking the posture found in both the Hours and Mass-cover woodcut (Figure 2c.) When juxtaposed, these three images of Francis—wood-cut, Hours, psalm translation—form a strikingly consistent juxtaposition of pose, highlighting different aspects of the king’s relationship with God and the authority vested thereby, and the nuanced role of psalmic narrative in articulating that relationship. Thus the Missa plurium motettorum, being largely constructed out of multiple psalm-settings, published with a woodcut cover of Francis and his entourage at prayer, and nominally dedicated to one of Francis’s most important political allies, appeared against a backdrop of fluid elision between biblical texts, figures, and places, and circumstances and individuals in Francis’s life and court.
The text sources for Claudin’s models in order of Mass appearance are set out in Table 1. The only motet texts not drawn from Old Testament literature are those of the two partes of Deus regnorum (whose contested attribution to Gascongne is argued below to be accurate). Marie-Alexis Colin has traced its contents to Books of Hours published in Paris in the early sixteenth century (Colin 2012: 346–7), although the secunda pars is not unique to the Hours; it is derived from a generic collect from the historical Litany of the Saints. Deus regnorum, in textually deriving from Hours, remains consistent with the devotional tone of its companion models even if not of Old Testament origin. In a sense it constitutes a perspectival shift, switching from David/Francis’s own voice to those of a population in prayer on his behalf, as though transitioning from Francis’s internal monologue to those of his entourage in the Attaingnant Mass-series woodcut. In threading a line between imprecatory and penitential tones—seeking, in equal parts, divine vengeance and protection—Claudin’s psalm-texted models are no doubt intended in this assembly as the Davidic simulacrum of Francis himself, confirmed by the inclusion of Deus regnorum‘s call to the “our king” Francis.
Table 1. Texts and sources of identified motet-models for the Missa plurium motettorum.
Davidic narrative aside, the known motet models assembled by Claudin in the Mass share a number of musical features. There is, as a technical prerequisite to the effective blending of models, a shared modal profile between the chosen motets. The CRIM cadence radar handily visualizes the transposed mode 1 hierarchies of each motet, dominated by a polarity of G (blue) and D (red) cadences (Figure 3). (Of tertiary importance are cadences to notes like A, Bb, or F.) These motets are all in four-voices, and in tempus imperfectum diminutum. A professional and institutional relationship to the French court is also evident. Claudin was employed (as de facto musical director, as the Cardinal of Tournon was titular head, in the period when this Mass appears to have been composed) in the king’s royal chapel; so too was Gascongne from at least 1517–18 and, before him, Antoine de Févin (Sherr 1988: 81). Jean Conseil was employed in the papal chapel, but spent much of the mid-1520’s in France (and often Paris), where he would certainly have interacted with the royal chapel (Cazaux 2012: 210–12, Bragard 1952: 51). It is perhaps owing to this institutional proximity that Conseil’s Adjuva me, Domine bears, according to John Brobeck, an unusually close stylistic affiliation to Claudin’s mature “French court motet” style, characteristic also of its companion model-motets in Claudin’s Mass and those published by Attaingnant more broadly (Brobeck 1998: 51–53).
Figure 3. CRIM cadence radars of Claudin’s identified model motets, highlighted by modal type.
The earliest sources of the motet-models are themselves associated with the French crown. Besides Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus, published in Ottaviano Petrucci’s series of French court repertory (the Motetti de la Corona, where it appears in Book 1 in 1514; RISM 1514¹), the known motet models were all published by the royal printer Pierre Attaingnant: Impetum inimicorum (Claudin) and Deus in nomine tuo (anonymous) in the Motetz nouvellement composez of 1529 (RISM 15292), and Deus regnorum (Gascongne) and Adjuva me, Domine (Conseil) in Book 11 of the Motettorum series (RISM 15353), published 1535. (Book 11 of Attaingnant’s Motettorum series has been noted for the pointedly political tone of its repertory; on this and general commentary on Attaingnant’s motet publications see Bazinet 2013, in particular 215–16, and Brobeck 1991, 364.) There seems to have been a going interest in psalms and the figure of David at Attaingnant’s workshop, as Book 9 of the Motettorum series (RISM 15351) is entirely devoted to settings of excerpts from psalms of David, and is subtitled as such (“daviticos musicales psalmos habet”). Geneviève Bazinet notes that these motets, much like those of the Missa plurium motettorum, are not “liturgically sound or complete,” but that “all but one of these eighteen psalms are part of the core sections of contemporary books of hours” (Bazinet 2018: 51). The “devotional use” this implies, as Bazinet puts it, corresponds to the perspectival immediacy of Claudin’s model motets (Bazinet 2018: 52). Meanwhile, the 1529 collection being titled “newly composed motets,” while suggestive as a timeline reference for the mass models it transmits, should be qualified as a partial truth at best; the publication contains, for example, work of Brumel that had existed for some time (Regina caeli laetare is found far earlier in Petrucci’s Motetti A print of 1502, RISM 15021). It is plausible, however, that the title is referring to works such as Impetum inimicorum or Deus in nomine tuo—the former attributed to Claudin only in a manuscript concordance, and the latter anonymous—that Claudin might shortly thereafter have integrated into the Missa plurium motettorum. (On the attribution of Impetum inimicorum to Claudin, see Brobeck 1998: 48.)
