The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet Author(s): ANNE WALTERS ROBERTSON Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Fall 2006), pp. 537-630 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2006.59.3.537 . Accessed: 22/03/2012 16:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society. http://www.jstor.org The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet ANNE WALTERS ROBERTSON A polyphonic mass written by an anonymous English composer in the 1440s arrived on the Continent around mid-century. Based on the melisma Caput from the Sarum Antiphon (henceforth Ant.) Venit ad Petrum, this novel work exemplified the way in which the Ordinary movements of the mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) would be set for the next fifty years.1 It must have caught the eye of composers who quickly recognized the possibilities inherent in its four-voice texture, including a freely written, independently moving line lying beneath the tenor’s borrowed melody. The very existence of this new kind of low voice offered more freedom in planning cadences and suggested ways of working around the hegemony of the time-honored cantus firmus.2 The later emergence of standard Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Seventy-First Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Washington, DC, October 2005; at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies of the Ohio State University; and at the Medieval Studies Workshop of the University of Chicago. My thanks go to Margaret Bent, Jennifer Bloxam, Philip Bohlman, Drew Davies, Daisy Delogu, Sinan Dora, Rebecca Gerber, Barbara Haggh-Huglo, Edward Houghton, Michel Huglo, Herbert Kellman, Robert Kendrick, Lewis Lockwood, Yossi Maurey, Robert Nosow, Alejandro Planchart, Mary Robertson (Chief Curator of Manuscripts, Huntington Library), Robby Robertson, Pamela Starr, Noel Swerdlow, Rob Wegman, and Craig Wright for their generous advice and assistance. I am especially grateful to Reinhard Strohm for the lively exchange of ideas that we shared. Throughout the article, I use “Saint-” for names of churches (e.g., Saint-Margaret’s parish church in London), and “St.” for names of persons (e.g., St. Margaret). Bibliographic abbreviations are explained at the beginning of the Works Cited. 1. The English Caput Mass is edited in Guillaume Du Fay’s Missarum Pars Prior (1–6), ed. Heinrich Besseler, vol. 2 of Opera Omnia (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1960), 75– 101 (No. 5). On the misattribution to Du Fay, see below, note 11. 2. Four-voice writing predates the Caput Mass, of course. In earlier works, however, the contratenor normally lies higher than the tenor (contratenor altus) and serves the purpose of filling in a third or fifth above the tenor. In pieces before around 1450 in which a contratenor bassus does appear, it is typically tied rhythmically and conceptually to the tenor. See Wegman, “Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus and the Early History of the Four-Voice Mass in the Fifteenth Century,” EMH 10 (1991): 235–303; Ernest Sanders and Peter M. Lefferts, “Motet I,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 17:190–202; Leeman L. Perkins and Patrick Macey, “Motet II, 1,” in ibid., 17:202–5; Owen Jander, “Contratenor,” in ibid., Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 59, Number 3, pp. 537–630, ISSN 0003-0139, electronic ISSN 1547-3848. © 2006 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: jams.2006.59.3.537. 538 Journal of the American Musicological Society chord progressions and functional harmonies traces its lineage in part to the development of this kind of unfettered contratenor bassus.3 Scholars today point to the English Caput Mass as archetypical of the kind of scoring that became the norm in the Low Countries throughout the remainder of the fifteenth century. As Rob Wegman observes, The key to success [of the novel scoring in the Caput Mass] lay not in the fact of its four voices, but in the invention of a new contrapuntal function, the low contratenor. This voice added more to the three-part texture than just an element of sonority: it was free to assume total control over the harmonic progressions, a task that had not previously been associated with any single, freely composed voice.4 [emphasis original] And in a seminal article on the Caput masses that is still cited a half century after its publication, Manfred Bukofzer implies even greater significance for this and other early insular compositions: “The cyclic tenor Mass is the most influential achievement of the English school of Renaissance music.”5 6:373; idem, “Contratenor altus,” in ibid., 6:373–74; Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Compositional Techniques in the Four-Part Isorhythmic Motets of Philippe de Vitry and His Contemporaries, 2 vols. (New York: Garland, 1989), 1:35–37, and passim; idem, Machaut’s Mass: An Introduction (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990), 20–79; Margaret Bent, “The ‘Harmony’ of the Machaut Mass,” in Machaut’s Music: New Interpretations, ed. Leach, 83–89; Roger Bowers, “To Chorus from Quartet: The Performing Resource for English Church Polyphony, c. 1390–1559,” in English Choral Practice: 1400–1650, ed. Morehen, 30; Peter M. Lefferts, The Motet in England in the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986), 19–23; Jon Michael Allsen, “Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet, 1400–1440” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1992), 40, 173–74, 200. 3. Reinhard Strohm notes that this voice is designated as tenor secundus “in the better sources,” perhaps in part because it helps make up for melodic shortcomings in the Caput tenor, as discussed below (The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], 236; see also pp. 234–37). 4. Wegman, “Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus,” 296; see also pp. 297–302. For other discussions of the importance of the low contratenor in the Missa Caput, see Gareth Curtis, “Stylistic Layers in the English Mass Repertory c. 1400–1450,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 109 (1982–83): 36; Allan W. Atlas, Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe, 1400–1600 (New York: Norton, 1998), 121, 127; and Leeman L. Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance (New York and London: Norton, 1999), 360–61. 5. Manfred Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York: Norton, 1950), 223. At the time, Bukofzer was unaware of the English heritage of this work. The notion of the cyclic mass as a Renaissance “masterwork” in which purely aesthetic values replaced liturgical ones has recently been questioned; see Andrew Kirkman, “The Invention of the Cyclic Mass,” this Journal 54 (2001): 1–47. The English style of composition was nonetheless considered matchless in its day, as attested in the famous remarks of Martin le Franc, who tells us that Du Fay and Binchois were excellent composers because they had “taken up the English countenance and followed Dunstable, whereby marvelous pleasure makes their song joyful and significant” (“Et ont prins de la contenance / Angloise et ensuÿ Dunstable; / Pour quoy merveilleuse plaisance / Rend leur chant joieux et notable”); Le champion des dames, ed. Robert Deschaux, 5 vols. (Paris: H. Champion, 1999), 4:68 (livre IV, lines 16, 269–72); translation from Strohm, Rise of European Music, 127. Similarly Johannes Tinctoris Caput Masses and Motet 539 The effect of the Caput Mass must have been due in some degree to its frequent performance. No fewer than seven copies of some or all of the English work have come down to us—the largest number for any polyphonic mass prior to the 1460s—and it is one of only a handful of pieces before 1480 to survive in six or seven sources.6 Caput was known beyond its native land, as far to the south as Italy and elsewhere on the Continent.7 It served as progenitor of two other masses composed on the same cantus firmus and borrowing directly from its layout: the Missae Caput by Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht of the late 1450s and late 1480s, respectively.8 Archives witness to the further diffusion of the English Caput Mass. Simon Mellet, for one, had a copy of the Kyrie made for a choirbook in Cambrai in 1463.9 And a note praises Dunstaple as chief expositor of “a new art, of which . . . the fons et origo exists among the English, whose head is Dunstaple” (“ars nova . . . cuius . . . fons et origo apud Anglicos quorum caput Dunstaple exstitit”); Proportionale musices, vol. 2a of Johannis Tinctoris opera theoretica, ed. Albert Seay, 3 vols. in 2 ([Rome]: American Institute of Musicology, 1975–78), 2a:10. (For a recent, revisionist view of Tinctoris’s statement, see Rob Wegman, “Johannes Tinctoris and the ‘New Art,’ ” Music and Letters 84 [2003]: 171–88; and idem, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–1530 [New York: Routledge, 2005], passim.) Strohm calls the Caput Mass “the most admired model [in the genre of the strict tenor Mass] in Europe” (Rise of European Music, 416); and scholarly quotation of Bukofzer’s seminal work, particularly of his musical analyses of the Caput masses, continues; see Rob Wegman, Born for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 266. 6. Rob Wegman, “Another ‘Imitation’ of Busnoys’s Missa L’homme armé—and Some Observations on Imitatio in Renaissance Music,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 114 (1989): 189. 7. The entire Mass is found in Trent 89, fols. 246v–56r. Portions and fragments survive in the Lucca Choirbook (Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus), fols. 17v–20r; in Coventry A 3, fol. 1r–1v; in Trent 93, fols. 126v–128r (Gloria), 236v–38r (Credo), 297v–99r (Sanctus); in Trent 90, fols. 96v–98r (Gloria), 168v–70r (Credo), 228v–230r (Sanctus); in Trent 88, fols. 31v–35r (Kyrie, Agnus); and in London 54324, fols. 6r–6v (Kyrie). Facsimiles of the Mass are found in Trienter Codices III: Fünf Messen des XV. Jahrhunderts, DTÖ 38, Jahrgang XIX/1, (Vienna: Artaria; Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1912), 3–16; in Codex Tridentinus 87[–93], 7 vols. (Rome: Bibliopola, 3–16; 1969–70); and in the forthcoming facsimile of the Lucca Choirbook, edited by Reinhard Strohm; see also note 11 below. A new edition of Trent 88 by Rebecca Gerber (Sacred Music from the Cathedral at Trent: Trent, Museo Provinciale d’Arte, Codex 1375 [olim 88] [Chicago: University of Chicago Press]) will also appear shortly. For a study of the sources of the Mass, see Strohm, “Quellenkritische Untersuchungen an der Missa Caput,” in Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance, ed. Finscher, 2:153–76. 8. Ockeghem’s Mass has been edited most recently in his Mass and Mass Sections, I, Masses Based on Chant, Fascicle 1, Missa Caput, ed. Jaap van Benthem (Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1994). On the dating, see Wegman, “Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus,” 289–302; Strohm, Rise of European Music, 422–23; Fabrice Fitch, Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Models (Paris: Champion, 1997), 56–61. Obrecht’s Mass is found in Missa Beata Viscera; Missa Caput, ed. Chris Maas, vol. 2 of the New Obrecht Edition (Utrecht: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1984), 33–75. On the date of this work, see ibid., xxi–xxii; and Wegman, Born for the Muses, 181–82, 283. 9. Jules Houdoy, Histoire artistique de la cathédrale de Cambrai, ancienne église métropolitaine Notre-Dame: Comptes, inventaires et documents inédits avec une vue et un plan de l’ancienne cathédrale (Lille, 1880; repr., Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), 194. 540 Journal of the American Musicological Society recording the presence of “a song called caput of iiii partys” in the parish church of Saint-Margaret’s in London from 1480–81 may refer to yet another mass on the Caput melisma or to a copy of the English one.10 Yet despite its immediate and long-term influence, the Caput tradition still guards many secrets. The composer of the English Caput Mass, once thought to be Guillaume Du Fay, is today unknown. Only in the last four decades has the piece begun to reveal its insular patrimony to scholars who uncovered new witnesses in English sources.11 Further speculation on the question of authorship has stalled, however, in part because it seems almost futile to try to pinpoint the place of origin of a cantus firmus taken from the highly standardized Sarum tradition. The state of survival of the Mass also contrasts sharply with the cephalic implications of its tenor. With the opening of the work missing from both extant insular sources, its earliest manuscript history is, quite literally, headless. Indeed, its transmission in England is the most fragmentary of all, since only interior portions of the Kyrie and Agnus Dei remain.12 Nor does a compelling use for any of the three Caput works seem to emerge from knowledge of the liturgical source of the tenor, a chant for Maundy Thursday. 10. Fiona Kisby, “Music and Musicians of Early Tudor Westminster,” Early Music 23 (1995): 226, 237. 11. The ascription to Du Fay relied solely on Trent 88 (fol. 31v), in which the Kyrie is attributed to him; in Trent 89, his name was erased (fol. 246v). Accepting Du Fay’s authorship, earlier scholars considered a triumvirate of composers of Caput masses—Du Fay, Ockeghem, and Obrecht—to be in loose contact with respect to the creation of the these pieces, as the similarities among the works seemed to illustrate. Evidence to the contrary appeared slowly. Bukofzer never rejected the received view of a Continental origin for the original Caput Mass, although he uncovered the source of the tenor in an English chant from the Sarum Rite, noted insular influences in the Mass (“Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 257–59), and documented fragments of the work in an English manuscript (“ ‘Caput Redivivum:’ a New Source for Dufay’s Missa Caput,” this Journal 4 [1951]: 97–110; facsimile of the Agnus, from Coventry A 3, is found in illustrations 1–4 following Bukofzer’s p. 100). Only in the late 1960s and early 1970s were the Continental beginnings of the Mass seriously questioned. Thomas Walker hinted that the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus of the Mass were part of an English work (“A Severed Head: Notes on a Lost English Caput Mass,” Abstracts of Papers Read at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Saint Louis, Missouri, December 27–29, 1969 [n.p., n.d.], 14–15). New examples of the troped Kyrie of the Mass came to light in both Continental and English sources, as reported in Reinhard Strohm, “Ein unbekanntes Chorbuch des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Die Musikforschung 21 (1968): 40–42, concerning his discovery of the Lucca Choirbook; and in Margaret Bent and Ian Bent, “Dufay, Dunstable, Plummer, a New Source,” this Journal 22 (1969): 394–434, regarding their finding of the London fragment. In 1972, Alejandro Enrique Planchart summarized these developments and offered further observations, leading to his conclusion that the Mass was in fact English (“Guillaume Dufay’s Masses; Notes and Revisions,” Musical Quarterly 58 [1972]: 1–58 [facsimile of the fragmentary Kyrie from London 54324 given on his pp. 6–7]). 12. See the useful chart illustrating the contents of all the manuscripts in Strohm, “Quellenkritische Untersuchungen,” 154. In 1989, Wegman speculated that “more sources may turn up in the future,” owing to the scant survival of the English Caput Mass, along with the fact that insular sources have been discovered largely in the last thirty [now nearly fifty] years (“Another ‘Imitation,’ ” 189n3). Caput Masses and Motet 541 Perhaps most surprisingly, given its auspicious start, the entire Caput Mass tradition died out before the end of the fifteenth century. After its demise, however, the tenor Caput was used at least one more time. A motet by Richard Hygons from the Eton Choirbook set the Marian text Salve regina to the Caput melody around 1500.13 It is generally assumed that Hygons’s composition has little to do with the masses, beyond their common choice of tenor.14 The masses, after all, do not appear to be intended for the Virgin, nor does a Salve motet seem appropriate for celebrating the Eucharist. If the lack of English sources and other factors continue to hamper research, the idea that we might know more about the function and meaning of the Caput works is full of promise. In fact, the apparent disjunction between the three masses and the motet based on the Caput tenor is only illusory, as consideration of all four works together for the first time will suggest. A range of theological allusions for the biblical and medieval concept “caput” also awaits scrutiny. These broaden our understanding of the raison d’être of the Caput tenor and its applicability to mass and motet alike. Through this wider lens, venues for ecclesiastical performance of the Caput masses along with signs of their connection to folkloric practices reveal themselves. Finally, despite their disappearance, the Caput works signal their lasting influence through their progeny, which rise up in yet another renowned family of polyphonic masses. The Caput Melody One of the many contributions of Bukofzer’s brilliant essay on the Caput masses was his identification of the source of the tenor Caput in the Ant. Venit ad Petrum from the Sarum rite. He also discussed the presence of this chant in a few places on the Continent, mostly in France.15 Example 1 extends his work a little to show the variety of forms that the melody took in sources from the region of Paris. The text and translation of the antiphon, taken from the dramatic verses of John 13:6–9, follow: Venit ad Petrum dixit ei Petrus non lavabis mihi pedes in eternum respondens Jesus dixit si non lavero te non habebis partem mecum domine non tantum pedes meos sed et manus et caput.16 13. Frank Ll. Harrison, ed., The Eton Choirbook, 3 vols. (London, Stainer and Bell, 1956–61), 2:39–45 (no. 20). 14. Wegman, “Another ‘Imitation,’ ” 190n4; Nicholas Sandon, “Hygons, Richard,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 12:14. 15. Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 228–49. 16. Text cited from the thirteenth-century Sarum gradual, London, British Lib., Add. 12194, fol. 50v, edited in Walter Howard Frere, ed., Graduale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, with a Dissertation and Historical Index, Illustrating Its Development from the Gregorian Antiphonale missarum (London: B. Quaritch, 1894). 