JOHANNES OCKEGHEM (c.1410-1497)

Missa Caput & Parisian machicotage from the Mandatum Ritual

1 mandatum novum
2 kyrie
3 diligamus nos invicem
4 gloria
5 in diebus illis
6 credo
7 maria ergo
8 sanctus
9 vos vocatis me
10 agnus dei
11 venit ad petrum

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About this CD

Graindelavoix, the new vocal adventure from Belgian ethnomusicologist Björn Schmelzer, makes its debut on Glossa with an exquisite and entrancing version of the Missa Caput by Johannes Ockeghem placed in a semi-liturgical setting, with Gregorian plainchant antiphons performed in the style of the Parisian machicots: the polyphonic passages and ornamentations anchored in the early performing traditions of Gallican origin, a recording made in the impressive Gothic acoustic of St Pauluskerk in Antwerp, and an intelligent combination of voices trained in classical and popular styles, help to locate this courageous musical design within a dense, organic aesthetic, offering no concessions to the nowadays-prevailing sterile uniformity that surrounds late medieval and renaissance polyphonic repertoire...

In words of Björn Schmelzer: ‘Machicotage is an anachronism, a living leftover which remains obliquely in its own time, a surviving element which one no longer knows what to do with. Machicotage is a practice, a savoir-faire of Parisian singers that worked until the 19th century but didn’t survive the Gregorian reform. Machicotage is above all a fold in the current of time of oral, operative practices: historical, musicological research can never be solely hermeneutic because the written source is only a (small) factor in the big picture of influences and practices: a similar research progresses via a comparative, interdisciplinary and historical-anthropological way. Machicotage is above all a symptom: of the infamy and complexities of the history of music, and of the diversity of execution practices.’