Claudin, in drawing on so many motet models, created a breathlessly heterogeneous Mass setting characterized by constant soggetto material turnover. As the motets are self-similar in core respects of mode, mensuration, and voicing, Claudin sought to maintain some textural contrast and formal balance, in two ways. The first is that duets are frequently inserted in the Mass (some identifiably drawing on motet material, as discussed in the Agnus Dei II below), within the Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei settings. Second is the insertion of sections in triple-time, variously notated by a mensural shift to “3” or coloration, sometimes simultaneously and indicated differently in different voices, toward the endings of both Credo and Gloria (Example 1). In the penultimate ternary phrase of the Credo, however, the text emphasis creates a hemiola suggesting an acceleration of declamation in perceived duple-time (not a mensural change as such) (Example 2). (A penultimate ternary section is common in motet repertory of the early sixteenth-century French court, but the material included by Claudin does not seem derived from identified models.) Whatever the generic musical characteristics, however, Claudin’s singular focus on French court repertory suggests that those performing—and hearing—the Mass were working from familiar music in an enclosed politico-cultural sphere primed to recognize its king centered in the Davidic narrative being developed. As Virginia Reinberg, writing on French Books of Hours, notes, “Images must be situated within the social and religious worlds from which their meanings were assembled” (Reinberg 2012: 116). The same could be said of the polyphony (and the devotional texts it transmits) in Claudin’s many-motet Mass.
Example 1. Different, simultaneous ternary notations in the penultimate phrase of the Gloria.
Example 2. Perceived tactus hierarchy from text emphasis in the penultimate phrase of the Credo, with tenor partbook excerpt showing coloration.
The Broader View: Working from Known Models
CRIM’s model finder tool gives a percentage value (from 0 to 1) reflecting the amount of recurring melodic entries (meaning 2 or more appearances of a single soggetti, for example in imitative presentations) in a Mass movement traceable to a given model. A value of 1 means that all recurring melodic entries are found in a model, while a value of 0 (as with Deus in nomine tuo and the Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie) means that mass and model melodic entries do not overlap at all. Its ability to cross reference multiple Mass movements against multiple models makes it uniquely suited to Claudin’s Missa plurium motettorum. The values returned comparing the Mass all identified model motets are shown in Table 2. (These results, and those of the subsequent derived figures, were given as of the model finder’s design in January 2023.)
Table 2. Model finder values for global Mass-model similarity of Missa plurium motettorum against identified models. (Rounded to two decimals.)
Figure 4. Model finder results for the Missa plurium motettorum against identified models visualized.
Table 2 can also be visualized by the CRIM model finder on a spectrum from no matching material (in brighter yellow) to high degree of overlap (in darker blue) (Figure 4).
The model finder results, when manually verified in the Missa plurium motettorum (guided in part by Allaire’s own conclusions), show—at least for Claudin’s mass—that a score of .4 and higher (in a similarity scale from 0 to 1) indicates meaningful material citation, with two exceptions marked by asterisks. These exceptions occur between the Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie trio and the motets Adjuva me, Domine and Deus regnorum; this trio, being vastly shorter (even together) than other movements, appears prone to false positives, as any coincidence of shared material (like a relatively generic rising scale entry) becomes disproportionately significant. The Credo risks the opposite problem—the movement is far more expansive than other movements, using so much material (only some of which has been identified) that an evident musical connection to Adjuva me, Domine is unremarked at first pass. When split into two sections (at a natural point of Claudin’s switch from 4vv to duo texture, at “Crucifixus”), however, Conseil’s motet unambiguously emerges as the model for the first section, with a similarity of .79 versus .14 for the remainder; these sections are referred to here as Credo (1) (until “Crucifixus”) and Credo (2) (from “Crucifixus” until the end).
The low similarity scores for Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus across all movements is a hint at its diffuse, fragmented treatment by Claudin; neither a newly identified Credo (1) citation, discussed later, nor that of the “Benedictus” of the Sanctus movement, are evident in the model finder results. By contrast, the striking .79 of the Credo (1) is traced to Adjuva me, Domine is followed by .65 of the Gloria to Gascongne’s Deus regnorum. Claudin’s Impetum inimicorum and the anonymous Deus in nomine tuo are statistically insignificant in all Mass movements but the concluding Agnus Dei, in relation to which they respectively turn up scores of .41 and .51. The model finder visualization can be further refined in the Agnus Dei, however, by splitting the source files into the three individual settings of the text (Figure 5). Like so, the tool identifies the materials of the Agnus Dei III as entirely traceable (with a complete value of 1) to Deus in nomine tuo and a meaningful amount of the Agnus Dei I and II to Impetum inimicorum, suggestive of recomposition and interpolated material especially in the latter. The Sanctus movement can be similarly divided across four sections musically delineated by Claudin himself by changes in voicing (alternating full 4vv and 2vv duo textures) and, visually, by double bars. At this level of detail, at least, a stark difference emerges between the “Benedictus,” and less-so the “Pleni,” and the “Sanctus” and “Osanna” sections (Figure 6), the former fully derived and the latter unrelated. Per the model finder’s design, however, this should not be mistaken for extensive use of the model as seen below with Adjuva me, Domine, Impetum inimicorum, and Deus regnorum; the Sanctus “Benedictus” is very short and, even with the “Pleni,” constitutes a very small amount of the source motet material in localized use.
Figure 5. Model finder results for the Missa plurium motettorum Agnus Dei I–III against two models.
Figure 6. Model finder results for the Missa plurium motettorum Sanctus against Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus.