542 Journal of the American Musicological Society Example 1 Tenors of Caput masses compared to English and Parisian sources of the Caput melisma English Caput Mass, Kyrie Tenor (second cursus) Bukofzer's Sections: a ENGLISH CHANT SOURCES V 2 V œ œœ œœ b a c Var. X Var. Y œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ ca Oxford, Bodleian, Rawl. lit. d.4œ œ 4 V œ œœ œœ 5 V œ œœ œœ V œ œœ œœ - œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Manchester, œ John Rylands 24 7 - œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ London, Lambeth Palace, Lambeth œ 7 œ V œ œœ œœ - œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ London, BL, œ Add. 12194 6 œœœ œœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ Oxford, Bodleian, Don. b.5 œ Obrecht, Caput Mass, Kyrie Tenor œ V œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ Ockeghem, œ Caput Mass, Kyrie Tenor 9 V œ œœ œœ 10 V œ œœ œœ 11 V œ œœ œœ 12 V œ œœ œœ 13 V œ œœ œœ 14 V œ œœ œœ 16 a œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ V 15 b London, BL, œ Harley 2942 (folioœ numbers in Appendix B) 3 8 PARISIAN CHANT SOURCES œ œœ œœ 1 œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ Paris, BNF, œ lat. 830 Paris, BNF, œ lat. 861 Baltimore,œ Walters 302 London, BL, œ Add. 16905 Paris, BNF, œ lat. 1337 Paris, BNF, œ lat. 1112 V œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ Paris, Bibl. œ Mazarine 411 V œ œœ œœ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ Caput Masses and Motet 543 Example 1 continued c 1 Vœ 2 Vœ d d e Var. Z œ œ œ œœœ œœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœœ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœœœ œ œ œ œœœ œœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœœ œœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœœœœ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœ œ – - - œ œ œ œœœ œœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ - - œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ 3 Vœ 4 Vœ 5 Vœ 6 V 7 V 8 Vœ 9 V œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ 10 V œœœ œœœœ œ œ œœ 11 V œ 12 Vœ 13 Vœ 14 Vœœ 15 Vœœ 16 Vœœ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœœ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœœ œ œ - œ - put œœœœœœ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ 544 Journal of the American Musicological Society (He came to Peter, [and] Peter said so him, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, saying, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” [And Peter said:] “Lord, not my feet only, but also [my] hands and [my] head.”) Ironically, Bukofzer’s discovery of the tenor has in some ways impeded, rather than assisted, our progress in understanding the meaning of the Caput masses. The chant Venit ad Petrum comes from an unusual ritual, the foot-washing, or Mandatum, service for Maundy Thursday. The spectacle of this day includes Jesus’s institution of the Lord’s Supper, his bathing of the disciples’ feet, and his betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. The intensity of these events has perhaps drawn attention disproportionately, preventing consideration of the full range of implications of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the celebration of Maundy Thursday alone would have inspired creation of such an elaborate polyphonic work as the Caput Mass. Although a few endowments for use of polyphony during the Mandatum exist,17 the feast falls during Lent, a time of curtailed celebration, at least in terms of polyphonic music. It is easier to envisage composed polyphony for Easter Day, the commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection, or some other occasion of unmitigated joy. The English composer of the Caput Mass even seems to point in this direction by incorporating the popular Prosula Deus creator omnium into the Kyrie.18 This trope was regularly sung in Exeter Cathedral and other English churches on principal and major double feasts, including Easter and Ascension,19 but added verses of this kind were expressly forbidden on Maundy Thursday in the Sarum Rite.20 17. Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 34, 35, 46; Barbara Haggh-Huglo, “An Ordinal from Ockeghem’s Time from the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris: Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 114,” Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 47, nos. 1–2 [Johannes Ockeghem] (1997): 60–61. 18. The trope is found in Trent 88, Trent 89, London 54324, and the Lucca Choirbook (for folio numbers, see note 7 above). 19. J. N. Dalton, ed., Ordinale Exon. (Exeter Chapter MS 3502 Collated with Parker MS 93), 4 vols. (London: Harrison and Sons, 1909–40), 2:467–68. In the late fifteenth century, the canons of Salisbury banned the singing of Deus creator omnium on the days immediately following Easter, thus hinting that the trope was in fact performed on the Resurrection; see Christopher Wordsworth, ed., The Tracts of Clement Maydeston with the Remains of Caxton’s Ordinale (London: Harrison and Sons, 1894), 54. Sandon shows that the use of the trope on Easter was the general practice (Nicholas Sandon, ed., The Use of Salisbury: 5, The Proper of the Mass from Easter to Trinity [Newton Abbot, Devon: Antico Edition, 1998], vi); for other feasts on which the trope was heard, see idem, The Use of Salisbury: The Ordinary of the Mass (Newton Abbot, Devon: Antico Edition, 1984), 52–53. I am grateful to Robert Nosow for alerting me to the Exeter references in this and the following note. 20. Directions for Maundy Thursday in the Exeter ordinal read: “Kyrie Conditor sine versibus”; Dalton, Ordinale Exon., 2:467; see also Nicholas Sandon, ed. The Use of Salisbury: 4, The Masses and Ceremonies of Holy Week (Newton Abbot, Devon: Antico Edition, 1996), 60. For a discussion of the distinct observances of Maundy Thursday, see David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 34–36; Andrew Caput Masses and Motet 545 Still, interpretation of the meaning of the Caput Mass has traditionally been tied to persons associated with Maundy Thursday. Peter, who is speaking in the Ant. Venit ad Petrum, asks Christ to wash “not my feet only, but also [my] hands and [my] head (caput),” as we have just seen. It is on the word “caput” that the lengthy melisma chosen for the Caput tenor appears. Read prophetically, it is hypothesized, this caput might foretell Peter’s future position as first pope and thereby “head” of the church. The Caput Mass, according to this interpretation, was intended as musical accompaniment for pontifical coronations.21 Despite its logic, this theory has never fully taken hold, perhaps in part for reasons just mentioned.22 Rather than relying quite so literally on the liturgical placement of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum to shed light on the use of the Caput Mass, we might approach the question differently. After the mid-thirteenth century, cantus firmi no longer tied the polyphonic compositions for which they served as scaffold inflexibly to the feasts in which they originated. Composers of the late middle ages selected motet tenors for their value as hermeneutic support for or commentary on the ideas that they wanted to express in the texts of the other voices.23 Liturgical allusions inherent in the tenor formed part of this commentary, of course, but they did not dictate the ceremonial placement of these motets, as they had in the early Latin motets of the Parisian Notre Dame repertory. Similarly, in the fifteenth century, Marian polyphonic works were often built on the four great antiphons for the Virgin (Salve regina, Ave regina Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to Their Organization and Terminology (Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 258– 60 (nos. 921–24). 21. Ruth Hannas, “Concerning Deletions in the Polyphonic Mass Credo,” this Journal 5 (1952): 163–65. See also Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance, 361–62; and Strohm, Rise of European Music, 236. A recent paper by Andrew Kirkman suggests that the “caput” refers to Christ’s head (“Whose Head? New Light on the Cantus Firmus of the ‘Caput’ Masses,” paper read at the Seventy-First Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Washington, DC, October 2005). As will be seen, this reading is at odds with evidence contained in sources for the Caput Masses: references to Peter’s (not Christ’s) head in the Ant. Venit ad Petrum; allusions to dragons, signifying the caput draconis theology, in three sources for the masses (Lucca and Chigi manuscripts and an archival document for Saint-Margaret’s parish church in London); and the incompatibility of Christ’s head with that of the dragon. 22. An earlier interpretation even suggested that the masses honored St. Andrew, a favored saint in the diocese of Cambrai, where the Kyrie was copied in 1463 (André Pirro, Histoire de la musique de la fin du XIVe siècle à la fin du XVIe [Paris: H. Laurens, 1940], 77). 23. See Sylvia Huot, Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997); Anne Walters Robertson, Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in His Musical Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. 79–186 (chaps. 3–6); Alice V. Clark, “Concordare cum Materia: The Tenor in the Fourteenth-Century Motet” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1996); David Rothenberg, “Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs in Medieval Polyphony: Studies in Musical Symbolism” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2004); also articles by Margaret Bent, Kevin Brownlee, and Gerald Hoekstra that are cited in these works. 546 Journal of the American Musicological Society celorum, Ave Maris stella, and Regina celi). These chants are not connected to particular feasts, and the polyphony based on them likewise has a variety of functions.24 Perhaps the Caput melisma from the end of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum is to be understood similarly: as a marker for theological constructs related, but not restricted, to a specific day. Thinking in this way may help explain not simply the function of the Caput Mass but also its wide dissemination and the number of its emulators.25 To be sure, the very transmission of the Caput melisma in polyphonic contexts warrants this kind of analysis. Employed both in masses that seem to be Christological and in one decidedly Marian motet, the Caput melody already seems to project a purpose larger than that of identifying St. Peter, marking the significance of Maundy Thursday, or venerating the Virgin. The dual Christological-Marian context of “Caput” appears to be some kind of overarching idea, one able to accommodate a number of theological and ritual settings at once. This highlights the question: “Whose caput (“head”) is it anyway?” The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Bible and Medieval Theology The caput that Christ and Mary have in common is the head of the serpent, namely Satan. In multiple contexts in medieval theology, liturgy, and art, the serpent is allegorized as the personification of original sin. It is this interpretation of the serpent’s head (caput serpentis or caput draconis) that was associated with the caput of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum, employed by composers as the tenor of the Caput masses and motet. By linking the waters that washed the disciples’ feet in the New Testament with the waters of baptism that symbolically remitted the ancient guilt of Adam and Eve, this caput came to signify the topos of the destruction of sin. The serpent of the Old Testament assumes many different forms, most often that of a snake or a dragon.26 In biblical exegesis, both Christ and, later 24. These functions include daily Salve services, funeral settings, and many other uses. For a sampling of the extensive literature on this subject, see Howard Mayer Brown, “The Mirror of Man’s Salvation: Music in Devotional Life about 1500,” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 752–53; Craig Wright, “Dufay at Cambrai: Discoveries and Revisions,” this Journal 28 (1975), 219–20; Rothenberg, “Marian Feasts,” 19 and passim; and Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance, 318–19. 25. Masses that imitated the style of the English Caput include not only the Caput works of Ockeghem and Obrecht, but also the English Veterem hominem Mass, the Missa Spiritus almus of Petrus de Domarto, the anonymous German Gross senen cycle, and others; see Wegman, “Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus almus,” 280–302. 26. See Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 163–66; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, Caput Masses and Motet 547 on, Mary tread upon and crush the fiend in innumerable representations in art, liturgy, and drama. To discover how this happens, it will be useful to examine how the serpent/dragon became a recurrent trope for the presence of evil in the world.27 This, in turn, will help illustrate the common link between the Caput masses and Hygons’s motet, as well as the meaning that underlies these works. The question of who crushes the head of the serpent/dragon harks back to one seminal, yet ambiguous verse in the Old Testament. Genesis 3:15 contains the first allusion to a savior,28 as seen in the following translation from the familiar King James Bible: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, . . . I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise [crush] thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Despite its obvious significance, this verse was confusing for early translators (Table 1, line 3). The Greek Septuagint translated the Hebrew as “he shall strike [crush] thy head.” Seven centuries later Saint Jerome used the feminine “ipsa” (“she”) in his Latin (Vulgate) translation from the Hebrew, presumably in order to preserve the gender of the antecedent (i.e., the “the woman’s offspring”). Figure 1 seems to illustrate this: Jerome points to his Bible while adoring the Virgin with infant who towers over the Garden of Eden. Many subsequent translations, including the King James, adopt a strongly Messianic interpretation and write “he [Christ]” or “it [the seed] shall bruise thy head.” Others, including the Rheims-Douay version, follow the Vulgate and transmit “she shall crush thy head,” implying the additional words “through her seed.”29 It is easy to see how a “he,” namely Christ, crushes the head of the serpent/ dragon. Throughout the New Testament, as will be discussed below, Jesus repeatedly confronts and overthrows Satan, and this theme is faithfully depicted in medieval iconography. The dragon is wrapped around the base of the Cross (Fig. 2) and is smashed under Christ’s foot, both as he steps forth from the tomb on Easter morning (Fig. 3) and again when he returns to perform the Last Judgment (Fig. 4).30 All saints who slay dragons (Fig. 5) represent 1984), 67; and Robert Muchembled, A History of the Devil from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 11. 27. The interchangeability of the serpent and dragon in this role is common in medieval and Renaissance art; see, for instance, Rosa Giorgi, Angels and Demons in Art, ed. Stefano Zuffi, trans. Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 97. 28. On the importance of this passage, see Charles Journet, “Scripture and the Immaculate Conception: A Problem in the Evolution of Dogma,” in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. O’Connor, 31; and Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 244–45. 29. For a conspectus of nine translations of this passage up through the beginning of the twentieth century, see the anonymous article “Comparative Translation: Genesis 3:15; A Study in Modernizing the English Bible,” Biblical World 23 (1904): 130–31. 30. Claire Donovan, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford (Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 11, fig. 2. Table 1 God’s Curse of the Serpent and Eve, as Seen in Four Translations of Genesis 3:15 Greek Septuagint (3rd c. BC)a Latin Vulgate (4th c. AD)b Rheims-Douay (16th–17th c.) King James (17th c.) (1) And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and I will put enmities between you and the woman, and your seed and I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and (2) her seed, her seed: her seed: her seed; (3) he [␣␷␶␱´␵] she [ipsa] she it (4) shall strike thy head, and thou shalt watch against will crush your head [caput tuum], and you will lie in wait for shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise (5) his heel. her heel. her heel. his heel. a Translation from Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, ed., The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1990); see also Brenton’s note on this verse. bMy translation, based on Albertus Colunga, O.P., and Laurentius Turradus, eds., Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, new ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965). Caput Masses and Motet 549 Figure 1 Mary standing with the Infant Jesus above Adam, Eve, and the snake in the Garden of Eden, adored by Saint Jerome and Saint Zenobius (Mariotto Albertinelli and Francesco Franciabigio; Florence, 1506; Louvre Museum, Paris; photograph from http://www.insecula.com/ us/oeuvre/O0017092.html) the Savior crushing Satan’s head. And symbolically, every warrior who puts on the armor of Christ (Fig. 6) similarly trounces the beast.31 The dragon’s association with sin and its defeat is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the prayer traditionally ascribed to St. Benedict and used in exorcism formulas beginning in the fifteenth century: 31. Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 101–27. 550 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 2 Dragon wrapped around the foot of the Cross (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14159, fol. 6r). Used by permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Caput Masses and Motet 551 Figure 3 Christ steps out of the tomb, crushing the dragon (Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 21, fol. 75r; photo from the Austrian National Library, picture archives, Vienna). Used by permission of the Austrian National Library. 552 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 4 Christ treads on dragons at the Last Judgment, from the de Brailes Hours (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 330, leaf 3). Reproduction by permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Caput Masses and Motet 553 Figure 5 St. George slaying the dragon, from William Bruges’s Garter Book, (London, British Library Stowe 954, fol. 5v). © the British Library. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. 554 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 6 The Armed Man slaying the dragon, from opening of Agnus Dei III from Josquin Desprez’s Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cappella Sistina 197, fol. 10v). Used by permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Crux sancta sit mihi lux, Non draco sit mihi dux, Vade retro satana, Nunquam suade mihi vana, Sunt mala quae libas, Ipse venena bibas. May the holy cross be my light, Let not the dragon be my leader, Get behind me, Satan. Never tempt me with vain things, What you offer is evil, Drink the poison yourself. This saying was so well known that it was reduced to its initial Latin letters (CSSML.NDSMD.VRSNSMV.SMQLIVB) on the popular medallion of St. Benedict and in other artistic depictions of the saint.32 Biblical writing and commentary similarly accentuate this Christological interpretation of the person who overpowers the dragon. Psalm 74:13–14 (Vulgate 73) is a key “dragon passage” in the Old Testament: “Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces.”33 Psalm commentators 32. The Benedictine medal is known from an early fifteenth-century Bavarian manuscript from the Abbey of Metten. This source includes a drawing of the medal and an explanation of the letter abbreviations; see J. Rippinger, “Benedict, St.,” in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 15 vols., 2:236–38 (Detroit: Thomson/Gale Group; Washington, DC: in association with the Catholic University of America, 2003); A. J. Corbierre, Numismatique bénédictine: Histoire scientifique et liturgique des croix et des médailles de Saint Benoît, patriarche des moines d’Occident d’après des documents inédits, 2 vols. (Rome: Giuseppe, 1904), no. 131; Ph. Schmitz, “Benoît, Abbé du Mont-Cassin,” in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, 8:225–41 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1912–); Anselmo Lentini and Maria Chiara Celletti, “Benedetto di Norcia,” in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 13 vols. (Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII nella Pontificia Università lateranense, 1961–1970), vol. 2, col. 1161. 33. The sentiment of this psalm finds its way into the earliest prayers of the church, including the Gallican Missal: “in these waters may [the Lord] break in pieces and obliterate the dragon’s head” (“confringat et conterat super has aquas capud draconis”); Leo Cunibert Mohlbert, OSB, ed., Missale Gallicanum Vetus (Cod. Vat. Palat. lat. 493) (Rome: Herder, 1958), 40 (no. 27. “Opus ad baptizando,” para. 163, lines 3–4). Caput Masses and Motet 555 emphasize the sacramental nature of the waters in which the dragons’ heads are broken. Not surprisingly, then, this psalm is central both to the story of Jesus’s baptism and to the rite of Christian baptism that sprang from it (Fig. 7). In Peter Lombard’s twelfth-century interpretation, the dragon is allegorized as sin, with pride as its head: “ ‘You have broken the heads of the dragon. . . .’ ‘You . . . have broken the heads,’ that is, the powers ‘of the dragon,’ that is, the prince of demons, namely Leviathan. Another reading of ‘head of the dragon’ is the beginning of sin, which is pride.”34 St. Bruno of Segni (ca. 1040/1050–1123) succinctly summarizes the meaning of “caput draconis” in this psalm: “The head of this great dragon, by which is signified original sin, was broken by the death of Christ.”35 This meaning is preserved up through the golden age of Middle English play cycles, where, in “The Baptism” from the Barbers’ Play, Christ announces to John the Baptist: “For man’s profit . . . take I this baptism certainly. The dragons . . . through my baptism destroyed have I . . . and saved mankind, soul and body.”36 Elsewhere in the Bible the dragon is likewise equated with sin. In the Christian interpretation of Psalm 91 (90), Christ treads upon the lion and dragon as a metaphor for his destruction of evil: “The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.”37 So, too, St. Michael, who stands as a figure of Christ the Warrior, defeats the “great dragon” of the Apocalypse, namely the “old serpent” of Genesis. Michael is widely recognized as the angel who battles sin on behalf of humankind: And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, [a]nd prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.38 34. “ ‘Tu confregisti capita draconis . . .’ ‘Tu’ etiam ‘confregisti capita,’ id est potestates ‘draconis,’ id est principis daemoniorum, scilicet Leviathan. Vel ‘caput draconis,’ alia littera, id est initium peccati, quod est superbia” (Peter Lombard, Commentarium in Psalmos, in PL 191, col. 689). 35. “Hujus magni draconis caput, per quod originale peccatum significatur, Christi morte confractum est” (Bruno of Segni [Saint], Expositio in Psalmos, in PL 164, col. 981). Bruno goes on to say: “The big dragon has a big head, which should be crushed with a big hammer” (“Magnus draco, magnum habuit caput, quod magno malleo conterendum fuit”); cols. 981–82. 36. Richard Beadle, ed., The York Plays (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 185 (my translation from Middle English). 37. Ps. 91:13. On this passage, see K. M. Openshaw, “The Battle between Christ and Satan in the Tiberius Psalter,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52 (1989): 23–28; and Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France, XIII Century: A Study in Mediaeval Iconography and Its Sources of Inspiration, trans. from 3rd ed. by Dora Nussey (London: Dent; and New York: Dutton, 1913), 43–44. I learned of the latter work in Craig Wright, “The Palm Sunday Procession in Medieval Chartres,” in The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, ed. Fassler and Baltzer, 352, where this meaning of Psalm 91 is also discussed. 38. Revelation 12:7–9; see Openshaw, “The Battle between Christ and Satan,” 23. 556 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 7 Christ breaking the dragon’s head (Ps. 74:13–14), from the St. Alban’s Psalter (Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St. Godehard 1, p. 216). Used by permission. Caput Masses and Motet 557 Through scores of commentaries on these and other verses,39 the dragon’s head emerges as the common metaphor for sin. Understandably, getting rid of dragons was a praiseworthy activity, one usually carried out by a saint. In the story of St. Silvester, a dragon had long menaced the city of Rome with his fiery breath. City officials requested help from Emperor Constantine, who turned to Silvester. The saint descended into the dragon’s lair and, in the name of Jesus, bound the beast’s mouth shut. Grateful citizens were immediately converted and baptized. As the story concludes, “Thus the Roman people were delivered from a twofold death, namely, from the worship of the devil and the dragon’s venom.”40 Here two modes of interpretation are conflated: the literal presence of pagan worship is allegorized as the poison that comes from a dragon’s mouth. In this and similar ways, the dragon, archsymbol of evil, made his way into the realm of folklore, a place where such beasts flourished, as we will see later on. Quite apart from popular accounts of the dragon in medieval society, real controversies concerning the snake occurred in the fifteenth century. The unresolved question from Genesis 3:15—is it “he” or “she” who crushes the head of the dragon/serpent?—helped set in motion a lengthy process that led, in 1854, to promulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Already by 1500, however, celebration of this feast on 8 December had become a regular feature of Western liturgies. A brief review of its history bears on our subject. Reasoning about the birth of the Virgin Mary went something like this. Because of the fall of Adam and Eve, under early Christian doctrine the whole of humankind is born into a condition of depravity. This state is inherited from one generation to the next through the very act of procreation. Mary, however, conceived Christ without intercourse, thus avoiding the sin of concupiscence. It was of interest, therefore, to speculate on the nature of her own conception. There were two prominent positions. According to one view, Mary’s parents Anna and Joachim gave life to their daughter through divine intervention, thereby sparing her from the dreaded curse.41 The other view 39. See also passages that refer to crushing Satan, for example: “And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (Romans 16:20); “And [Jesus] said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:18–19). 40. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:70–71. 41. In medieval iconography, the theme of Anna and Joachim’s Kiss or Embrace at the Golden Gate was intended, in part, to depict Mary’s spotless origin through an innocent act that attempted to mirror the one which resulted in Christ’s birth; see Suzanne L. Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 20–28. See also Virginia Nixon, Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 13–16; and Nancy Mayberry, “The Controversy over the Immaculate Conception in Medieval and Renaissance Art, Literature, and Society,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21 (1991): 209–11. 558 Journal of the American Musicological Society held that Mary was conceived in the usual way, but that she was sanctified at the moment of conception and rendered thereafter free of stain. The goal of both explanations, of course, was to account for Mary’s sinless—or virtually sinless—nature. Once again, the passage from Genesis 3:15 served as one point of entry for theologians and lay persons considering this issue. This Ur-Messianic prophecy, the Catholic Church holds, enfolds Mary in the salvation scheme as a kind of “supreme facilitator.” As such, she is due a reverence exceeded only by that owed to Christ himself. The late middle ages were tireless in enhancing the cult of the Virgin through images, votive masses, music, and numerous other reminders. Given her stature, it was expedient to confirm Mary’s sinlessness in order to establish once and for all her roles as protectrix and mediatrix par excellence. A feast, and ultimately a doctrine relating to Mary’s perfection, framed in terms of her Immaculate Conception, would help accomplish this end. Celebration of a festival commemorating Mary’s conception began in the East in the seventh century. It was known, albeit not widely observed, in England and Normandy by the eleventh century.42 With the rise of the religious orders in the thirteenth century, Franciscans and Dominicans began to debate the topic in earnest. Led by the writings of Duns Scotus, Franciscans asserted that Mary was divinely conceived, adopting the name “Immaculate Conception” for the feast. Dominicans, following Thomas Aquinas, believed that she was made pure at the moment of conception and privileged the phrase “Sanctification of the Virgin.”43 Over time the Franciscan viewpoint prevailed, but there was opposition along the way. As early as the twelfth century, liturgical commentator Johannes Beleth complains: “Some occasionally have celebrated the feast of the Conception and some celebrate [it] by chance, but it is not authentic. Indeed, it seems that it ought to be prohibited, for in sin was she conceived.”44 42. One finds the term “Conception of the Virgin” in manuscripts and calendars, as shown in Cornelius A. Bouman, “The Immaculate Conception in the Liturgy,” in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. O’Connor, 127–35. For excellent overviews of the history of the feast, in addition to the collection of essays in O’Connor’s volume, see Bonnie J. Blackburn, “The Virgin in the Sun: Music and Image for a Prayer Attributed to Sixtus IV,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 124 (1999): 175–82; Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, 5–66; and Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 236–54. 43. Bouman, “The Immaculate Conception in the Liturgy,” 138–40; see also Bonnie J. Blackburn, “For Whom Do the Singers Sing?” Early Music 25 (1997): 603–4 and 609n25. 44. “Festum enim conceptionis quidam aliquando celebrauerunt et forte aliqui celebrant, sed non est autenticum, immo prohibendum uidetur esse. In peccato enim concepta fuit” (Johannes Beleth, Johannis Beleth Summa de Ecclesiasticis Officiis, ed. Heriberto Douteuil [Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1976], 284 [chap. 146, lines 51–53]); see also Sicardus of Cremona, Mitrale sive Summa de Officiis Ecclesiasticis, in PL 213, col. 421. Likewise, in his monumental Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, Guillelmus Durandus does not recognize the Conception of Mary; see also Mayberry, “Controversy over the Immaculate Conception,” 208. Caput Masses and Motet 559 These issues justifiably found an audience in the great conclaves of the church in the fifteenth century. At the Council of Basel (1431–49), proponents of Mary’s miraculous birth went to some lengths to demonstrate their position, asserting her role as the one who crushes the dragon’s head. The Septem Allegationes of Franciscan conciliarist John of Segovia includes a chapter entitled “Testimony of God that the Virgin will crush the head of the serpent, and the Devil will wound her in the heel without crushing the head of the Virgin through sin.”45 Dominican John of Torquemada takes the opposite position. He explains that because Mary had no use of [her] free will at the time [of her birth], it cannot be said that she exercised any virtue by which she might be said to have engaged in battle with the snake and crushed his head. Indeed, [only] those sanctified in the womb and children are said to be made sons of God by grace in Baptism. They may be said to be freed from the power of the Devil, although they have not crushed the head of the Devil, because no action on their part has intervened, but only divine action has done this. Not to them but to God alone is the crushing of the head of the serpent ascribed, according to that which is said in Psalm [74, Vulgate] 73.46 After the councils, immaculists continued to attract adherents. In 1477, Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV took the step of having a new office for the Immaculate Conception composed and added to Roman service books. His subsequent bulls of 1482 and 1483 reinforced his stance without, however, denouncing the dissenters as heretics.47 In 1481, Duke Hercules d’Este of 45. “Testimonium Dei, quia Virgo contritura erat caput serpentis, et Diabolus insidiaturus calcaneo ejus, sed non conterens caput Virginis per peccatum” (John of Segovia, Septem allegationes et totidem avisamenta pro informatione partum Concilii Basiliensis . . . Circa Sacratissimae Virginis Mariae Immaculatam Conceptionem ejusque preservationem a peccato orginali [Brussels: Balthasarius Vivien, 1664; repr., Brussels: Culture and Civilization, 1965], 260–61). He goes on to say (ibid.) that divine intervention prevented original sin from traveling up to Mary’s head from her wounded heel. 46. “. . . ipsa pro tempore illo nullum habuerit usum liberi arbitrii, non potest dici quod exercitium habuerit cujuscunque virtutis quo mediante gessisse bellum cum serpente dicatur, et ejus caput contrivisse. Sanctificati quidem in utero et pueri in Baptismo dicuntur facti filii Dei per gratiam: licet a diaboli potestate liberati dicantur; non tamen caput contrivisse diaboli; quoniam cum non interveniat ex parte eorum aliqua cooperatio, sed sola operatio Divina hoc efficiat, non eis sed soli Deo contritio capitis serpentis ascribitur, secundum quod dicitur, Psal. 73”; John of Torquemada, Tractatus de Veritate Conceptionis Beatissimae Virginis pro facienda relatione coram patribus Concilii Basileae, anno Domini MCCCCXXXVII, mense Julio (Rome: Antonium Bladum, 1547; repr., 1869), 590 (Pars X, chap. 5). 47. Wenceslaus Sebastian, “The Controversy over the Immaculate Conception from after Scotus to the End of the Eighteenth Century,” in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. O’Connor, 234; Bouman, “The Immaculate Conception in the Liturgy,” 150–53; Rene Laurentin, “The Role of the Papal Magisterium in the Development of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception,” in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. O’Connor, 275, 298–99. 560 Journal of the American Musicological Society Ferrara, future patron of Jacob Obrecht,48 held a six-hour public debate on the subject. Here the new voice was Vincent Bandelli, a Dominican from Castelnuovo.49 Bandelli argued vehemently against the teaching, concluding that “the Blessed Virgin Mary, just like all other men, was conceived in original sin,”50 while several Franciscans spoke out in favor of her perfection.51 By 1490, oaths for defense of the immaculist position were now required in the universities, and by the mid-sixteenth century, even the Dominicans had come around to the doctrine, albeit with some reticence because of their champion Aquinas’s position.52 Not surprisingly, given the growing acceptance of the Immaculate Conception in the second half of the fifteenth century, the image of the Virgin crushing the serpent/dragon is frequently found in the liturgy, although it is less common in fifteenth-century art. Confraternities on the theme of the Immaculate Conception existed in Bruges and Milan at this time,53 and an illumination of the Virgin trampling the dragon’s head does appear in the Bedford Hours from 1423 (Fig. 8).54 A treatise from 1512 by Lotharingian music theorist Nicolas Wollick likewise cites the Marian Ant. Hec est preclarum vas, which includes the text “here is the woman of virtue who crushed the head of the serpent.”55 Poetry for the contests, or puys, that were held in 48. Obrecht served in Ferrara from 1487 to 1488 and again from 1504 to 1505; see Wegman, Born for the Muses, 139–47, 346–53. 49. Bandelli’s dedication reads: “To the most illustrious and excellent Duke Hercules d’Este, with best wishes to Your Highness from Brother Vincent of Castelnuovo of the Order of Preachers, here begins a letter in the way of a narrative of the dispute that has occurred concerning the matter of the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary” (“Ad illustrissimum et excellentissimum ducem d.d. Herculem estensem epistola fratris Vincentii de castro novo ordinis predicatorum narrative disputationis facte de materia conceptionis beate virginis Marie coram celsitudine sua feliciter incipit”); De singulari puritate et praerogativa conceptionis Salvatoris Nostri Jesu Christo (Bologna: Ugo Rugerius, 12 February 1481), fol. 1r. See also Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este, 1471–1505, and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 167. 