The music in this recording belongs to an era which is conveniently but not very aptly known as that of the “Netherlanders”. This expression came into use a century and a half ago on the geographical basis of the nation at that time termed the Netherlands; through all the political changes since then the expression “Netherlanders” has remained in use, in the context of musical history, even the alternative terms suggested by scholars such as “Franco-Flemish” have not been generally adopted. By “Netherlanders” in this sense are meant the many gifted musicians who were produced during the 15th and 16th centuries by the area of north-western Europe which now forms the territories of Holland, Belgium and northern France. Almost all of these musicians, after years of training and their first professional appointments at cathedral choir schools in their native land, found their way southwards, drawn to - and not infrequently invited by - the princely courts of Renaissance Italy with their love of everything artistic. This tendency to travel southward from northern Europe gradually became so pronounced from about the middle of the 15th century onward that the sources reveal very little native Italian music, and then usually only of a minor kind - it was the Netherlanders who dominated the development of European music at that time. Not until the 16th century were works of comparable significance again produced by Italian composers.
All four of the masters represented in this recording figure in musical history as members of this group of Netherlanders. All of them were born in northern Europe about 1450, and they probably all died between 1515 and 1525. Every one of them went to Italy, although Mouton spent only a short time there. The closest links with the south were those of the Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac. Invited to Florence by the Medici in 1484/85, unusually for one of the Netherlanders he went to the Hapsburg Court of the Emperor Maximilian in 1496/97, but he did not entirely give up his connection with Florence. Loyset Compère, probably a native of St. Omer, was active during the ’seventies at the Sforza Court in Milan; later he is known to have returned to the north, working in Paris, Cambrai, Douai and St. Quentin. Antoine Brumel, of whose early career we have only sparse information indicating appointments at Chartres, Lâon, Faris and Lyons, went in 1505 as director of music to the Este Court at Ferrara. Only Jean Mouton remained entirely true to his northern homeland: born near Boulogne, he worked at Nesle, Amiens and Grenoble, and from 1502 onward he was a member of the Royal Court Chapel in Paris. A brief visit to Bologna in 1516 appears to have been his only stay in Italy.
The motet had long been unquestionably the most important type of composition, but during the early 15th century settings of the Mass gradually took precedence. The challenge of fashioning the five sections of the Ordinary of the Mass into a musically unified cycle seems to have fired the artistic ambitions of composers to an even greater extent than the problems of Writing motets, with the result that the motet exerted less fascination than the Mass, and it did not regain first-rank importance until the 16th century. Nevertheless anyone who explores the motets of the period discovers everywhere a wealth of splendid and masterly music. In a certain sense the composition of a motet offered greater scope for imaginative creative work than a setting of the Mass: it was not based on a pre-determined text, and could even make use of secular elements - a fact which naturally had its effcct on the diversity of music being composed. A motet could be intended for a particular event of the Church year, but it could also owe its existence to contemporary events. This is so in the case of Isaac’s funeral motet Quis dabit capiti meo aquam; in the words of this piece the humanist Angelo Poliziano mourns Lorenzo il Magnifico, who had been killed by lightning (in April 1492). There is no indication from a hearing of this motet that Isaac, possibly because he was pressed for time, took considerable sections of this motet from his Mass “Salva nos” and linked them by means of new transitional passages; the composition is skilfully fashioned round a kind of “axis”, consisting of ostinato repetition, generally in a lower part, of the concluding phrase “et requiescamus in pace” from the antiphon “Salva nos”. While the fullness of sound, particularly at the beginnings of sections, with rich chordal writing, possibly points to a stylistic feature of Italian music, the other three motets, which date from Isaac’s time in Germany, are predominantly contrapuntal works. Use is made in each of them of a plainsong or semiliturgical melody, though these are employed in different ways: in the motet to words from the Song of Songs Tota pulchra est, composed about 1500/5, the plainsong melody appears in the treble or tenor, and sometimes pseudo-canonically in both parts. In Regina caeli laetare, written a few years later, the pseudo-canonic cantus firmus, sung in long-held notes by the lower voices, continues even more persistently; the characteristics of this plainsong melody also permeate the more animated upper voices, and each section of the piece leads beautifully into a lively Alleluia conclusion. In the motet O Maria, mater Christi, probably one of his late works, Isaac made use of the cantus firmus and canonic techniques already mentioned, and also inserted duet sections into the structure; recurring melodic figures and the reappearance at the conclusion of material presented at the beginning give the composition a remarkable sense of unity.
The prayerful motet O Domine Jesu Christe by Brumel is particularly attractive because of its unusually low setting and the masterly way he organizes the different parts. Its tendency towards chordal writing is emphasized when it is followed by the wordless instrumental piece Noe noe which, especially in its second half, shows Brumel to have been a master of sequences of brief motives which are contrapuntally interwoven. Finally Brumel’s large-scale motet Ave virgo gloriosa is marked by a skilful combination of chordal and figural writing; here, too, passages of bicinia occur between sections for the full ensemble. Mouton’s Christmas motet Quaeramus cum pastoribus, in which animated sections for few voices provide contrast with the rich choral texture elsewhere in the work, is followed by Compère’s Passion composition Crux triumphans; as in the works of Brumel no plainsong melody is used here, and Compère, too, understood how to alternate rich chordal sections with those based on figuration, here making little use of imitation. Especially expressive are the acclamations “Jesus” which occur several times during the second section of the motet. If there is any need for proof of the richness of the wonderful artistry displayed in the motets of the Netherlands masters, the examples by Isaac, Brumel, Mouton and Compère brought together here make this proof convincing in terms of actual sound.