The model finder results, although broad and largely affirming of known general relationships established by Allaire, offer a lucid view of Claudin’s two-track approach to citation: that of fragmentary and diffuse (Févin) or in extenso (the four other motets), with the latter falling on a spectrum between composed out and verbatim citation. (Allaire describes this as “exact plagiarism to diluted paraphrase”; see Allaire 1960: 152.) These modes of similarity and dissimilarity of treatment track precisely with the known early publication history of these works. The Févin motet appears soon after the composer’s 1512–13 death, in Petrucci’s 1514 installment of the Motetti de la Corona series, while the Agnus Dei movements “compose out” motets from Attaingnant’s Motetz nouvellement composez of 1528 and the most verbatim-cited motets appear together in Attaingnant’s Motettorum series’ eleventh installment of 1535. In other words, when contextualized in terms of generational appearance, a relationship is suggested between professional immediacy (gauged by Attaingnant’s motet publications as a conduit for French court repertory) and Claudin’s manner of citation. The implication is that Claudin took a certain amount of composition license with his own work and the anonymous Deus in nomine tuo, far less than with Conseil and Gascongne, and—at the opposite end of the spectrum—much more with a colleague known to be long-deceased: his stylistic forebear, Antoine de Févin (on Févin and French-court motet style see Brobeck 2012, especially 320–24).
Material Interpolation in the Credo
The Credo (1) is one of the most overt and extensive citations of a model in Claudin’s Mass. Claudin adapts Conseil’s Adjuva me, Domine from the Credo’s beginning to “Crucifixus” in a largely verbatim, all-voice re-texting of the motet material. (No models have been identified for the remaining material of Credo (2).) The CRIM corpus-comparison heatmap tool, by plotting all shared entry n-grams between model and Mass-movement, offers a more granular and visually lucid representation of the extent of citation—not only in the material used by Claudin in the Credo (1), but its order of appearance and voice distribution. For these heatmaps, an n-gram length of 3 (a profile of 3 successive melodic motions) was sufficient to show shared melodic entries with demonstrable accuracy. Unisons (repetitions of the same note) were excluded from the n-gram searches, or in CRIM terms “combined,” to account for re-texting in the Mass; in Example 3, the unisons highlighted in red (“se-” to “De-um”) would disrupt the identification of what is, once removed, the matching n-gram [2, -3, 2] in blue. This accounts for potential issues of shared entry identification not only between model and Mass, but within the Mass itself, as the Credo text continues over the musical repetition of this phrase (“Deum de Deo” to “Deum verum”) with rhythmic modifications where the model merely repeats its previous text (“secundum misericordiam”).
Example 3. n-gram (unisons combined) [2, -3, 2] in superius excerpts from Adjuva me, Domine (mm. 45–48) and Credo (1) citation (mm. 33–35).
The corpus-comparison heatmaps, where shared n-grams between model and Mass are matched by color, show (manually annotated in solid boxes) where clusters of material in specific registral and temporal distribution appear; in Example 8, it can be seen that the matching shapes between the Conseil model (top) and Mass Credo (bottom) account for nearly all of the motet material. The second box of both is dotted to show that the n-grams (constituting the soggetti themselves) are identical, and appear in matching order, but compositionally redistributed across the texture by Claudin and not, as elsewhere, in identical voice distribution and entries. This is characteristic especially of the re-organized presentations of the n-gram [3, -2, -2], coded as brown by CRIM and as seen in score in the manually-annotated, color-matched Example 4, where the bassus remains nearly identical between Mass and model within the boxed material (the motet’s semibreve in m. 12 is extended to a breve in the Mass, also at m. 12) but the upper voices find their material shifted: in the Mass, the altus enters on this n-gram earlier on D, anticipating the bassus entrance, and the motet countertenor entrance on G has been shifted to the Mass tenor. (Imitative entries that were not identified by CRIM at left due to continuous material, for example the lack of rest when the tenor picks up in m. 11 on “et…” in the motet model, are highlighted in lighter blue.)
Figure 7. Corpus-comparison heatmap of Adjuva me, Domine and Credo (1).
Example 4. Redistributed material between Adjuva me, Domine (mm. 10–14) and Credo (1) (mm. 11–15), corresponding to corpus-comparison heatmap.
But the corpus-comparison heatmap can reveal as much by exclusion as inclusion: the Credo (1) heatmap in Figure 7 shows a conspicuous gap before the final, cadential phrase that both model and Mass share (marked by gray highlight), indicating that for a significant stretch of the Credo (1) there is no corresponding material from Conseil’s motet. An individual Credo (1) heatmap (plotting all n-gram entries, not limited to those shared by the Conseil) fills in this gap with an imitative duo in the shape of rising entries—from bassus to superius—foreign to both Claudin’s chosen motet model and Credo (1), whose presentations occur in less texturally linear fashion (as, for example, with the opening altus-superius and responding bassus-tenor imitative duo) (Figure 8). Claudin evidently considered this moment of the Mass narratively important enough to break not only from the material of his model but its norms of texture and presentation as well.
Figure 8. Individual heatmap (n=3, unisons combined) of Adjuva me, Domine.
With the non-Conseil material now identified (characterized by both an n-gram of [3, 2, 2] and the ascending shape of voice-entries), a targeted application of the corpus-comparison heatmap tool turns up a likely source among the motets: a passage in Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus. In Figure 9, the matching green (corresponding to the highlighted red in Figure 8) stands out as unique in Claudin’s Credo (1) and nearly-so in the Févin. (While other shared n-grams are noted by the corpus-comparison tool, those entrances are disparate in presentation shape and formal position, suggesting a coincidental overlap of entry intervallic profile.) The [3, 2, 2] n-gram alone is fairly generic, but shared features of the overall soggetti presentation—besides the rising shape of entries and duo distribution of voices (B and T, A and S)—suggest intentional citation with recomposition (Example 5). Overall similarity between the model (at top) and Mass presentations (at bottom) is marked by the solid boxes. At least for the non-altus voices, pitch-level of entry is identical. The rhythmic profile of the tenor of both motet and Mass is then characterized by a longer-value D rising to a dotted-minim, semiminim. minim ascent through F, G, and A (highlighted in blue), followed by a note sustained over the tactus that dissolves into rapid semiminim motion (highlighted in red). Additionally, once the voices of a given pair enter, they continue almost entirely in parallel 3rds, marked by dotted boxes.