50. “Beata virgo Maria fuit sicut ceteri homines in originali peccato concepta” (Bandelli, De singulare puritate et praerogativa, fol. 6r). 51. Sebastian, “Controversy over the Immaculate Conception,” 237. 52. Laurentin, “The Role of the Papal Magisterium,” 271. 53. See Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 67, 71, 82; Thomas McGrath, “Color and the Exchange of Ideas between Patron and Artist in Renaissance Italy,” Art Bulletin 82 (2000): 304; and Mayberry, “Controversy over the Immaculate Conception,” 213–14. 54. Maurice Vloberg notes that the iconography of the Virgin trampling on the head of the snake becomes common only in the early fifteenth century (“The Iconography of the Immaculate Conception,” in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. O’Connor, 471–72, and plate VII [following p. 492]). Vloberg’s earlier work nonetheless includes a few examples of this theme from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; La Vierge notre médiatrice (Grenoble: B. Arthaud, 1938), 49–64. On the Bedford Hours, see Janet Backhouse, The Bedford Hours (New York: New Amsterdam, 1991). 55. “Hec est mulier virtutis que contrivit caput serpentis” (Nicholas Wollick, Enchiridion Musices [Paris, 1512; repr., Geneva: Minkoff, 1972], fol. ciiiir). Caput Masses and Motet 561 Figure 8 Mary standing atop the dragon, from the Bedford Hours, 1423, detail. Banner reads, “Une fame te casera la teste” (“A woman shall crush your head”; London, British Library, Add. 18850, fol. 283r). © the British Library. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. 562 Journal of the American Musicological Society northern France beginning in the twelfth century also helped further this idea. At the Puy de la Conception at Rouen in 1515, for instance, the first prize in the category of epigram went to Guillaume Mauduit, whose winning poem begins “The Virgin shall crush your head.”56 And yet, hesitancy about the doctrine is also reflected in the relatively small number of representations of the Virgin trampling the dragon. In addition to the Bedford image, a fifteenth-century carving of Mary holding the Christ child shows that it is he who thrusts the spear into the dragon’s mouth, rather than the Virgin.57 Indeed, it was not until the late sixteenth century that the familiar iconography of the Immaculate Conception, in which the Virgin is portrayed as the Woman of the Apocalypse, crowned with the sun, standing on the crescent moon and often crushing a dragon, was fully developed. We will elaborate below on this tentativeness. Whereas male saints are understood to represent Christ when they slay dragons, females could emulate both Christ and Mary as dragon-destroyers. Hildegard of Bingen’s twelfth-century play, Ordo Virtutum, gives the feminine virtues Victory and Chastity the honor of treading Satan underfoot.58 The legend of St. Margaret similarly records that, upon being swallowed by a dragon, she bursts his belly open by making the sign of the cross (Fig. 9). When the dragon later reappears in the form of a man, Margaret throws him to the ground, places her foot on his neck, and says, “Lie still at last, proud demon, under the foot of a woman.”59 In this regard, the aforementioned “song called Caput” that was copied for Saint-Margaret’s Church in London in the late fifteenth century seems especially pertinent. Likely this work was a Caput Mass sung in honor of the dragon-conquering patroness of this house. In view of mounting acceptance of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the late fifteenth century, it is clear that not simply Christ but also Mary could rightly be depicted in the arts crushing the head of the dragon. The analogous roles of the Savior and the Woman offer an explanation for the three Christological masses on the one hand and the Marian 56. “Virgo conteret caput tuum” (Gérard Gros, Le poète, la vierge et le prince du puy: Étude sur les puys marials de la France du Nord du XIVe siècle à la Renaissance [Paris: Klincksieck, 1992], 193). In a contemporaneous chant royal, we read Mary’s similar words: “Of the proud serpent, crafty and malicious, seditious, subtle, fallacious and vicious, the head [is] crushed and suppressed; as a consequence, I am, among all beauties, the one who surpasses, full of gifts and delicious goods” (“Du fier serpent cault et malicieux / Sedicieux subtil fallacieux / Et vicieux le chef contere et casse / Pourtant ie suys des belles loultre passe / Plaine des dons et biens delicieux”); Rouen, Bibl. mun. Y.18, fol. 72r. I am grateful to Daisy Delogu for her help with this translation. See also Vloberg, “Iconography of the Immaculate Conception,” 501–2. For mentions of this theme in other chants royaux, see Gerard Defaux, “(Re)visiting ‘Delie’: Maurice Scève and Marian Poetry,” Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 690–700. 57. Vloberg, “Iconography of the Immaculate Conception,” plate IX (following p. 492). 58. Hildegard von Bingen, Ordo Virtutum, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984), 20, 31. 59. Voragine, Golden Legend 1:369. Caput Masses and Motet 563 Figure 9 St. Margaret and the dragon (London, British Library, Harley 2974, fol. 165v). © the British Library. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. 564 Journal of the American Musicological Society motet by Richard Hygons on the other, all based on a tenor signifying the head of the dragon. Yet it remains to be seen how the Caput tenor that was employed by these composers can be identified with the caput draconis theology, that is, the doctrine of original sin. The Caput Melody and the Head of the Dragon in the Redemption Scheme Peter’s outburst at the Last Supper, urging Christ to wash “not my feet only, but also [my] hands and head [caput],” forms the immediate context for the final melisma “caput” from the Ant. Venit ad Petrum. The dramatic and, as we shall see, pivotal nature of this chant within the Mandatum service of Maundy Thursday shows how this disciple’s head becomes an emblem for sin. Moments earlier, Peter had vigorously objected to Jesus’s washing his feet, claiming it to be an act of humility that undermined the savior’s status. “Lord, dost thou wash my feet?” and “Thou shalt never wash my feet,” he says. Peter’s tone changes abruptly, however, when Jesus replies, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.”60 Peter begins to understand that Christ’s action is no mere example of his humbleness, but a purposeful demonstration of sanctification.61 In his characteristic exuberance, Peter then overreacts and offers his hands and head to be washed, too. For him these limbs are every bit as corrupt as his feet. With good reason he may truly have believed this, since Jesus once equated him with the Devil, saying “Get thee behind me, Satan [Peter]: thou art an offence unto me” (Matthew 16:23, Mark 8:33), the same words that he addressed the Devil during the Temptation (Luke 4:8). The “caput” in the Ant. Venit ad Petrum, then, represents Peter’s comprehension of his head as a “head of sin.” It marks a critical shift in the dynamics of the foot-washing sequence: no longer solely a lesson in charity, the Mandatum prefigures redemption itself. Given the significance of the word “caput,” the length of its musical melisma (Ex. 1) is particularly apt and seems to parallel the common medieval depiction of the Mandatum that invariably shows Peter pointing to his head (Fig. 10).62 60. John 13:6–8. Liturgical commentator Johannes Beleth notes that Jesus utters this command because Peter is unwittingly getting in the way of Jesus’s Passion. In Beleth’s words, Christ wants Peter “to follow [him] through imitation of the Passion [but] not disturb his Passion” (Johannis Beleth Summa de Ecclesiasticis Officiis, 237 [chap. 123, lines 60–65]). 61. Ernst H. Kantorowicz analyzes the two interpretations (charitable and sanctifying) of the foot washing, but without connecting the Caput melisma to the caput draconis theology, in “The Baptism of the Apostles,” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers—Numbers Nine and Ten, ed. The Committee on Publications, The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Trustees for Harvard University, 203–51 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956; repr., New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967). Bukofzer cites Kantorowicz’s work (when it was still forthcoming) in “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 238–41. 62. Kantorowicz reproduces multiple images of Peter pointing to his head (“Baptism of the Apostles,” figures following p. 244). Caput Masses and Motet 565 Figure 10 The Footwashing, showing Peter pointing to his head (London, British Library, Cotton. Tib. C.VI., fol. 11v). © the British Library. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. Theological discussions of the foot washing mirror this reading of the Gospel account. Whereas some medieval commentators view the pedilavium as a consummate act of humility, others emphasize its purifying aspects and associate it with Jesus’s imminent Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. Using 566 Journal of the American Musicological Society physiological terms that point to this Messianic reading, St. Ambrose examines the conceptual thread that connects Peter’s head, the sacrament of baptism, the foot washing, and the serpent/dragon of Genesis 3:15: Because [Peter] said “[wash also my] hands and head,” the Lord answered him: “Whoever has washed does not need to wash again, except to wash only the feet.” Why this? Because in baptism all guilt is washed away. Guilt thus goes away, but because Adam was tripped at the heel by the devil and had venom sprayed on his feet, so you wash the feet, so that in that place in which the serpent ambushed [Adam], the greater help of sanctification might be added, through which it will not be possible to trip you up later. Therefore you wash the feet so that you might wash off the serpent’s venom.63 For Ambrose, Peter’s impure head is cleansed through his baptism, but the serpent’s poisonous wound to Adam’s heel needs further assistance. Christ, the new Adam, laves the disciples’ feet in order to wipe away the snake’s venom, thus beginning his fulfillment of the prophecy from Genesis 3:15. As the aforementioned Psalm 74 (73) tells, the dragon’s (serpent’s) head, that is sin, is broken in the waters. Through exegesis of the foot washing as a sanctifying act, triggered by Peter’s understanding of his own “caput” as sinful, the Ant. Venit ad Petrum for Maundy Thursday is relevant to Christ’s crushing of the serpent/dragon, a quintessential metaphor for salvation. Other writers follow Ambrose’s lead, including the Venerable Bede (Homilies)64 and Peter Abelard (Sic et 63. “Respondit illi dominus, quia dicerat manus et caput: ‘Qui lavit non necesse habet iterum lavare, nisi ut solos pedes lavet.’ Quare hoc? Quia in baptismate omnis culpa diluitur. Recedit ergo culpa, sed quia Adam subplantatus a diabolo est et venenum ei suffusum est supra pedes, ideo lavas pedes, ut in ea parte in qua insidiatus est serpens maius subsidium sanctificationis accedat, quo postea te subplantare non possit. Lavas ergo pedes ut laves venena serpentis” (Saint Ambrose, De Sacramentis—Des mystères: Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée de l’explication du symbole, ed. and trans. Bernard Botte [Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 1961], 94–97). Kantorowicz discusses Ambrose’s crucial role in the interpretation of the pedilavium as an act of sanctification in “Baptism of the Apostles,” 232–34. 64. “Peter, with good reason, shrank from such an act of service because he did not grasp [the meaning of] the mystery. . . Having been reproved, [he] answered immediately . . . as if he were clearly saying, ‘Since I now understand through your pointing it out to me, that by washing my feet you affirm that you are cleansing my misdeeds, I offer you not only my feet, but also my hands and my head, to be washed. I do not deny that, not only by walking, but also by my actions, my vision, my hearing, tasting, smelling and touching, I commit many deeds which must be forgiven by you.’ . . . [Jesus] said, ‘The person who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, and he is completely clean.’ [Jesus] is giving clear notice that this washing of the feet indicates pardoning of sins, and not only that which is given once in baptism, but in addition that by which the daily guilty actions of the faithful, without which no one lives in this life, are cleansed by his daily grace” (Bede the Venerable, Bede the Venerable Homilies on the Gospels, trans. Lawrence T. Martin and David Hurst, OSB, 2 vols. [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991], 2:46–47 [homily on John 13:1–17]). Caput Masses and Motet 567 Non).65 Fifteenth-century conciliarists likewise reprise Ambrose’s interpretation, notably the English Carmelite Thomas Netter, a prominent delegate to the Council of Constance (1414–18). Netter writes: “Ambrose thus says that Peter, albeit just and holy, needed to be washed by the water of baptism to clean off original sin.”66 Most importantly, the foot washing on Maundy Thursday was traditionally regarded as the beginning of the New Covenant and the end of the Old, an association that elucidates its immediate relevance to the history of salvation. The shift is signaled in the text of its opening Ant. Mandatum novum do vobis (“A new mandate I give to you”).67 “The Last Supper” from the English Bakers’ Play likewise emphasizes Jesus’s explanation of this text: “Of Moses’s laws here make I an end . . . [and] in that stead shall a new law be set between us, but who thereof shall eat, [it] behooves to be washed clean.”68 One can imagine how an English composer might easily seize on the melisma Caput and connect it with the theological understanding of the “caput draconis.” A chant segment that could symbolize the idea of the conquest of sin would offer a powerful tool for representation through music. In this way, the Ant. Venit ad Petrum becomes the ideal vehicle for a tenor for masses (and a motet) that aim to depict the defeat of sin during the Maundy Thursday/Easter season. The Caput Melody and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet We have seen that the “song called Caput” copied at Saint-Margaret’s in London could well refer to the dragon that was defeated by this saint. In addition, two late medieval polyphonic sources allude to dragons, one witness 65. Peter Abelard, Peter Abailard Sic et Non: A Critical Edition, ed. Blanche B. Boyer and Richard McKeon (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 352–53 (quaestio cvii, lines 56–68). 66. “Hic definit Ambrosius, Petrum quamvis justum, et sanctum, abluendum tamen aqua baptismi ad tergendum originale peccatum” (Thomas Waldensis, Thomae Waldensis Carmelitae Anglici Antiquitatum Fidei Catholicae Ecclesiae Doctrinale de Sacramentis, 3 vols [Venice: Antonii Bassanesii ad S. Cantianum, 1758; repr., Farnborough, UK: Gregg Press, 1967], 3:604). Netter was also known as Thomas Waldensis. On the various interpretations of the foot-washing ceremony, see John Christopher Thomas, Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine Community (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991); Christoph Niemand, Die Fusswaschungserzählung des Johannesevangelium: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Entstehung und Überlieferung im Urchristentum (Rome: Centro Studi S. Anselmo, 1993); Georg Richter, Die Fusswaschung im Johannesevangelium: Geschichte ihrer Deutung (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1967). Significantly, Strohm has shown that English musicians were well represented at the Council of Constance (Rise of European Music, 84, 106–8, 118, 197, 205). 67. Edward H. Weatherly, ed., Speculum sacerdotale: Edited from British Museum MS. Additional 36791 (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 102. 68. Beadle, York Plays, 229 (my translation from Middle English). 568 Journal of the American Musicological Society preserved in word, the other in painting. The Lucca Choirbook, a continental manuscript copied in Bruges for use in Italy and containing the English Caput Mass, records not the usual “Caput” but the phrase “Caput draconis” at the beginning of the tenor (Fig. 11). This rubric has been regarded as scribal error,69 not least because there exists another antiphon beginning with the words Caput draconis (Ex. 2). This chant draws its text (“The Savior crushed the head of the dragon in the Jordan River; from its power has he snatched everyone” 70) from Psalm 74 (73), which was discussed earlier. It is assigned to the first Sunday after Epiphany, the day on which the baptism of Jesus is traditionally celebrated in the liturgy. The event marks the inauguration of Jesus’s mission on earth to “break the heads of dragons” (Fig. 7), an undertaking that he accomplishes in the Resurrection. Like its theological and artistic counterparts that illustrate Christ treading on dragons (Figs. 2–4), the meaning of the Ant. Caput draconis is closely related to that of the “caput” from the Ant. Venit ad Petrum for Maundy Thursday, as outlined by St. Ambrose and others. But the tenor melisma of the polyphonic works based on “caput” differs significantly from the melody of the antiphon for Epiphany I, as comparison of Examples 1 and 2 shows. It is unlikely that a scribe copying the Mass was confused about the identity of either chant. Clearly composers deliberately eschewed the Ant. Caput draconis and selected the Ant. Venit ad Petrum instead. A good reason for this choice exists: the Epiphany chant Caput draconis was inappropriate for Maundy Thursday. This latter feast, along with the Easter season that immediately follows, was the time composers wished to emphasize. What is more, there is no evidence of erasure of “draconis” from the Lucca source. Presumably, then, the erroneous word was entered intentionally, or even subconsciously. We must ask, then, what does the dragon have to do with the Caput Mass in the Lucca manuscript? Two answers are possible. Perhaps the copyist himself added the word “draconis,” or he used an exemplar that included the phrase “caput draconis.” The scribe would have simply made the mental link between the similar meanings of the “caput” of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum and of the Ant. Caput draconis. Equally possibly, the word “draconis” could have appeared in English sources for the Lucca version of the Caput Mass as a trope of the tenor “caput,” again playing on the similar meanings of these two chants. The opening 69. See Planchart, “Guillaume Dufay’s Masses,” 12–13; Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 124; idem, “Ein unbekanntes Chorbuch,” 41; and idem, “Quellenkritische Untersuchungen,” 172n25. In the Lucca Choirbook, the tenor is written with the alternate spelling “caput drachonis.” I have omitted the “h” in the present article to maintain consistency. 