Repertoire
Composers
Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497)
A native of Hainaut, Johannes Ockeghem spent most of his active career in the service of the French royal court. Alongside Binchois, Du Fay, Busnoys and Josquin, with whom his name is linked in documents of the time, he is considered one of the greatest composers of the 15th century. Ockeghem worked at the French court, first under Charles VII and later under Louis XI. His reputation as a singer of extraordinary skill and a master among composers was well established during his lifetime. Numerous composers of the 15th and early 16th centuries either based their work directly on an earlier piece of Ockeghem’ or quoted substantively from his music. After his death, his music disappeared from daily use, and knowledge of his existence, and of his extraordinary contrapuntal skills, was somewhat distorted by later scholars until his rehab ilitation in the 19th century.
Although the number of known works attributed to Ockeghem is surprisingly small in view of the length of his life and the esteem in which he was held, his masses constitute an imposing repertory. He wrote a number of masses deploying a varied treatment of cantus-firmus melodies and complex polyphony. His motets, though few in number, display perhaps even greater inventiveness than his masses, no doubt because the genre was itself in a state o f stylistic redefinition during much of the 15th century. In his Alma Redemptoris mater the antiphon melody is heard in an upper voice, as in a treble-dominated plainsong setting, but with the addition of a fourth part in an unusually high range above it. He also composed a number of secular chanson based on vernacular poetry. Like his contemporaries, he adhered to tradition, but no other 15th-century master seems to have handled with as much freedom compositional procedures such as head-motifs, cantus firmi and canonic imitation, nor to have treated established musical genres (mass, motet and chanson) with such subtly inventive creativity.
Links
For more information about the life and music of Johannes Ockeghem, check out these other websites:
- Johannes Ockeghem - a discography
- A very extensive discography referencing all known works attributed to Ockeghem.
- ClassicalNet - Basic Repertoire List - Ockeghem
- A basic biography, with links to various discographies of Ockeghem’s work.
- Johannes Ockeghem Home Page
- A page maintained by Scott David Atwell of Ferris State University, Michigan, containing an extensive academic bibliography and discography on Ockeghem and his work.
Vocal Works Performed by SFBC