Figure 9. Corpus-comparison heatmap of Benedictus Dominus Deus and Credo (1).
Example 5. Comparative analysis of citation of Benedictus Dominus Deus material (mm. 110–114 and 119–121) as adapted into “Et incarnatus est” of Credo (1) (mm. 69–73).
Févin’s original presentation has characteristics of both duo and fuga; the bassus and tenor open as an imitative duo pair, the tenor responding at the higher 5th, but the presentation type becomes definitionally a fuga (a particularly distended one, at that) with the later entry in the superius of the same soggetto. (This vocabulary for presentation types is drawn from Schubert 2007.) The altus, doubling the superius, ends up replicating melodic features of the earlier bassus but without an independent entry that would properly define the two voices as an imitative duo. Claudin, latching onto the latent duo qualities of the Févin excerpt, then reworks this material into a textbook imitative duo in the Mass, with the shorter low-voices duo presentation corresponding to a responding superius and altus. The Févin material presentation is thus brought into line with Conseil’s frequent use of the imitative duo.
The shared pictorial conceit of these ascending presentations, at moments where the text declares or conjures height and authority, may not be accidental. The text of the model material from Févin’s motet reads, “Quoniam Dominus excelsus, terribilis, rex magnus super omnem terram.” In the Mass, the equivalent phrase is reads “Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto.” Like so, the targeted interpolation of material from Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus into the otherwise continuous citation of Conseil’s Adjuva me, Domine in the Credo (1) indicates Claudin’s care with dramatic contours of the Mass ritual. The “Et incarnatus” citation, which may have remained unidentified but for targeted application of CRIM’s corpus-comparison heatmap tool, thus sheds light on the material construction of narrative design in the Mass ritual. It also puts in relief his particular willingness to fragment and redistribute the motet material of Févin specifically, who, as discussed, is the only represented composer definitively not in the French royal chapel of the 1520’s.
Claudin on Claudin
Revisiting Allaire’s discussion of Claudin’s Agnus Dei I–III—specifically, Claudin’s citation of his own Impetum inimicorum—touches on both the promise and peril of CRIM’s corpus-comparison heatmaps, which turn up notable relationships necessarily followed and contextualized by manual investigation. Allaire writes that the Agnus Dei I “parodies the first half of the motet Impetum, while Agnus II parodies the ‘memores estote’ motive of the motet” (157). (As strongly affirmed by the CRIM model finder in Example 5, Allaire notes that Agnus Dei III, not discussed here, “parodies the motet Deus in nomine faithfully enough as to make it recognizable.”) Minor note and rhythm modifications made by Claudin to his motet material stymie a 3-note n-gram search in the Agnus Dei I, however, as marked in red highlight in Example 6. At the opening, the bassus entrance of the Mass is transposed down the interval of a 5th versus the model, but Claudin also inserts a descending turn figure (falling to F and a lower-neighbor E below the tenor’s entrance on D) to rearticulate the G that, at the equivalent entry in the motet, is instead the falling arrival point of the opening [2, -2] figure. Hence an evidently related set of entrances is not recognized by CRIM with 3-note n-grams: [2, -2, -5] in the model, versus [2, -2, -2] in the Mass. (The continuation of the bassus after that head-motive conclusion on G is then identical, highlighted in blue.). The tenor, meanwhile, has a falling 3rd in the model between the third and fourth notes (D and Bb) of the soggetto; in the Mass, this is filled in rhythmically with a passing C, similarly confounding a 3-note n-gram search that would consider model and Mass tenor to open [2, -2, -3] and [2, -2, -2] respectively.
Example 6. The openings of Agnus Dei I and Impetum inimicorum compared (mm. 1–5 of both).
A 2-note n-gram corpus comparison (with unisons combined), while risking false positives, nevertheless turns up matching clustered material cited from the motet model with enough accuracy to add a major caveat to Allaire’s claim that the Agnus Dei I “parodies the first half” of Impetum inimicorum: as shown in Figure 10, a large amount of material, in a dotted box, is missing from the Mass citation. The fairly verbatim opening entrance scheme is elided over that material to one of two statements of material marked by CRIM in brown and gray, both marked by solid boxes. These paired duo imitations are more similar than they appear as color-coded, as the only difference between them is an opening rising 4th or 5th—[4, 2] versus [5, 2] (Example 7, in highlighted heatmap-matched colors)—in an otherwise identical soggetto followed by a [-2, -3] presentation. (In the Agnus Dei I, CRIM’s heatmap mistakenly places the altus entrance of “Et nunc” slightly before the superius, rather than just after; in Claudin’s motet, this material is also repeated again later in the motet.)
Figure 10. Corpus-comparison heatmap of Impetum inimicorum and Agnus Dei I–III.
Example 7. n-gram [4, 2] versus [5, 2] as a variant head-motive in Impetum inimicorum (superius mm. 43–45) and Agnus Dei II (mm. 14–16) both followed by [-2, -3] (respectively m. 50 and 21).