70. “Caput draconis Salvator contrivit in Jordanis flumine ab ejus potestate omnes eripuit” (cited from Walter Howard Frere, ed., Antiphonale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, with a Dissertation and Analytical Index [London, 1901– 24], 95). The textual similarity was noted in Edward E. Lowinsky, “Laurence Feininger (1909– 1976): Life, Work, Legacy,” Musical Quarterly 63 (1977): 362n6. Caput Masses and Motet 569 Figure 11 English Missa Caput, Kyrie, opening, including Trope Deus creator omnium (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Biblioteca Manoscritti 238, fol. 17v). Used by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (Prot. no. 1644), Archivio di Stato di Lucca. 570 Journal of the American Musicological Society Example 2 Antiphon Caput draconis Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŠŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ca - put dra - co - nis sal - va - tor con - tri Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ð ŠŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł flu - mi - ne ab e - ius po - tes - ta - te om - - vit in Jor - dan - is Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł nes [er - i - pu - it]* * Word omitted but pitches present. folio of the Caput Mass in the Lucca manuscript is in fact a troped Kyrie (Fig. 11), as noted earlier, featuring the insular verses Deus creator omnium for Easter, Ascension, and other high feasts. The prosula, written in the Discantus voice just above the tenor Caput draconis, is ideal for these celebrations because it includes the salvific text, “Christ . . . who saved wretched men, returning from death to life have mercy.”71 While we will never know for certain why the words “caput draconis” were chosen to designate the Caput tenor, the foregoing explanations are both plausible. The next allusion to a “caput draconis” in a Caput Mass is found in the Chigi Codex, one of two extant sources for the Missa Caput by Ockeghem. Here we see an illumination of a wild warrior fighting a dragon in the lower left margin, along with several serpentine beasts on the opposite side of the opening (Fig. 12). Evidently, yet another scribe, or the illuminator of the manuscript, is relating a Caput mass to a dragon: once again none of these pictures is altered. These decorations will be discussed further on, but now another question arises: did the Chigi and Lucca scribes draw from the same model? It has long been conjectured that they did and that both the Lucca and Chigi manuscripts transmit corrupt readings. Either these sources repeat the error of their presumed common model, or they both preserve independent, yet eerily parallel, mistakes. There is a simpler explanation for these anomalies, however. We can accept, rather than reject, these verbal and artistic references to “caput draconis,” viewing them as trope-like commentary that reflects the well-understood meaning of “caput” in the Antiphons Venit ad Petrum and Caput draconis. In short, we can take the Lucca and Chigi witnesses at their word. The “caput” that served as tenor of the Caput masses and motet can reasonably be interpreted as a “head of sin” and, figuratively, as the standard theological image for original sin, the caput draconis. 71. “[Christe] . . . qui perditum hominem salvasti de morte reddens vite eleyson” (Lucca Choirbook, fol. 17v). For transcription of the complete prosula, see Bent and Bent, “Dufay, Dunstable, Plummer, a New Source,” 410. Figure 12 Ockeghem, Missa Caput, Kyrie, opening (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi C.VIII 234, fols. 64v–65). Used by permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 572 Journal of the American Musicological Society The “Time of the Dragon” and the “Time of Grace” in Gospel, Temporale, and Paraliturgy In laying out the plan for salvation, both Gospels and liturgy are clearly interwoven with the theology of the caput draconis. Christ’s debut at his baptism was foretold as the moment when he would begin to “break the heads of dragons.” From this day forward, in order to fulfill prophecy and serve as a supreme example, Jesus spends much of his time battling Satan. The repetitiveness of the Gospels on this point is striking. Christ is led into the desert immediately following his baptism, where he is thrice tempted by the devil. On each occasion, he resists, at one point uttering the very words with which he later admonishes Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”72 He preaches frequently about the need to resist sin,73 he casts out demons,74 and he is reported by others to have done so at various times.75 Following the Last Supper, Satan, working through the traitorous Judas, appears to gain the upper hand in the dark hours of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. But then the Great Reversal begins. Christ’s Harrowing of Hell, recorded in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and later incorporated into Apostle’s Creed, tells us that “the King of glory seized the chief ruler Satan by the head and handed him over to the angels.”76 Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday marks his official overthrow of the Devil. The last demonstration of his victory is seen in the Gospel for Ascension: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. (Mark 16:15–19) In this, his final act on earth, Christ hands over power to the disciples to cast out evil spirits. 72. Luke 4:1–13 (also Matthew 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13); see above, p. 564. 73. Matthew 10:1–8; 11:18; 12:26–45; 13:39; 23:33; Mark 4:14; Luke 8:12; 10:17–20; John 7:20–21; 8:42–56; 10:19–21. 74. Matthew 9:32–34; 12:22–23; 15:22; 17:14–20; 25:41–42; Mark 1:23–27; 3:11, 29–30; 5:2–20; 7:24–30; 16:9; Luke 4:33–36; 8:2, 27–39; 9:38–42. 75. Matthew 4:24; 8:15, 28–34; 12:24–27; Mark 1:32–34, 39; 3:15, 22–23; 6:7–13; 9:38; 16:17; Luke 6:18; 9:1, 49–50; 11:14–26; 13:32. 76. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, English trans. ed. R. McL. Wilson, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster, John Knox Press; Cambridge, England: James Clarke & Co, 1990–91), 1:524. I owe my knowledge of this passage to Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 80–86 (which draws from a different edition). Caput Masses and Motet 573 No doubt also for edifying reasons, the Christian liturgy mirrors the Gospels in its regular commemorations of Christ’s salvific act. The period of time that celebrates Jesus’s earthly existence, known as the Temporale, includes feasts marking the most important events of his life, beginning with Advent and continuing for the next six months until the Feast of Ascension. Numerous celebrations bear witness to the ritual reenactment of Christ’s defeat of Satan. The first Sunday after Epiphany observes Jesus’s baptism in the aforementioned Ant. Caput draconis. The forty days of Lent that recall his temptation include the antidemonic antiphons Jesus cum ejecisset daemonium (“When Jesus had cast out the demon”) and Si in digito Dei ejicio daemonia (“If I eject devils by the finger of God”).77 The ritual for Maundy Thursday celebrates the exorcism of the oil of the cathechumens, which, as Parisian liturgist Praepositinus Cremonensis explains, conjures against the Devil and causes him to “shake with fear.”78 In the Mandatum service that follows, as mentioned earlier, Jesus washes the snake’s poison from the disciples’ feet. On Holy Saturday the Devil is renounced and expelled in the rite of baptism.79 The introit for Easter Sunday begins with the word “Resurrexi” (“I have risen”), showing that Christ has undone the Devil’s fleeting success from Good Friday. The Gospel for Ascension forty days later marks Christ’s ultimate victory over Satan, as we have seen. A fifteenth-century English sermon for this day quotes Jesus saying to the angels, “Now I ascend unto heaven for to fulfill your number, from which fell the Devil and his angels.”80 And in the contemporaneous Ascension Play, he announces, “In my name devils cruel and keen shall be outcast.”81 Just as the narrative of Christ’s conquest of Satan is spelled out repeatedly in theology and ritual, so the graphic means of his triumph helped instruct viewers of art in the middle ages. Accounts of the Devil’s destruction in both Scripture and commentary use particularly vivid verbs. Satan is “cast out” or “down,” “driven out,” “broken,” “trodden upon,” “pushed behind” or “back.” These words and phrases emphasize the physical nature of the defeat. In terms of spatial orientation in painting and sculpture, Christ (Figs. 2–4)— or Mary, when she is depicted as snake- or dragon-conqueress (Figs. 1 and 8) 77. Both antiphons are found in the Sarum liturgy for the third Sunday in Lent; see Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense, 178. 78. “Ibi scit se diabolus puniri, unde illius timore concutitur” (“Thus the Devil knows he is being punished, whence he shakes with fear of it”); James A. Corbett, ed., Praepositini Cremonensis Tractatus de Officiis (Notre Dame, IN, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 116–17. 79. A fifteenth-century English sermon for Passion Week records: “[that week] is also called painful, for in that week the Devil has more pain than he has in another week. For because he sees the people convert more in that week than in another, therefore he is more tormented that week”; Weatherly, Speculum sacerdotale, 101 (my translation from Middle English). 80. Ibid., 157 (my translation from Middle English). 81. Beadle, York Plays, 376 (my translation from Middle English). 574 Journal of the American Musicological Society —typically appears in a higher position, with Satan relegated to a lower spot. The pictorial nature of the dragon’s subjugation is not simply a way of providing flamboyant images for medieval worshippers, of course. It is an accurate portrayal of the original prophecy that condemned the serpent. Genesis 3:15, as we have seen, forecasts that the savior/the woman will crush the serpent’s head, while he himself (she herself) is wounded in the heel. The verticality of the images conjured in these elemental words lays the foundation for their analogous representation in art through the centuries.82 Both the paraliturgy and popular religion draw especially heavily on these physically oriented pictures to represent the dragon’s downfall. Certain prayers of the late middle ages were composed in litany-like fashion in an attempt to keep the devil at bay. These intercessions, contained mostly in devotional works such as books of hours and English primers, differ from the more affective entreaties of the period in their incantatory quality. Their spellbinding character is evident in the manuscripts that transmit them, where one often sees crosses written between the words. Here the cross serves not only as an ocular reminder of Christ’s Passion, but as a talisman for warding off demons.83 In similar fashion, processions wound their way through the streets of late medieval towns to rid the vicinity of demons. Almost every English parish “beat the bounds” of their neighborhoods in Ascensiontide in order to eject Satan from their precincts. On this day, the Gospel of Mark just mentioned was read during mass. As Eamon Duffy writes of this lesson: The Marcan passage, with its divine promise of victory over demons, disease, and evil . . . came as the culmination of the Rogationtide exorcism of the parish and community by beating the bounds, in which the demons which infested earth and air were banished with cross, bells, banners, and by declaiming these passages of the four Gospels to the points of the compass.84 The religious tone of these practices, overlaid with folkloric qualities, accentuates the potent effects of demonophobia as well as the social, ritualistic ways in which people addressed them.85 Significantly, the image of the dragon representing Satan all but came alive from the period of Holy Week through the Ascension. On Palm Sunday, the general procession in the cities of Chartres and Tours paraded a mock dragon 82. The injury to the heel symbolizes the transitory reign of Satan; it is temporary because a wound to the heel is rarely fatal. The crushing of the serpent’s head, on the other hand, is lethal and spells his demise. 83. See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400– c. 1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 266–98 (chap. 8, “Charms, Pardons, and Promises: Lay Piety and ‘Superstition’ in the Primers”). 84. Ibid., 216–17 (see also pp. 214–17). 85. In their communal nature, these ceremonies also fostered a sense of belonging among the citizens. Caput Masses and Motet 575 to connote the presence of evil in the world.86 The symbolism went further than this in the weeks following Easter, as the dragon became a central figure in paraliturgical services. In the processions that took place on the three Rogation days leading up to Ascension, and on Ascension itself, churches everywhere displayed an image of a dragon, either an effigy or a cloth figure sewn into a banner. Again, the purpose was to point to mankind’s iniquity, that is, to “give the Devil his due,” while also insisting on its destruction. In this respect, the Rogation processions mirrored the great medieval pilgrimage journeys in which the participants voluntarily left their daily lives and took to the road to do penance.87 The ritual of Satan’s ouster in this season is quite dramatic. In a Sarum custom dating to the origin of the Use, the dragon takes pride of place in the procession on the first two Rogation days. In addition, the clergy carry a cross and numerous other banners: When [the hour of] none has been sung and everything pertaining to the procession has been done, let the procession line up at the step of the choir . . . with the cross [and other objects]. . . . After this, the deacon and subdeacon with the priest and procession should walk through the middle of the choir, and the procession should go out. . . . In addition, at the beginning of the procession the dragon should be carried, with three red banners preceding; in second place the lion; in third place the other banners; then let the procession follow in order in the same manner and dress.88 The dragon is made to lead the procession to remind the faithful of his terrible rulership over the earth. Already by the second day, however, his ceremonial expulsion begins. Chorus and clerics chant the litany in alternatim style, ending each verse with a refrain: “Lord have mercy, who by your precious blood has snatched the world from the throat of the cursed dragon.”89 86. For Chartres, see Wright, “Palm Sunday Procession,” 351–52; for Tours, see A. Fleuret, ed., Consuetudines Ecclesiae Beati Martini Turonensis—Rituel de Saint-Martin de Tours, documents et manuscrits (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1899–1901), 49–51. I am grateful to Yossi Maurey for bringing this reference to my attention. 87. On the anthropological aspects of such journeys, see Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 7. The Turners based their work in part on Arnold van Gennep’s fundamental study of life crises in many cultures, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Interestingly, van Gennep’s work was also informed through his observation of Flemish religious processions of the Temporal cycle in which likenesses of dragons and giants were on display; see his Le folklore de la Flandre et du Hainaut français (Département du Nord), vol. 1, Du berceau à la tombe, les cérémonies périodiques, le culte des saints (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1935). 88. See Appendix A (1) for the Latin text. On the Rogation processions, see also Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 25, 115. 89. “Kyrie eleison, qui pretioso sanguine mundum / Eripuisti de maledicti fauce draconis” (London, British Library, Add. 57534, fol. 85r); see also W. G. Henderson, ed., Processionale ad 576 Journal of the American Musicological Society On the third day and on the Feast of Ascension, a monumental upset occurs, as the dragon is demoted to the very end of the parade of banners.90 In his place, the lion symbolizing Christ takes the lead (Fig. 13): On the third and fourth ferias [i.e., the second and third Rogation Days], a procession is made going out and returning in the same way and order as we said earlier, except that on the vigil of Ascension let the dragon recede, namely to the place closest in front of the cross, [both] going out and returning. On the day of the Ascension of the Lord: let the procession be ordered as on Easter, except that on this day let the banners lead the procession, so that in the first place is the lion; then the lesser banners in order; [and] in the last place the dragon.91 As innumerable depictions of Satan’s conquest in art show, the downgrading of the dragon from front to back of the line conveys a strong sense of directionality. Dragons waving in the wind were widespread in Rogation processions on the Continent as well. As early as the twelfth century, Johannes Beleth describes the dragon’s physical appearance in vivid terms. He also introduces the notion of two distinct periods of time during which the Devil holds sway in the world: The dragon, who for three days carries himself with a long and inflated tail, goes before the cross and banners on the first two days, and [then] behind on the last day. He signifies the Devil who for three periods of time—“before the law,” “under the law,” and the “time of grace”—which are signified by these three days, deceived man or strives to deceive [him]. On the first two [days] he was, as it were, lord of the world. This is why Christ calls him “prince of this world.”92 In the “time of grace,” however, he was defeated by Christ, nor does he dare to reign as openly as before, but stealthily seduces through suggestions those whom he sees as lazy and remiss in good works, not following the way of [eternal] life. In the same way, the enemy killed the infirm and weak children of Israel and those who erringly remained behind after the flight [from Egypt]. Hence it happens that on the first two days [the dragon] precedes, and on the final day he follows.93 usum insignis ac Praeclarae Ecclesiae Sarum (Leeds: McCorquodale, 1882; repr., Farnborough, UK: Gregg Press, 1969), 117 (which reads slightly differently: “. . . de maledicti voce draconis”). 