I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—
Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of eye—
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—
Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading of my narrow Hands
to gather Paradise—
If you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
If only centuries delayed,
I’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemens land.
If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He has had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony. [source]
226.
From off his horse the Emperor now descends;
On the green grass he kneels with bended head,
Then to the sunrise he lifts his face addressed
And prays to God with heartfelt reverence:
“Father most true, this day my cause defend!
Thou that to Jonah Thy succour didst extend
In the whale’s belly, and safely draw him thence,
And after, spare the king of Nineveh;
Thou that didst save Thy servant Daniel
From torments dire within the lions’ den,
And the Three Children amid the fire protect,
Lord, be thy love this day my present help;
And, if it please Thee, grant that ere this day’s end
Roland my nephew may fully be avenged!”
His prayer is done; rising, he stands erect;
The sign of power he makes on brow and breast.
Now to the saddle once more the King has leapt,
Joz’ran and Naimon to hold his stirrup bend;
He takes his shield, his sharpened spear as well;
Comely his body and straight and nobly held,
His face is frank, his looks are confident;
Forward he rides, firm in the stirrup set.
To van, to rear, the braying clarions swell;
Olifant’s voice resounds above the rest;
The thought of Roland draws tears from all the French.
“Josquin is the master of the notes; others are mastered by them.”—Martin Luther
Perhaps the finest composer of the High Renaissance was Josquin des Prez, third in the trio of great fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish composers. His major works are the nineteen masses he composed in a dramatic and masterful fashion.
Chorus:
Many marvels walk through the world,
terrible, wonderful,
but none more than humanity,
which makes a way under winter rain,
over the gray deep of the sea,
proceeds where it swells and swallows;
that grinds at the Earth—
undwindling, unwearied, first of the gods—
to its own purpose,
as the plow is driven, turning year into year,
through generations as colt follows mare.
Weaves and braids the meshes to hurl—
circumspect man—
and to drive lightheaded tribes of birds his prisoners,
and the animals,
nations in fields, race of the salty ocean;
and fools and conquers the monsters
whose roads and houses are hills,
the shaggy-necked horse that he holds subject,
and the mountain oxen that he yokes under beams,
bowing their heads,
his unwearying team.
The breath of his life he has taught to be
language, be the spirit of thought;
griefs, to give laws to nations;
fears, to dodge weapons
of rains and winds and the homeless cold—
always clever,
he never fails to find ways
for whatever future;
manages cures for the hardest maladies;
from death alone he has secured no refuge.
With learning and with ingenuity
over his horizon of faith
mankind crawls
now to failure, now to worth.
And when he has bound the laws of this earth
beside Justice pledged to the gods,
he rules his homeland;
but he has no home
who recklessly marries an illegitimate cause.
Fend this stranger from my mind’s home and home’s hearth.
“He [Ockeghem] alone of all singers is free from all vice and abounds in all virtues.”—Francesco Flori
The Franco-Flemish composer Johannes Ockeghem succeeded Guillaume Dufay as the most celebrated composer of his period, and was praised for the “extraordinary sweetness and beauty” of his music.
Relatively few of Ockeghem’s compositions have survived, among them fourteen masses that were the most important of their time. The earliest of these masses were composed on the accepted pattern of the cantus firmus (an existing melody used as the basis for the polyphonic composition). Ockeghem later experimented with the pattern, freeing the cantus firmus from its usual tenor part; and he became the fist known composer to use melodies from his own songs as the cantus firmus in a number of his masses. Several of Ockeghem’s masses do not even rely on a cantus firmus, but are freely constructed from rhythmic and melodic fragments.
In the succession of medieval composers I have enjoyed so far, I seem to have made personal connections with every other one. Hildegarde von Bingen I adored; the representatives of the Notre Dame school—Perotin and Leonin—not so much; Guillaume Machaut I loved. So I wondered about Guillaume Dufay.
I bookmarked numerous pieces, but did not find any particularly compelling until my attention was captured by his beautiful motet Nuper Rosarum Flores. I was all the more intrigued when I learned it was composed for the 1436 consecration of the Basilica de Santa Maria de Fiore. This massive brick dome—which was then in the last stages of completion—was a feat of medieval technology, accomplished by Filippo Brunelleschi.
What just happened to be on my library book shelf?—Ross King’s excellent Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture.
I love connections like this!
Interestingly, it has been argued that the proportional structure of the motet was inspired by I Kings 6:1-20, which gives the dimensions of Solomon’s temple.
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melded across the skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour,
And éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous loves’ greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.