Claudin’s formal-citational strategy is hinted at in Allaire’s observation that the Agnus Dei II duo between superius and altus draws on the “memores estote” motive. Although he says nothing of the rest of the material, the model-finder results suggest far more than a single-motive relationship. A corpus-comparison heatmap (n=3, unisons combined) between Impetum inimicorum and the isolated Agnus Dei II turns up not only the “memores estote” motive—n-gram [-2, -2, 4]—but two others traceable to the motet in imitative pairs: [3, -2, -2] and [4, -3, 2]. What more, the heatmap finds that the ordering of material is globally identical to the model motet, when the superius and countertenor voices are isolated; this is marked by the box in Figure 11 (the lower voices of the model are grayed out to directly compare the upper voicing), and the second and third presentations identified shown in score in Example 17. Not only do the “missing” citations fill in the dotted gap in Example 14, the heatmap shows that they pick up immediately after; textually (after “Agnus Dei” from “memores estote”), “peccata mundi” originates in “patres nostri,” and then “miserere nobis” in “in mari rubro.”
Figure 11. Corpus-comparison heatmap of Impetum inimicorum and Agnus Dei II.
Example 8a. Heatmap-identified citation, Agnus Dei II (superius mm. 44–47) to Impetum inimicorum (contratenor mm. 31–33).
Example 8b. Heatmap-identified citation, Agnus Dei II (mm. 51–55) to Impetum inimicorum (mm. 86–89).
Example 9a. Rising scales from Impetum inimicorum (mm. 66–67) incorporated into the Agnus Dei II (mm. 61–63).
Example 9b. Agnus Dei II (mm. 56–60) citation of “et nunc” material (Impetum inimicorum, mm. 90–94), with truncated head-motive.
To this, two manual observations may be added, outside the scope of a CRIM n-gram entries search (Example 9): the florid rising scales incorporated throughout the duet in Claudin’s Agnus Dei II appear to be loosely derived from the motet setting of “mementote mirabilium,” and the final “miserere nobis” is derived from yet another “et nunc clamemus…”, corresponding (as a second iteration of that material, after first being heard on “qui tollis” the Agnus Dei I) to that phrase’s double-appearance in the motet. This is not readily seen in the corpus-comparison heatmap as the rising 4th/5th of the originating head-motive is removed in the Agnus Dei II, after which material continues in identifiable citation, highlighted in blue in Example 9 (the motive’s removed pick-up, on “et,” is in red). As shown in Table 3, Claudin’s interlocking distribution of his Impetum inimicorum into the Mass Agnus Dei I and II constitutes a near-full citation of the model. His specific approach to these interlocking settings may correspond to certain textual alignments, for example “miserebitur nostri” with “miserere nobis” in Agnus Dei I, which is dramatically offset in homorhythmic declamation.
Table 3. Interlocking distribution of Impetum inimicorum musical material between Agnus Dei I and II.
Thus, what at first blush seems a scattered reworking of material similar to that of the Févin model is in fact a near-comprehensive distribution of the motet model across two sections of the Agnus Dei, comparable in its completeness (and, in a sense, consistency of material order) to Claudin’s citation of Conseil and Gascongne. The Agnus Dei I and II are distinguished, however, by Claudin’s willingness to recompose and rework—usually after presentation onset—his own material, for example taking license with rising scales from a discrete phrase of the model (from “mementote mirabilium”) to transform the overall idiom of the Agnus Dei II duo and distinguish it from its 4vv companions. In sum, Claudin reworks his source material into these Agnus Dei settings with a stronger personal compositional touch even as the thoroughness of his model citation corresponds to those of his nominal colleagues at the French court of the 1520’s.
Situating Gascongne in the Gloria
With its conceit of “many motet” models, Claudin’s Missa plurium motettorum carries, in a literal sense, an extended subtext. Insofar as those motet citations are treated to “composing out” and adaptation in the Mass, it is a process that, in Claudin’s hands, plays out along professional lines and is driven by an overarching Davidic narrative of authority and protection. Those sections (or near-entire motet partes) cited verbatim must have induced a mnemonic, associative effect among royal chapel singers who had performed both the motet models and Claudin’s Mass setting (as well as, perhaps, among listeners at court). At times this is to the point of an overt text “pun,” such as the opening of Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus set as the Mass “Benedictus” (Example 10). In other words, Claudin appears to have employed the imitation Mass format as the ritualized expression of his contemporary and antecedent repertory in the French royal chapel. What the original purpose of that repertory might have been, however, remains a major point of inquiry. Brobeck has argued for liturgical use for segments of this repertory published by Attaingnant (although not these motets specifically), even as Bazinet, as cited above, cautions that the textually-fragmented Davidic psalms published in Book 9 of Attaingnant’s Motettorum series may not have been functional as such (Brobeck 1993).
Example 10. Openings of Benedictus Dominus Deus and the Sanctus “Benedictus.”
Of the Mass’s identified models, only Deus regnorum has received speculation as to specific occasion or purpose. Allaire suggests it is related to the 1529 Treaty of Cambrai negotiated by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria that formally ended Franco-Hapsburg hostilities following Francis’s captivity (Allaire 1967: 39). This diplomatic, functionalist view of the motet has been essentially sustained, if by a different interpretation, by Peter Gram Swing’s suggestion (in his Grove article on Gascongne) of Francis’s coronation and Brobeck’s of the king’s precocious military successes of 1515–16 in Italy as prompting events (Brobeck 2016: 3). This approach is characteristic of the “staatsmotette” as discussed by Albert Dunning, who, like Allaire, all-but-places Deus regnorum within the proceedings of the Treaty of Cambrai (Dunning 1970: 323), far later than Swing or Brobeck. However, Christelle Cazaux cautions that the language of the text is more militaristic than celebratory, making it especially odd for a coronation, and notes that the reasons for Swing’s suggestion are not, in fact, explained beyond inference (Cazaux 2002: 169 and 208, n. 59). In this vein, she argues against the interpretations of Dunning, Swing, and Brobeck (and, by extension, Allaire), noting that the wish for victory and the restoration of peace corresponds more to ongoing war than to a secured peace, or to “the idyllic atmosphere that bathed the early months of the reign of Francis I” (Cazaux 2002: 356).