90. It is interesting that the earliest Sarum gradual from the thirteenth century does not yet record the reversal: see the edition of London, British Library, Add. 12194 in Frere, Graduale Sarisburiense, 131 and 133, in which the dragon heads up the procession on all three Rogation Days. The rubrics that follow for Ascension do not discuss the procession, probably because this book is a gradual, rather than a processional. 91. See Appendix A (2). 92. John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11. 93. See Appendix A (3). Beleth’s discussion of the dragon in the Rogation procession seems to be the earliest to specify some sort of downgrading of the beast on the third Rogation day. To judge from the similarities, it would appear that thirteenth-century theologian Jacques de Vitry Caput Masses and Motet 577 Figure 13 Order of Procession on Ascension in the Sarum Rite, showing the dragon following the other banners (Richard Pynson, Processionale ad Usum Sarum, 1502, reprint, Clarabricken, Clifden, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland: Boethius Press, 1980; fol. 111v). Beleth’s “time before the law” implies the era from the creation of the world up until Moses received the Ten Commandments. Similarly, the “time under the law” represents the age from Moses until the birth of Christ. Since, as Beleth explains, the Devil reigns over both periods, we can encompass them under the more common rubric “time of evil,” a term seen frequently in Old Testament Messianic prophecies.94 “Evil” and the “dragon” are one and the same, moreover. Drawing on these equations, the colorful dragon processions borrows from Beleth in his Sermones in epistolas et evangelia dominicalia totius anni (Venice: Giordanum Zilettum, 1578), 762, 819–20; as does Voragine in his Golden Legend 1:287–88. 94. Beleth’s discussion of these three tempora is found in Beleth, Johannis Beleth Summa de Ecclesiasticis Officiis, 45 (chap. 22, lines 1–14). 578 Journal of the American Musicological Society for Rogation days and Ascension dramatically illustrate the transition from the “time of the dragon” to the “time of grace.”95 Praepositinus Cremonensis offers an equally lively discussion of the dragon, reporting that his tail was shortened on the third day: Moreover, in certain important churches we dramatize a great mystery, for during the three preceding days there goes before the banners a dragon which has a long tail blowing in the wind, a sign that in these times the Devil had power over mankind, who were moved about like the wind because they were swayed by any old doctrine, and they worshipped the image of the Devil. Afterward the dragon follows, now with shortened tail, as a sign that the Devil, because of the Lord’s passion and Ascension, lost his power.96 Later in the thirteenth century, Guillelmus Durandus, borrowing from Beleth’s description of the dragon, adds other information, no doubt culled from the many local usages that he observed. Durandus’s dragon faces backward on the third day; his tail, once held high, now drags along the earth: It was also the custom for a kind of dragon with a long tail, erect and inflated, to be carried on the first two days in front of the cross and the banners. But on the last day was [the dragon] carried backward, so that it faces backward, its tail empty or thrust down and pressed down. . . . [Here Durandus discusses the “three periods of time,” as in the Beleth passage above.] For on the third day, the dragon, his power having slipped away because of the spread of the faith, follows after the cross, his tail empty and put down and not long. . . . He looks backward like a thief, in case someone whom he might drag to himself and incorporate into himself, as it were, with his tail should wander and fall away from the straight path of faith.97 Finally, the customary of the collegiate church of Saint-Martin of Tours from the thirteenth century provides a spectacular account of the symbolic execution of the dragon on Ascension: On Monday before Ascension, after Terce and Sext, the procession goes to Saint-Julian. A youth of the fourth station carries the dragon, and the banners go out after him. . . . On Ascension . . . after Terce, the procession is made in silk copes. First the banners go out and then the dragon, which the youth of the fourth station clothed in vestments carries. . . . The banners, as mentioned, go out and the crosses are prepared as on the Rogation days. . . . Entering the church of Blessed Martin, they sing beneath the chandelier the ninth responsory Non turbetur. The youth of the fourth station, however, stands before the 95. See Micah 2, Isaiah 13, Joel 2, Obadiah (only one chapter), Malachi 1–5. In other places in the Old Testament, the evil world is contrasted with a prophecy of the Messiah who will come in the “day of the Lord.” 96. See Appendix A (4) for the Latin text. Praepositinus’ description of the dragon is also found in Wright, “Palm Sunday Procession,” 369–70 (see also his p. 352). His translation is reproduced here with minor changes. 97. See Appendix A (5). Caput Masses and Motet 579 choir entrance with the dragon, with a lance fixed in a hole in the stone pavement. And while the Agnus Dei is sung, the cantor, bowing to the youth, begins the Gloria Patri beneath the chandelier. The youth, if he is able, breaks the lance in pieces by shaking [it] with the dragon. For this he receives five sous from the chapter.98 The exact sequence of the “shaking” described at the end of this passage is difficult to follow. Presumably the youth placed the mock dragon atop a spear set in the stone floor. By pressing down and vigorously shaking the dragon and spear simultaneously, he broke the latter. This act symbolized the violent defeat of the dragon, while still preserving the demonic effigy for use on another occasion. Equally salient in this passage is the moment of the dragon’s demise. This time the beast does not end its journey at the doors of the church but actually enters both into the building and into the Eucharistic ritual itself. The creature takes center stage at the moment when the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God— signified here by the youth who then slays the dragon—makes his triumphant appearance. In the encounter between the fantastic remant of the procession and the focal figure of the Mass that follows,99 it comes as no surprise that the most Christocentric of chants, the Agnus Dei, heralds the moment of the monster’s destruction. A similar image in art appears in two copies of Josquin Desprez’s Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales (Fig. 6). Here a historiated initial conspicuously positioned at the opening of the Agnus, rather than at the beginning of the Kyrie, shows the Armed Man representing Christ fatally stabbing a dragon.100 These scenes of the processional dragon banished to the end of the line, having his tail pushed down or shortened, and even shaken to death, were enormously popular. Although precise details about the Rogation processions 98. See Appendix A (6). For the dating, see Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 315; and Agostino Magro, “Basilique, pouvoir, et dévotion: Ockeghem à Saint-Martin de Tours,” in Johannes Ockeghem: Actes du XLe colloque international d’études humanistes (Tours, 3– 8 février 1997), ed. Vendrix, 80–81. I am again grateful to Yossi Maurey for alerting me to this intriguing passage about the dragon. In his dissertation (“Music and Ceremony in Saint-Martin of Tours, 1250–1500,” 2 vols. [PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005]), he notes that the “corona” is a large chandelier in the Collegiate Church of Saint-Martin under which important chants were sometimes sung (p. 341). The contemporaneous ordinal from Chartres Cathedral also mentions the dragon in the Rogation processions and on Ascension in this church, but it is unclear which place the banner holds in the lineup; see Yves Delaporte, ed., L’ordinaire chartrain du XIIIe siècle publié d’après le manuscrit original (Chartres: Société archéologique d’Eure-etLoir, 1953), 123, 127 (cited in Wright, “Palm Sunday Procession,” 351–52). 99. On the power that emotional participants in ritual settings can ascribe to mythical elements of ceremonies, see Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, 13, 23. 100. Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 189–90 (esp. fig. 7.6; also his p. 343, which identifies the illumination as Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Cappella Sistina 154, fol. 23v). 580 Journal of the American Musicological Society in individual cities and towns are generally sketchy, owing to their largely oral transmission, it is clear that these ceremonies took place in various forms all over England and Northern Europe. Indeed, local dragons and other serpentlike beasts came to serve as virtual mascots or municipal emblems, roaming the streets not only of England,101 but also of the French cities of Paris, Niort, Douai, Provins, Toul, Verdun, Nîmes, Sainte-Baune, Arles, Marseilles, Aix-enProvence, Graguignan, Cavaillon, the fountain of Vaucluse, Avignon, Lérins, as well as Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, and Mons in the Low Countries. We even know the names of some of these creatures: Grande Gueule in Poitiers, Gargouille in Rouen, Chair-Salée in Troyes, Kraulla or Grand Bailla in Reims, Grawly or Graouilly in Metz, and the particularly famous Tarasque in Tarascon.102 And during the suspension of reality that occurs in these processions, the dragon comes to touch the hearts of the populace, just as legendary, mythical and folkloric events are said to happen in pilgrimages in all cultures.103 The annual reenactment of its defeat in the Rogation processions proclaims Jesus’s Ascension, cuts short the “time of the dragon,” and ushers in the “time of grace.” 101. See Jacqueline Simpson, British Dragons (North Pomfret, VT: Batsford, 1980), esp. pp. 142–43 (“Gazetteer of Places with Dragon Legends”). 102. Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, 178–84; see also Sébastien Bottin, “Traditions des dragons volans dans le nord de la France,” in Mélanges d’archéologie, precédés d’une notice historique sur la Société royale des antiquaires de France, et du cinquième rapport sur ses travaux, ed. Bottin, 155–73. 103. In this “folklorized liturgical festival” (Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, 184–85), the beast is paraded and mocked for theological purposes, and yet, while the people make fun of its defeat, they do not really wish to see their dragon destroyed. As Turner and Turner have shown, the liminal status of pilgrimage rituals implies not only a sense of transition from one place to another, but also the notion of potentiality, that is, of “what may be” (Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, 3, 23–24). By analogy in the context of processions, the dragon may be perceived as “good” or “lovable.” To be sure, we have already noted that the dragon lives to fight another day in Tours. Although documentary evidence of dragons in Rogation processions does not survive from every city, the testimony of Beleth and Durandus suggests that the usage was widespread. And each town had its legend, along the lines of the traditions of the aforementioned Sts. Silvester and George, in which a hero saves the city by killing a dragon. These deeds are patterned after Christ’s salvific act and carry the same meaning. The procession of St. George on Trinity Sunday in Mons, for instance, included a re-creation of his combat with the dragon, known as Le Lumeçon. Special music accompanied this festival: documents from the fifteenth century onward witness the existence of a confraternity for St. George and endowed masses in his honor; see Léopold Devillers, La procession de Mons: Notice historique (Mons, Belgium: Masquillier et Lamir, 1858), 1–50; Paul Heupgen, Le Lumeçon (Mons, Belgium: Les presses du journal “La Province,” 1936), 8–16. (The ceremony in Mons evidently eclipsed an earlier one built around a legend from nearby Wasmes regarding St. Gilles and the dragon; see Bottin, “Traditions des dragons volans,” 165–73; and Émile Hublard, La légende montoise et la tête du dragon [Mons, Belgium: Camille Leick, n.d.].) A similar dragon procession in Antwerp in honor of St. Joris (St. George) began in the late fourteenth century; see Cyriel de Baere, Onze vlaamsche Reuskens (Antwerp: Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1941), 55–69; and idem, Onze Ommegangsreuzen (Brussels: N. V. Standaard-Boekhandel, 1930). Caput Masses and Motet 581 Symbols of the Caput draconis in the Caput Masses? In myriad ways, the theme of the caput draconis penetrates late medieval liturgy and art, as we have seen. But do the symbols implied in this teaching carry over into the very structure of the Caput masses? That is, can we detect some of the spatial features discussed in the preceding section—conspicuous high and low, abasement, or truncation—in the music that was created on the melisma Caput? And if so, do these elements stand apart enough from standard musical processes so that they can be perceived as emblems of the theology of the dragon? We will explore this question in this and the next two sections. As Bukofzer has shown, the Caput tenor of the English mass consists of five discrete melodic units that unfold in the order: a b a b a c c d (d) e (Ex. 1, line 1).104 Other examples of the Caput melisma given in Example 1, lines 2–7 and 10–16, show that precisely which sections repeat, and in what order, vary widely. The instability of the melody suggests that the Ant. Venit ad Petrum was somewhat infrequently used, and its sporadic appearance in manuscripts strengthens this impression.105 The chant is found in processionals, graduals, and missals, the dissemination of which occurs mostly in the British Isles and Northern Europe (see Appendix B).106 The capricious repetition of sections of the melisma probably developed out of the tradition of the foot-washing service itself. That is, the time it took to bathe the feet of one person after another no doubt fluctuated from place to place. As Example 1 illustrates, it would seem that the ritual was shorter in Paris than in English houses, since internal phrases in Parisian examples do not uniformly repeat. On the other hand, it might simply have been understood that sections of the melody were to be reiterated as needed.107 104. Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 243–49. The final section e, which consists of the cadential formula, is the only segment that does not repeat. 105. That is, the antiphon did not become more or less fixed melodically through performance, as is often the case in the plainchant repertory. On its dissemination, see Appendix B, which samples the scattered representation of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum in English and Continental sources. It lists both sources in which the antiphon appears (see Appendix B1) and ones in which it does not (Appendix B2); the latter outnumber the former by about 5 to 2. Michel Huglo’s recent catalogue of processionals was very useful to me in assembling these tables (Les manuscrits du processional, 2 vols., RISM B XIV/1–2 [Munich: G. Henle, 1999, 2004]). Huglo’s lists of antiphons for the Mandatum do not include Venit ad Petrum (ibid., 1:47*, 52*). 106. The nature of the Mandatum as a paraliturgical rite means that the music for this service is hard to find. Graduals and missals of a particular church often omit the chants of the pedilavium: one imagines that they might appear in a non-extant processional from the same place. As Appendix B shows, for instance, the gradual and missal from Saint-Denis of Reims do not include the Ant. Venit ad Petrum, while the processional from this house does. 107. A thirteenth-century processional from Saint-Albans or Tynmouth has no melisma at all (see Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lauds Misc. 4, fol. 151r). No doubt the shortening or lengthening of the Mandatum was accomplished mainly by reducing or increasing the number of antiphons. 582 Journal of the American Musicological Society Borrowing from English versions of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum, the composer of the original Caput Mass stated the melody twice in each movement in double cursus fashion (Table 2). The only difference between the two cursus is that Section d is repeated the second time. This pattern (. . .) d d e at the end of the second cursus is found in the Kyrie of the English mass, and in the Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus of all the Caput masses. Noticeably, however, none of the Agnus movements repeats Section d in the second cursus.108 Curtailment of the melisma could have occurred for any number of reasons, of course. Hence it is premature to try to connect the abbreviation of the Caput melody in this, the final movement of the masses to the truncation of the dragon’s tail that occurred on the final day of the processions of Rogation and Ascension. We will simply note that, with the exception of the Kyrie, the shortening happens only in the Agnus and that Ockeghem and Obrecht studiously follow their English model by preserving this irregularity.109 Strikingly, the English Veterem hominem Mass, the structural twin of the Caput Mass in its use of a double-cursus tenor, does not abridge the cantus firmus in the Agnus.110 In light of this, the abbreviation in the Caput works does seem deliberate—even symbolic. Given the nearly identical layouts of the cantus firmus in the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus of all three masses, it is interesting that the Kyrie of the English mass differs so pointedly from those of the other two composers. As Table 3 makes clear,111 neither Ockeghem nor Obrecht adopted the English double-cursus format. Scholars have rightly observed that the Sarum trope used in the anonymous mass, Deus creator omnium, is an insular accretion that did not appeal to European composers.112 Hence, it is thought, Ockeghem composed his Kyrie afresh, and Obrecht followed his lead.113 As Bukofzer first noted, Ockeghem was, however, quite familiar with the Mass since shown to be English.114 Example 1 illustrates that his pitches conform to those found in insular versions of the Caput melody and differ noticeably from Parisian readings, especially at Variants X, Y, and Z. On the other 108. Ockeghem also shortens his Agnus in other ways, noted in Table 2. 109. Obrecht’s use of diminution only in the Agnus may also appear to be suggestive. His diminution does not shorten the movement temporally, but it does change the relationship of the cantus firmus in long notes in the bass to the three other, faster-moving voices. Nonetheless, many composers use diminution in the Agnus Dei. 110. I am indebted to Alejandro Planchart for pointing this out to me. The Veterem hominem Mass is edited in Margaret Bent, ed., Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, vol. 2, Four Anonymous Masses (London: Stainer and Bell, 1979), 110–63. 111. See also Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 267–68, 270–71. 112. Planchart, “Guillaume Dufay’s Masses,” 2; Strohm, “Quellenkritische Untersuchungen,” 158. 113. Obrecht’s layout of the cantus firmus also resembles the first statement of the English Mass, but many details of his Kyrie recall Ockeghem’s setting; see Bukofzer, “Caput: A LiturgicoMusical Study,” 270–71. 114. Ibid., 243–44. Caput Masses and Motet 583 Table 2 Disposition of the Caput Melisma in the Caput Masses a Kyrie (English Caput Mass only): 1st statement of melisma 2nd statement of melisma a a b a b a b a b a c c c c d e d d e Gloria (all Caput Masses): 1st statement of melisma 2nd statement of melisma a a b a b a b a b a c c c c d e d d e Credo (all Caput Masses): 1st statement of melisma 2nd statement of melisma a a b a b a b a b a c c c c d e d d e Sanctus (all Caput Masses): 1st statement of melisma 2nd statement of melisma a a b a b a b a b a c c c c d e d d e Agnus: 1st statement of melisma (English, Obrecht) 1st statement of melisma (Ockeghem) 2nd statement of melisma (English, Obrecht) 2nd statement of melisma (Ockeghem) a a a a b b b b b a b a b a c c c c c d d d d a a a a c e e e e a The Kyries of Ockeghem’s and Obrecht’s Masses are shown in Table 3. For the corresponding music of the Caput melisma, represented here and in Table 3 by Letters a–e, see Example 1. Designations “a–e” are borrowed from Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 243ff. Table 3 Disposition of the Caput Melisma in the Kyries of the Caput Masses Kyrie (English Caput Mass): 1st statement of melisma 2nd statement of melisma a a b a b a Kyrie (Ockeghem):a melisma (1 statement only) a b a Kyrie (Obrecht): melisma (1 statement only) a b a a The b a b a c c c c c b a c d e d d e d c e d d e irregularities of Ockeghem’s and Obrecht’s Kyries will be discussed below. hand, he seems to have borrowed his repetition scheme, not from the English, but from the Parisian sources that he would have known from the time of his employ at the royal court and as a canon of the Cathedral of Paris.115 A layout such as that found in the Notre Dame missal Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 115. Here I depart slightly from Bukofzer, who writes: “There is not a single measure in Ockeghem’s cantus firmus that does not go back to Dufay [read: ‘the English Caput’]” (ibid., 268). On Ockeghem’s career in Paris, see François Lesure, “Ockeghem à Notre Dame de Paris 584 Journal of the American Musicological Society 411 (Ex. 1, line 10), is identical to Ockeghem’s cantus firmus except for one repetitition of section b that Ockeghem omits.116 He might have heard this form of the melisma when he witnessed King Charles VIII perform the ritual washing of the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday, 3 April 1488,117 and he undoubtedly sang the Parisian version of the antiphon in other years as well. We should recall, too, that Ockeghem served in the collegiate church at Tours, where the demise of the dragon on Ascension was likewise celebrated. Perhaps a reading of the Ant. Venit ad Petrum from Tours would tell us more about the source of the layout of the tenor of his Kyrie, and would suggest the place—Paris or Tours—or axis of places—the itinerant royal court moving between Paris and Tours—for which he composed his Caput Mass.118 As we move closer to an understanding of Ockeghem’s and Obrecht’s manipulation of the cantus firmus, let us also examine other compositional features of their respective Caput Masses. We will suggest intriguing parallels between the caput draconis theology and the actual music of these works. Although these observations are of necessity conjectural, we will see how the image of the caput draconis can help explain what have long been viewed as glaring harmonic irregularities in these pieces, as it reminds us of the kind of musical symbolism seen in other compositions from the Low Countries in the late fifteenth century. The Caput Tenor, Ockeghem’s Canon, and the Chigi Illumination Ockeghem is the only composer of a Caput Mass to include a canon in his work. This rubric, appearing at the beginning of the Kyrie, is preserved in two (1463–1470),” in Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac on His 70th Birthday, ed. Gustave Reese and Robert J. Snow, 147–54 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969); and Craig Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 21, 35–36, 224–25, 303–5, 316. It is doubtful that the identical D-endings of Ockeghem’s tenor (Ex. 1, line 9) and the Sarum source Oxford, Bodleian Library, Don. b. 5 (line 7) suggest any sort of English connection for the tenor. Ockeghem most likely knew only G-endings for this chant and added the D at the ends of his movements, typically after several rests, in order to close in the Dorian or Hypodorian mode. 116. Bukofzer (“Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 231, 244–45) used Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1112, which incorporates all sections of the melisma, as Example 1 shows (line 16). Several other Parisian readings (Ex. 1, lines 10–15) are closer to that found in Ockeghem’s tenor than in MS lat. 1112. 117. J. M. Vaccaro, “Jean de Ockeghem, trésorier de l’église Saint Martin de Tours de 1459 (?) à 1497,” Johannes Ockeghem en zijn Tijd: Tentoonstelling gehouden in het Stadhuis te Dendermonde 14 november–6 december 1970, 67; see also Agostino Magro, “Jean de Ockeghem et Saint-Martin de Tours (1454–1497): Une étude documentaire” (PhD diss., Université François-Rabelais, Tours, 1998), 210, 238. 118. No extant gradual, missal, or processional from Tours contains the antiphon (see Appendix B). Caput Masses and Motet 585 slightly different versions. The Chigi manuscript reads, “Alterum caput descendendo tenorem per dyapason et sic per totam missam,”119 whereas Trent 88 abbreviates, “Alterum caput descendendo tenorem per dyapason.”120 The basic meaning is the same: “another Caput by downing [descending] the tenor by an octave [and thus throughout the whole mass].” The extra words in Chigi simply emphasize for how long the tenor is to be downed, namely from beginning to end of the mass. Ockeghem is known for his exploration of low musical registers, but his Caput Mass stands out for another reason. It is the sole four-voice work of the period to place the cantus firmus in the bass in all five movements.121 A peculiarity of his canon that has escaped notice seems related to the downward transposition of the tenor. The only verb form in the canon, the gerund descendendo, is transitive. Its direct object is the noun “tenorem.” The transitive sense of descendere means “to cause to come down”; this differs significantly from the intransitive sense, which means “to go down” or “to go into a lower position.” The former entails the application of some amount of force on the object being brought down. The latter keeps the effect of the verb within the subject, that is, the person or thing that “goes down.” More importantly, this transitive form of descendere is distinctive among surviving late fifteenthcentury canonic instructions, occurring only in Ockeghem’s Caput Mass. Because of its uniqueness, we should try to understand its connotations from contemporaneous sources. To be sure, it is the intransitive sense of descendere that is typically found in music and writing on music in the middle ages. Within Ockeghem’s very oeuvre, the gerund descendendo appears in the canons of two other masses, his Missa L’homme armé and Missa Prolationum. In both pieces, descendendo occurs without a direct object: we read, “by descending an octave” (“descendendo in dyapason”) in the Agnus Dei from L’homme armé, and “sing in imitation after one perfect tempus by descending by a seventh” (“Fuga post unum perfectum tempus descendendo per septimam”) in the Pleni of the Sanctus from Prolationum.122 Canons from other fifteenth-century masses and motets avoid the word descendere altogether.123 It turns up quite frequently 119. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi C VIII 234, fols. 64v–75r. This source is edited in Herbert Kellman, ed., Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi C VIII 234 (New York and London: Garland, 1987). 120. Trent 88, fols. 286v–95r; facsimiles of Ockeghem’s Mass are found in Trienter Codices III, 49–57; and in Codex Tridentinus 2:286v–95r. 121. Ockeghem’s à 4 Salve regina comes close to his Missa Caput in this respect. Here the cantus firmus is sung in the bass, except for seven measures where the tenor has it; see Ockeghem, Motets and Chansons, ed. Richard Wexler with Dragan Plamenac, vol. 3 of Collected Works (Philadelphia: American Musicological Society; Boston: Schirmer, 1992), xlv, 13–17 (no. 4). 122. On the canon in Prolationum, see Michael Eckert, “Canon and Variation in Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum,” in Johannes Ockeghem: Actes du XLe colloque international d’études humanistes (Tours, 3–8 février 1997), ed. Vendrix, 465–79. 123. The word tenorem is used as a direct object of the verb “habere” in Dunstaple’s isorhythmic Motet Veni sancte spiritus / Consolator optime / Sancti Spiritus assit : “If you wish to 586 Journal of the American Musicological Society in music theory treatises, however, where passages describing the ascent and descent of musical pitches are ubiquitous. Here descendere is almost always used intransitively: “It follows concerning ligatures, that when one ligature ascends, the other descends; the ascending [form] is when the second note is higher than the first, the descending [form] is the opposite, when the first note is higher than the second.”124 In some instances the passive voice is employed: “et tunc descenditur a acuto in naturam gravem” is best translated, “and then it descends from B natural to B flat,” although it literally means that the voice “is brought down from B natural to B flat.”125 Nowhere is the forcefulness that is conveyed by an active verb with direct object present.126 The gist of descendendo tenorem in Ockeghem’s Caput Mass is best seen in dictionaries that preserve the transitive senses of both the Latin descendere and the Middle English “to descend.” Du Cange cites theologian Raymund Lull (ca. 1232–ca. 1315): “They descended the aforementioned body from its . . . sepulcher.”127 The Lexicon Latinitatis Nederlandicae medii aevi likewise includes the causative use of descendere. One transitive meaning refers to laws of heredity: “by transferring and descending [handing down] the aforementioned tenth [and] that which remains from that tenth.”128 Another has to do W have the tenor, first go forward, second turn the line upside down, thirdly turn the line around by removing the third part, and you will capture the fifth” (“Primo directe, secundo subverte lineam, terci reverte removendo terciam partem et capias dyapenthe si vis habere tenorem”); John Dunstable, Complete Works, ed. Manfred F. Bukofzer, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Margaret Bent, Ian Bent, and Brian Trowell (London: Stainer and Bell, 1970), 92–94 (no. 33); see also the editors’ Critical Commentary, pp. 192–93. On this work, see Allsen, “Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet,” 500–501. 124. “Sequitur de ligaturis, unde ligaturarum alia ascendens, alia descendens; ascendens est quando secunda nota est altior prima, descendens est e contrario quando prima nota est altior secunda”; Ugolini Urbevetanis, Declaratio musicae disciplinae, ed. Albert Seay ([Rome]: American Institute of Musicology, 1960), 220. 125. Stephano Vanneo, Recanetum de musica aurea (Rome: Valerius Doricus, 1533; repr., Bologna: Forni, 1969), fol. 17r. 126. In my search of the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum Database (http://www.music .indiana.edu/tml/start.html) on 8 April 2005, I examined 862 instances of the string descend- (all words built on this root) found in treatises from the third through seventeenth centuries. I found only one transitive use of descendere in an anonymous fourteenth-century treatise dealing with note values: “Quomodo frangitur de unisono ad tertiam et de tertia ad quintam in tempore imperfecto; Quomodo de octava ad octavam cantum descendendo per duas” (“How it is broken from a unison to a third and from a third to a fifth in imperfect time; How [it is broken] from octave to octave by descending the chant by twos”); Christian Meyer, ed., Tractatus de contrapuncto et de musica mensurabili (Mss. Munich, Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 16208 et 24809) (NeuhausenStuttgart: Hänssler-Verlag, 1995), 61. 127. “Dictum corpus a . . . suo sepulcro descenderunt”; Charles Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, 10 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1954), s.v. “descendere (active).” 128. “Dictam decimam transferendo et descendendo quod ipsa decima . . . permanebit”; J. W. Fuchs and Olga Weijers, eds., Lexicon latinitatis Nederlandicae medii aevi: Woordenboek van Caput Masses and Motet 587 with the arms of the crucified Christ, which sink downward: “The erect part of the cross, the sign of which is then made over the bread, has held up the body of Christ, and the transverse part of the cross descends [pulls down] the arms of Christ. By the latter is the chalice rightly signified, as if it will take up the blood from Christ’s hands under his arms.”129 The Oxford English Dictionary likewise lists one transitive use of the verb “to descend,” taken from William Caxton’s translation of the Golden Legend (1483): “Assoylle [Assail] the synnars whan thou descendest into helle them of thy partye.”130 Most present-day English dictionaries no longer even record this active sense; instead, it is preserved in the verb “to down,” as understood in the phrases “to down a meal,” or “to down an opponent.” Ockeghem employs the verb descendendo in this, the most causative sense, implying downward pressure on the tenorem. His use is virtually unique both within his own oeuvre and in music composition and writing on music in general in the late fifteenth century. It will be important to bear this in mind as we interpret the canon. Not only are performers of Ockeghem’s Mass supposed to “down” the tenor, but they must do so “throughout the whole mass,” as the gerund descendendo and the prepositional phrase per totam missam instruct. In other words, the person assigned to this musical line, written in alto clef, must effectively sing in the bassus range, constantly pushing the notes an octave lower. Bukofzer remarks about this canon, “it would have been at least as simple to write the voice at pitch in the bass clef and to dispense with the written direction altogether.”131 He goes on to surmise that Ockeghem retained every aspect of the original notation of the English Caput in order to preserve the image of the “borrowed res facta.”132 For Bukofzer this subtle act of homage to the composer of the English mass is the latent meaning of Ockeghem’s canon. Tinctoris and other theorists elaborate on the idea of the composer’s hidden intent: “A canon is a rule het middeleeuws Latijn van de Noordelijke Nederlanden (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1970–), s.v. “descendo II. (trans.)” The transitive meaning “to sail (the sea)” is given in R. E. Latham, ed., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (London: Oxford University Press, 1975–), s.v. “descendere.” 129. “Pars crucis erecta, cuius signum tunc fit super panem, corpus Christi sustentavit, et quod pars crucis transversa brachia Christi descendit, merito calix quasi sanguinem de manibus Christi suscepturus sub brachiis, partier designator”; Fuchs and Weijers, Lexicon latinitatis Nederlandicae medii aevi, s.v. “descendo II. (trans.).” 130. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991; repr., 1992), s.v. “descend.” 131. Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 266. Plamenac echoes Bukofzer: “The ‘canon’ which forms the basis for the notation of the Tenor (Bassus) must be understood as a mere change of pitch, as a transposition of the ‘canonically’ notated part an octave down” (Ockeghem, Eight Masses and Mass Sections, ed. Dragan Plamenac, vol. 2 of Collected Works [Philadelphia: American Musicological Society, 1947, 1966], xxviii). 132. Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 267. 588 Journal of the American Musicological Society showing the purpose of the composer beneath a certain obscurity.”133 As it has been interpreted, Ockeghem’s canon seems less than satisfying in terms of this definition. Transposing the tenor downward is the outward, technical realization of his canon, to be sure. But is this the only sign of the composer’s unseen purpose? Illuminations of Ockeghem’s mass, found on the same page as his canon in the Chigi Codex, help us respond to this question.134 As noted above, the principal illustration at the beginning of this mass is a half-horse, half-warrior fighting a dragon (Fig. 12).135 Other dragon-like beasts appear on this same opening of the Kyrie, along with the head of what appears to be a bespectacled man (perhaps Ockeghem?), who is about to be engulfed in flames in a fountain with water running out at the bottom.136 Some of the illuminations elsewhere in the Chigi manuscript refer to the musical work at hand: a skull and bones for Ockeghem’s Requiem, and an Annunciation scene for his Missa Ecce ancilla domini, for example.137 Do the pictures for his Caput Mass function similarly, manifesting the theology of the caput draconis in a work intended to celebrate the defeat of sin? Writing on “images on the edges” of manuscripts, Michael Camille explains that such examples, while possessing multiple meanings, draw their immediate significance from the main text on the page, often mocking or parodying its theme(s).138 The illuminations on this opening certainly seem consistent with 133. “Canon est regula voluntatem compositoris sub obscuritate quadam ostendens” (Joannes de Tinctoris, Terminorum musicae diffinitorium: A Facsimile of the Treviso Edition [ca. 1494; New York: Broude Brothers, 1966], fol. a.iiiv). Similar definitions are given by several other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century theorists, including Bartolomeus Ramis de Pareja (Musica practica Bartolomei Rami de Pareia Bononiae [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1901], 90); Adam von Fulda (Musica, pars secunda, ed. Martin Gerbert, 3 vols. [St. Blaise: Typis San-Blasianis, 1784; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1963], 3:354); and Hermann Finck (Practica musica Hermanni Finckii, exempla variorum signorum, proportionum et canonum, iudicium de tonis, ac quaedam de arte suaviter et artificiose cantandi continens [Wittenberg: Georgii Rhaw, 1556], fol. Bbiiijv). 