Cazaux’s stance is amplified in French constitutional historian Tyler Lange’s critique of a “ceremonialist” view of state occasions, which could apply equally to any stated role of a motet therein. He writes that “taking contemporary descriptions”—here one could substitute “motet texts”—”at face value … minimizes contentiousness and conflict in rituals, that is, their status as ‘a currency for measuring power and honor’ and thus their polysemic nature … [This] failure to account for the context produces a purely functionalist interpretation” (Lange 2011: 1008; he is citing Koziol 1992: 306). In the case of Francis and repertory of the 1520’s, emphasis on formal international ceremonial and diplomatic engagements in the period following Francis’s captivity ignores the civic volatility and threats to royal authority he faced at home in the 1520’s from Parisian institutions in whose orbit motets such as those cited in the Missa plurium motettorum would most speak to Lange’s “contentiousness.” Such a lens can perhaps more securely link Deus regnorum to its Mass-companions as a narrative whole, rather than as a stand-alone occasional work in generic company.
The 1532 publication of the Missa plurium motettorum pushes the terminus post quem of Deus regnorum back several years from the motet’s 1535 publication, a small but pertinent detail. That the work is not only first known to appear in the early 1530’s, but does so in a burst of interest as political motet and Mass-model, should raise reasonable doubt about the early dating given by Swing and Brobeck of ca. 1515–16. I argued in a paper given at the 2022 Medieval & Renaissance Music Conference in Uppsala, Sweden that this early dating of Deus regnorum—and by extension Gascongne’s biographical dating—rests merely on textual inference and loose association with the composer’s motet Christus vincit, which is widely held to be securely occasioned by Francis’s coronation. That paper demonstrated that the claimed link between Christus vincit and the 1515 coronation stems from a mischaracterization of Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s study of the Carolingian laudes regiae (from which the motet is musically and textually sourced). It seems certain that a liturgical, not coronal, association was understood for Christus vincit—per Kantorowicz’s actual claim about French practice of the laudes—and a later date possible, if not more likely (Kantorowicz 1946: 100). That the majority of French manuscripts transmitting the laudes considered by Kantorowicz place the laudes on Easter corresponds to Christus vincit’s publication not in Book 11 of the Motettorum series with Deus regnorum and Adjuva me, Domine, but in Book 2 (RISM 15344) appended to an Easter cluster. (On the motet contents and their Temporal use in Book 2, see the table in Bazinet 2013: 211; taking the motet as written for Francis’s coronation, as noted in an Appendix on p. 483, she does not consider a possible liturgical association.) With Christus vincit and the coronation of Francis removed as a date referent, there is little to tie Deus regnorum to any particular event on the basis of its text, let alone those as early as 1515–16, with major implications for dating the career activity of Gascongne.
The corpus-comparison heatmap (n=3, unisons combined) shown in Figure 12 shows how extensively Claudin sources his Gloria from Deus regnorum; while the exact placement of (or, at times, CRIM’s capacity to recognize) entrances is variable, there is an overarching integrity of overlapping presentation shapes and n-grams throughout, until the last section. As one of three known motets—together with Conseil’s Adjuva me, Domine and Claudin’s Impetum inimicorum—subjected in the Missa to extensive retexting and citation, there is cause to think that the motet could have emerged well into the late 1520’s, closer to Conseil’s time at court, the 1532 Attaingnant Masses print, and the Attaingnant Motettorum series. Insofar as its use especially parallels that of the motet by Conseil, who is definitively placed at the French court in the mid- to late-1520’s, and to a slightly lesser extent Claudin’s citation of his own motet, Deus regnorum is set in further contrast with the scattered treatment of Févin’s Benedictus Dominus Deus. If Gascongne, for whom no records survive between 1517–18 when he is at the court and 1533 when he has disappeared from the roster, had truly retired (or passed away) by the early 1520’s, one might expect a level of compositional license more characteristic of Claudin’s approach to his Févin model.
Figure 12. Corpus-comparison heatmap of Deus regnorum and the Gloria.
Claudin’s selection and treatment of Deus regnorum in the Missa plurium motetorum can also contribute to an outstanding question on this motet’s attribution. While the work is credited to Gascongne where it appears in the Motettorum partbooks, it is credited to Claudin in the same partbooks’ indices. On the basis primarily of various musical and stylistic characteristics (e.g. voice-crossings not characteristic of Claudin) and, secondarily, early dating of Gascongne’s career and “political” works, Brobeck suggested that Gascongne is the composer of Deus regnorum (Brobeck 1998: 59–61). More recently, Marie-Alexis Colin has argued on similar grounds, conversely, for Claudin’s authorship, in part (for example) because “the final repetition of text and music” is atypical of Gascongne (Colin 2012: 342). Yet—to address this point in particular—the ending of Gascongne’s uncontested Spiritus ubi vult, employing coloration in its first of two statements, features the otherwise identical repetition of the motet’s ending phrase in very similar manner Deus regnorum: in both instances, the true cantizans resolution is reserved for the second of the two repetitions, as shown in the superius parts of Example 21; yellow highlights an initial non-cadencing statement toward F followed in red by a repetition that cadences to G. (Colin describes this moment in Spiritus ubi vult as “a ternary passage,” but, as in the “in remissionem” passage of Claudin’s Credo setting, the text declamation is functionally binary in a perceived tempo change, confirmed by its exact repetition out of coloration, and not a shift to ternary meter as such; see Colin 2012: 363.) Vague stylistic markers in a highly (and seemingly willfully) self-similar repertory of 4vv motets clustered around the early sixteenth century cannot, in the end, be the basis for definitive conclusions.
Example 11. The superius endings of Spiritus ubi vult and Deus regnorum compared.
Brobeck may, however, be exaggerating to state that “the authorship of … Deus regnorum must be determined solely on the basis of musical style” (Brobeck 1998: 59). In the interest of maximal variety and representation of professional network, it would follow that Claudin’s Mass features not two of his own motets in disparate sections in different compositional approaches, but one of his own and one of another colleague in the French royal chapel: Gascongne. Claudin’s intricate rendering of his own Impetum inimicorum into the interlocking Agnus Dei I and II settings in 4vv and 2vv textures is markedly contrasted with his near-verbatim use of Deus regnorum in the Gloria, which corresponds much more closely to Claudin’s adaptation of Conseil’s Adjuva me, Domine. While small modifications in the counterpoint of Deus regnorum are made, as with Conseil’s motet, the touch is significantly lighter than his recombinatorial weaving and elaboration of his own motet-material. The appearance and treatment of Deus regnorum in the Missa plurium motettorum thus support Brobeck’s assessment that Gascongne, not Claudin, is the composer of Deus regnorum but also, contrary to his early dating of Gascongne, reinforce a closer professional and musical link between Gascongne, Conseil, and Claudin in the mid- to late-1520’s (closer, in the end, to Allaire and Dunning’s suggestion of ca. 1529).
Dramatizing the Mass
The Mass ritual, although a manner of dramatic reenactment, does not function a priori as politically occasional or as musical statecraft as might a standalone occasional motet that references, explicitly or implicitly, historical events. Yet Francis showed keen awareness of the communicative, performative utility of religious institutions and rites toward his political ends, and it was often his court composers who mediated between assertive crown and recalcitrant church. Craig Wright highlights several such instances, for example when Antoine de Longueval (fl. 1498–1525), appointed maître of the royal chapel by Francis in 1515 and the king’s first appointment to the chaplainship of Paris from 1517, was among those responsible for acquiring funds in Francis I’s architecturally-minded request in 1518 for a low wall between the cathedral choir and sanctuary to be dismantled to accommodate English ambassadors for the ratification of a peace treaty with Henry VIII (Wright 1989: 218–19). (The French and English royal chapels also notably played off each other in a Mass held at the Field of the Cloth of Gold Summit; see Wright 1989: 226–27, Cazaux 2002: 206–7.) Francis also evidently counted on the loyalty of musicians in his service with canonries in Paris—Longueval among them—when voting on his royal nominee to dean of the chapter at Notre Dame, part of a broader and sustained royal effort under Francis to divest the church of influence through clerical nominating rights and procedures (Wright 1989: 224–25).
As concerns the Missa plurium motettorum, most intriguing is a witness account cited by Wright dated April 15, 1527, that describes Francis’s procession into Paris a day prior, through to Notre Dame. There, the king “heard Mass at the high altar of Notre Dame celebrated by a priest of the church” with, very unusually, his own chapel singing motets: “Missam aduivit ad majus altare per alterum sacerdotum altaris celebratam submissa voce, cantantibus tamen suis cantoribus et aliqua moteta dicentibus” (Wright 1989: 229). The timing and purpose of this procession requires significant context. Back in 1516, with the signing of the Concordat of Bologna, Francis and pope Leo X had mounted a major challenge to the staunchly independent Gallican church. In the Concordat, among other goals, Francis I sought papal favor in his Italian excursions, approval to levy taxes on the French clergy, and the exclusive right to make ecclesiastical appointments in France (of which the Cardinal de Tournon was one of the first); meanwhile, Leo X sought to head off strains of Gallican conciliarism that threatened papal authority (Knecht 2015: 29–31, Lange 2014: 120–24). The Concordat explicitly superseded the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges of 1438 enshrining many rights of the Gallican church, which, via a 1486 commentary by the Parisian jurist Cosme Guymier, was the Paris Parlement’s going constitutional rationale for France’s governance concerning ecclesiastical independence and clerical taxation (Lange 2014: 59–60). The implications for French power hierarchies were enormous (Lange notes the “connection between ecclesiology and constitutional thought”), and there was significant struggle among the organs of government before the Paris Parlement conceded and registered the Concordat in 1518, emphasizing that it did so under duress (Lange 2014: 133). Even so, political jockeying intensified between royal court and Parisian institutions, and it was only in 1527 that the Grand Conseil, an appeals court offshoot of the monarch’s personal council, began to fully enforce the terms of the Concordat (on the origins and functions of the Grand Conseil, see Lange 2014: 151).
After Francis’ release in 1526, the king spent much of 1526–27 in France but conspicuously avoided Paris (Knecht 1994: 249). On April 13th, 1527, in the continued fallout from the 1516 Concordat, he had eight opponents of royal reform policy, including members of the Paris Parlement and a canon of Notre Dame, arrested (Lange 2014: 190). His definitive entrée into Paris the following day—the one described in Wright’s cited witness account—was then executed so abruptly that many of the ceremonial trappings associated with such a procession, like a canopy for the king, could not be prepared (Knecht 1994: 264). By far the most telling aspect of the king’s designs is that the date he chose to process into Paris and to Notre Dame with his chapel that year, April 14th, was Palm Sunday, commemorating Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem (Bond 1866: 241). Lange holds the period of Francis’s captivity and legal wrangling between his mother Louise (the de facto regent in his absence) and the Paris Parlement to be a full-blown constitutional crisis of authority; with the spectacle of Francis’s Christomimetic triumphus of 1527, Paris therefore witnessed a calculated enaction and projection of his ecclesiastico-legal authority over lingering institutional resistance at home (Lange 2014: 121). The Mass staged at Notre Dame that Sunday (royal chapel, motets, and all) would have been conducted before a hostage audience of precisely the Parisian lawyers and clergy who’d seen their colleagues arrested the day before; superseding Notre Dame’s own musical forces with the royal chapel constituted, in parallel, a sonic takeover. (Contributing to the exceptional nature of the event was that, by tradition, the French king processed to Notre Dame only on Easter Sunday, to take communion; see Du Peyrat 1645: 681–87.)
To then speculate which motets would have been selected for performance by the French royal chapel at the Palm Sunday Mass on April 14, 1527—possibly written expressly for the event, possibly drawn from existing repertory, or likely a mix of both—one could consider those assembled by Claudin in his Missa plurium motettorum as prime candidates. Their collation in a Mass so preoccupied with divinely-given Davidic authority and protection for Francis is likely to be, at minimum, a willful intervention by the royal chapel in the political discourse around the king and his office leading up to, and immediately following, his return to Paris. But given the charged circumstances, the thematic link, and the associative effect of verbatim citation, it is plausible that Claudin so drastically (and so unusually) expanded the imitation Mass format to accommodate these very “many motets” as a musico-ritual rendering of the those brought to the high altar of Notre Dame by his chapel on that Palm Sunday. The Davidic subtext of Missa plurium motettorum resonates with the core penitential tone of Lenten season (and strongly with Francis’s imperative, on returning to Paris, to both garner sympathy and establish authority), and any of the motets would have been appropriate to the occasion. Certain of Claudin’s model-motets—if not functioning liturgically as such—amplify or mirror elements of the Palm Sunday liturgy itself (and broadly that of Holy Week), as paraliturgical musical accessories to the Mass. Morvan de Bellegarde’s L’Office de la Semaine sainte à l’usage de la maison du Roi notes a prominent reading from Exodus 15 (corresponding to Benedictus Dominus Deus) at the blessing of the palms, as well as psalm 118(V) (Adjuva me, Domine, on Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday), and psalm 53(V) (Deus in nomine tuo, on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday) (De Bellegarde 1732: 48; 34, 96, 103, 243; 243, 309). (Gascongne’s Christus vincit would also have been appropriate—a tropary-prosary for the Abbey of Saint-Martial in Limoges, F-Pnm ms. lat 1118, transmits the laudes on Palm Sunday, on fol. 38v—but, on account of heavy use of prius factus material from the laudes, may have been stylistically unfit for subsequent adaptation into an imitation mass.) Apropos of Claudin’s functionalist interest in the Holy Week liturgy, as localized to practices of the French court, Brobeck notes that his setting of the St. Matthew Passion published by Attaingnant in Book 10 of Motettorum (RISM 15352) “sets precisely, and only, those portions of the gospel that traditionally were sung by soloists during the royal court’s celebration of the Palm Sunday Mass” as described by de Bellegarde (Brobeck 1993: 133).
Finally, the date range of mid-late 1520’s to early 1530’s corresponds to the appearance and dissemination of every identified motet used in the Missa plurium motettorum, excepting that of the definitively deceased Févin (distinguished, in Claudin’s Mass, by its extreme fragmentation): Attaingnant’s 1528 and 1535 motet collections, respectively the Motetz nouvellement composez (the title perhaps referring to these motets in the proposed timeline) and Book 11 of Motettorum buttressing the 1532 publication of Claudin’s Mass. In this scenario, Francis’s preparations for arrival over 1526–27 as he toured France could well have included the commissioning of new motets from figures at court like Claudin and Conseil, as well as an arguably still-active Gascongne, that were then augmented by pre-existing repertory of the French royal chapel for the surprise 1527 Palm Sunday Mass at Notre Dame by the king and his retinue. In turn, this would have set the groundwork and incentive for publication by Attaingnant and re-adaptation as ritual and sonic echo by Claudin into the Missa plurium motettorum. This Palm Sunday Mass was staged by Francis and his cohort with motets and the French royal chapel itself as integral, documented elements, a remarkable act of appropriating the liturgy as political theater with direct import in the prevailing frictions between performer and public—Lange’s ritual “contentiousness.” Like so, it may be a more compelling prompt for motets like those of Sermisy’s Mass than the formal occasions of French coronations or international diplomatic treaties, where music—in or about the event—would have been gratuitous if not, as Cazaux notes, somewhat tone-deaf.
Conclusions
Allaire’s dissertation of 1960 made foundational strides in outlining the general sourcing and technical features of the complex and unique Missa plurium motettorum, contending admirably with the unwieldy amount of musical data of Claudin’s multi-model conceit. Building on his achievement, a more precise understanding of the role, distribution, and treatment of Claudin’s motet models enabled by the tools of CRIM (both for analysis and as visual representation) can do much to enrich and hone our view of the composer’s organization of his Mass. Although this paper does not propose new possible models for the Missa plurium motettorum, nor claims to be comprehensive in its analysis of known models, the tools and expanding corpus of CRIM can enable further study and the possibility of identifying stylistic—if not outright citation—matches in the future. Even without new models, a selected CRIM-guided reassessment of Claudin’s materials and methods in historical context demonstrates both the depth and variety of his engagement with colleagues (including the departed Févin), and his sensitive, curatorially-minded treatment of the imitation Mass-as-narrative, emerging in the political fallout of Francis’s absolutist aspirations.
My thanks to Richard Freedman and Thomas Kelly for their input. My thanks also to Jean-Christophe Candau and Vox Cantoris, who introduced me to this mass.
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