134. For discussions of the pictures on this page, see Kellman, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi C VIII 234, vii–viii. 135. This figure, bearded and scruffy yet also knightly in his dress, differs from the classic wild man, who is entirely hirsute. On the wild man, see Timothy Husband, The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 12–13; and Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 3, 18, 120, and passim. 136. I am grateful to Herbert Kellman for noticing the spectacles and suggesting the resemblance between this head and Ockeghem’s (see the famous picture of Ockeghem found in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 1587, fol. 58v, reproduced in Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance, 285 [figs. 7–10]). 137. See Kellman, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostilica Vaticana, MS Chigi C VIII 234, vii; and Planchart, “Guillaume Dufay’s Masses,” 13. 138. Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), passim; and Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Caput Masses and Motet 589 Camille’s ideas: in addition to topical references to patrons,139 in the most basic sense, the warrior and dragon in combat symbolize the universal theme of war against evil. Similarly, the head in the fire with water pouring out beneath recalls the sacrament of baptism, through which sin is remitted by water and by fire.140 These ideas are encompassed in the canon of Ockeghem’s Mass, viewed in light the caput draconis theology. Besides the canon and the intriguing illustrations, harmonic peculiarities of Ockeghem’s Caput Mass also call for comment. It is often remarked that Ockeghem set a huge problem for himself in putting the Caput tenor in the bass. The harmonies resulting from this transposition, in fact, “undo the very achievements of the model [the English Caput Mass],” as Reinhard Strohm has observed. Reasons for this are readily apparent: the modality of the Caput melisma (Ex. 1) is ambiguous; it lacks the movement by step, fourth, and fifth that is characteristic of bass lines; and the Mixolydian mode of the plainsong constantly conflicts with the Dorian mode of the polyphony. As Strohm again writes: “The contest f/f ♯ [in the English Caput Mass] is not part of a great tonal symmetry as found, for example, in Du Fay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores.’ . . . Rather, the harmony is off balance, because the work is predominantly Dorian except for the recurring B in root position.”141 Jaap van Benthem’s Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours (London: British Library; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 170–71. 139. Herbert Kellman has shown that the Chigi Codex was copied as a presentation manuscript for Philippe Bouton (1418–1515), a Burgundian nobleman. The rosebud (“bouton” in French), examples of which are found in illuminations throughout the manuscript, including on the opening folio of Ockeghem’s Caput Mass, was part of Philippe’s motto “Ung seul Bouton.” Kellman likewise suggests that the warrior-and-dragon miniature includes the standard iconography of St. Philip, who was Bouton’s name saint; see Kellman, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi C VIII 234, vi–viii. These perceptive topical readings, I believe, coexist harmoniously with the more universal meaning that the dragons and fiery head project. 140. The efficacy of both fire and water in baptism is clear from John the Baptist’s words: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but . . . he [Christ] shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). 141. Strohm, Rise of European Music, 421–22. Bukofzer is at a loss to explain Ockeghem’s harmonies, attributing them to the composer’s mystical outlook. He notes that Ockeghem’s chord progressions in the Mass “grow out of his contrapuntal combinations of intervals, and as they are not guided by a specifically harmonic plan or logic they seem erratic and arbitrary” (“Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 287–92). Placed inside the texture of the English Caput Mass, the Caput melisma of course shows fewer of these irregularities, because the low contratenor helps to conceal them. When moved to the bass, however, the tenor of Ockeghem’s mass transforms the harmony of its English model. As Strohm again notes, the D-Dorian opening of Ockeghem’s Kyrie has barely sounded, when the B-minor chord that results from the entry of the first note of the cantus firmus, B, shatters the effect (Rise of European Music, 421–22). See also Jaap van Benthem’s discussion in “ ‘Erratic and Arbitrary’ Harmonies in Ockeghem’s Missa Caput,” in Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Günther, Finscher, and Dean, 247–58; and in Ockeghem, Mass and Mass Sections I/1 Missa Caput, x–xi. 590 Journal of the American Musicological Society addition of ficta in his edition of Ockeghem’s Mass, an excerpt from which appears in Example 3, illustrates the lengths to which he felt it necessary to go to reduce the number of dissonances emanating from the use of these Bs.142 The apparent oddities of these harmonies all but vanish, however, when the caput draconis theology is taken into account. Just as Ockeghem seems to call for Satan’s head to be suppressed by requiring singers to “down” the tenor by an octave, and just as the opening illustrations underscore this directive, so the bizarre sounds that result from the Bs in the bass create instances of the diabolus in musica in the absence of added ficta.143 Rather than somehow compromising this music, then, Ockeghem’s placement of the cantus firmus in the bass may, quite appropriately, “demonize” it. What better way to symbolize aurally the crushing of the devil in music than by imitating the sounds that he supposedly makes? As Alejandro Planchart admonished more than forty years ago, then, perhaps editors should alter far fewer of “the melodic and harmonic tritones and cross-relations caused by the conflict of the mixolydian cantus firmus and the dorian upper parts in Ockeghem’s Mass.” As we are beginning to suspect, they are “part of the very essence of the work.144 Like the tenor designation Caput draconis in the Lucca manuscript, Ockeghem’s canon and the illuminations of his Mass in the Chigi Codex suggest that the composer may consciously have set out to depict Christ destroying evil. In light of this, it is perhaps not too far-fetched to hear the Bs in the bass as echoes of these verbal and artistic cues.145 The unbalanced harmony 142. Manuscript sources for the passage given in Example 3 include accidentals as follows: none in the Chigi source, and two in Trent 88 (F sharp in m. 108, altus; and C sharp in m. 113, upper voice). The rest are added by van Benthem according to the principles set forth in his introduction in Ockeghem, Mass and Mass Sections . . . Missa Caput, xi. 143. Reinhold Hammerstein’s work on the devil in music examines the iconography of this theme in music and art. He mentions that J. S. Bach reserves the harmonic tritone for the Devil in several cantatas, for example on the text “to crush Satan under our feet” in Cantata 18 (tritones actually appear earlier, at “the Devil’s deceit” [“des Teufels Trug”]); Diabolus in Musica: Studien zur Ikonographie der Musik im Mittelalter (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1974), 7–9; on Cantata 18, see also Eric Chafe, Analyzing Bach Cantatas (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 102–8. I use the word “tritone” in the sense of “perceived tritone,” that is, the sound of a harmonic interval composed of three whole steps, whether written as an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth. Without mitigating accidentals, diminished fifths would occur, either directly or as a result of cross relation, in Example 3, mm. 105, 111, 112. 144. Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ed., Missae Caput: Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Ockeghem, Jacob Obrecht (New Haven, CT: Department of Music, Graduate School, Yale University, 1964), 161. Bukofzer likewise says that the “frequency [of the tritones] indicates that they were intended” (“Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 289). Hence van Benthem’s proposed solution of transposing the hexachord system of the Mass up a fifth, justified by reading the canon as a pun, is unnecessary; “ ‘Erratic and Arbitrary’ Harmonies.” 145. Through a somewhat different line of reasoning, Robert Nosow has recently suggested this in his paper “Ockeghem’s Musical Eclipse,” read at the Seventh-First Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Washington, DC, October 2005. Caput Masses and Motet 591 Example 3 Ockeghem, Missa Caput, Agnus Dei III (mm. 102–119). After Ockeghem, Mass and Mass Sections, ed. Jaap van Benthem. $102 Š 8 8 ð Ð Ł ð Ł þ Ð Ð Ð Ðý ² (Ð ) þ - Š ÿ Ð þ + qui tol Š þ 7 lis, 8 9 10 ( Ð) 8 8 ð Ð ð Ð ²þ ca pec - ca Š ð ð Ðý - ( þ) Ð - - Ð Ð 11–12 13 lis, tol ² mun ca 15 35 - ta, 17 37 pec - ca 32 lis ÿ ² ðÐ Ðý [pec - ca - ca - - Ðý pec - ca 36 - ðÐ ð ðÐ ð ððÐ ÿ Ð ÿ Ð þ pec 16 di, [mun - di, þ 8 Ð U lis,] Ð þ ðÐ Ð Ð pec þ - - ² ta mun - di, 34 - Ð Ð 8 Ðý ð - Ð Ð ÿ þ Ð þ þ 33 14 lis ² Ð Ð Ð Ðý ta Ð tol 8 ŁŁÐ Ð Ð ÿ Ð U þ - ÿ Ð Ð ca - ta pec tol Ð Ð U - + ÿ Ðý ² pec - 8 ð ð ð ð ð ²Ð ð ð Ð þ lis, tol Š ÿ Ð þ + Ý - ² þ - % þ - Ý þ $111 Š þ Ð Ð Ð þ + % lis ÿ þ ô ô Ð Ð þý 38 40 39 ð þ - Ð 41 - produced by the demoted Caput melody may have been intended to symbolize the dragon’s wails, as the tenor (the dragon’s caput) is pressed down throughout the piece. Musical expression of this type, fully understood only when embedded symbols are known or expounded, was cultivated in Ockeghem’s day by Franco-Flemish composers of works such as the Armed Man masses. Given the prevalence of these techniques in the late fifteenth century, we might ask if Ockeghem’s colleague Jacob Obrecht follows suit in his interpretation of the Caput theme. 592 Journal of the American Musicological Society The Caput Tenor and Obrecht’s Serpentine Migration The use of transposition or migration of a cantus firmus from one pitch or voice to another is a common compositional technique in fifteenth-century masses.146 But only two works of this period cause the cantus firmus to progress through all movements according to an obviously ordered scheme. One of these is Obrecht’s Caput Mass (Table 4).147 Here the tenor carries the Caput melisma in the Kyrie; the top voice has it in the Gloria; the tenor reclaims it, now transposed down a fifth, in the Credo; the altus hosts the Caput melisma, again a fifth lower, in the Sanctus; and the bassus takes it over in the Agnus Dei. The movement of the cantus firmus through all five voices is so unusual that Alejandro Planchart suggests that it was performed on the organ, rather than vocally.148 Whatever the performance practice, one cannot help but notice that this migration undulates through the texture in a way that might easily have been imagined as serpentine.149 Is this sinuous motion anything other than the composer’s whim? Again, a response to this question must remain speculative. In view of what has just been suggested about Ockeghem’s procedures, however, it is perhaps noteworthy that Obrecht’s placement of the melody in the lowest voice in the Agnus Dei only enhances his twisting migration. Just as the dragon’s tail in the Rogation processions was lowered, unstuffed, or shortened on the final day, so Obrecht, in outlining the shape of a snake in his wandering cantus firmus, assigns the Caput melody to the lowest possible register at the very end of the Mass. Like Ockeghem, Obrecht thereby allows the diabolus in musica in the 146. See Edgar Sparks, Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 1420–1520 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1975); and M. Jennifer Bloxam, “Cantus firmus,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 5:67–74. 147. For the edition, see above, note 8; the Mass is found uniquely in Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, ␣ M. 1. 2. (lat. 457; olim vi. H. 1), fols. 39v–57r. On Obrecht’s frequent use of migrating cantus firmus, see Wegman, Born for the Muses, 97–98, 125–26, 184, 204–5, 239–44, 267, 268, 280, 288, 338; and Sparks, Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 245, 248–49, 262, 275–76, 279, 307. 148. Alejandro Enrique Planchart, “Fifteenth-Century Masses: Notes on Performance and Chronology,” Studi Musicali 10 (1981): 13–17; see also Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 147; and Sparks, Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 246. 149. The undulation of the tenor migration is most apparent when one sees it in a manuscript or edition of Obrecht’s Mass, since in performance the individual movements of the Ordinary are interrupted by the elements of the Proper and the passing of the cantus firmus from voice to voice is somewhat obscured. The liberty that I take in suggesting a dragon shape in Table 4 is analogous to the imaginative renderings of classical, medieval, and Renaissance astronomers, who defined star positions by outlining legendary creatures and objects in the sky. See, for example, the drawing by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) of the constellation Draco (shown here as Fig. 18); and Deborah J. Warner, The Sky Explored: Celestial Cartography, 1500–1800 (New York: Liss; and Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1979), ix–xiii. Table 4 Cantus Firmus Migration in Obrecht’s Missa Caput and Josquin’s Missa l’homme armé super voces musicales 594 Journal of the American Musicological Society Caput melisma to bellow freely at this climactic moment of the work (Ex. 4). To be sure, one editor was so bothered by the dissonances that he flatted the Bs in the Caput melody throughout the Agnus, thus silencing the offensive diminished fifths.150 In Obrecht’s Caput Mass, then, it is not merely one unusual feature, but three occurring simultaneously—the meandering of his migrating tenor from beginning to end of the mass, the fall of the Caput melody to its lowest point at the end of the work, and the resulting perceived tritones in the Agnus—that allow us to imagine the dying demon moving through melody, harmony, and time. Separately, these elements are not unique to Obrecht’s Mass, of course. But taken together and compared with analogous aspects of Ockeghem’s work, they seem suggestive. The caput draconis theology may offer a rationale for this conglomeration of features as the symbolic depiction of the destruction of evil through musical processes. A brief look at the only other composition of the period to employ a highly rationalized cantus firmus migration, Josquin Desprez’s aforementioned Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales, offers some perspective (Table 4).151 In this work, Josquin transposes the cantus firmus to successively higher pitches of the hexachord in each movement. He begins on C in the Kyrie, moves up stepwise in each movement until he reaches G in the first and second sections of the Agnus Dei, and finally climbs one note higher to A in the last statement of the Agnus. Here the song of the Armed Man, the Christ-like figure who slays the dragon, is heard more clearly than at any other point in the mass.152 For Obrecht, on the other hand, the Agnus Dei marks the nadir of his cantus firmus. Despite their opposite approaches, the two composers’ modus operandi correspond to the spatial orientation of pictures that depict the savior standing over the beast. That is, armed warrior-saints characteristically thrust their swords downward into serpents (Fig. 5), just as Josquin’s Armed Man surmounts Obrecht’s Caput laid low (Table 4).153 These associations between Josquin’s and Obrecht’s settings of the Agnus Dei hint at a conceptual link between the Armed Man and Caput themes that will be discussed below. 150. Jacob Obrecht, Werken, ed. J. Wolf, 30 vols. in 4 (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1908–21) 3:238–49. See Bukofzer’s comments on Wolf ’s alterations in “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 298–99. The accidentals added to Example 4 reproduce the editor’s ficta; none is found in the manuscript of Obrecht’s Mass. 151. Josquin Deprez, Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales, vol. 10 of Werken van Josquin des Prés, ed. A. Smijers (Amsterdam, 1926; repr., 1969), 1–33. See Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Masses Based on Popular Songs and Solmization Syllables,” in The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr, 53–62. 152. Recall also the illuminations in the Agnus of this work, showing the Christian soldier killing the dragon; see above, p. 579. Wright discusses this work in Maze and the Warrior, 189. 153. The beast’s ceremonial execution during the Agnus at Tours is also relevant. Caput Masses and Motet 595 Example 4 Obrecht, Missa Caput, Agnus Dei II (mm. 84–92). After Obrecht, Missa Caput, New Obrecht Edition 2, ed. Chris Maas. $84 Š Ł Łý Ł Ł Ł ð 8 Ł ð Ł ¼ Ł Ł Ł ý Ł Ł Łý mi - se - re ŁŁ ð Łý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁ ŠŁ ¼ Ł Ł Ł  + -re - ÿý Š + % re, Ð mi Ý Ðý Ðý - $88 Šð ½ ð 8 Šð Ð -re + no Ł ð - bis, re no Šð Ð + -re - re Ý % ð Ð - re -re ŁŁŁ Ł ŁŁð no Ł Ł ý Ł Ł ð - Ð Ðý - - ŁŁŁ Ð mi - se Ðý - se Ð Ð Ł ð se ðý ð bis, no no - 8 8 ŁŁð - ¼ Ł ŁŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ ð no - ðý no - bis, no Ł ð re - Ð - Ð no - bis, - Ð ¼ Ł Ł Ł ¼ Ł Ł ð bis, 8 Ð ð - Ð - - ŁŁ þ bis. þ bis. Ł þ bis. þ bis. The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet We can now take a moment to recall the various threads of the discussion. The image of the dragon representing evil was used in both Christological and Marian contexts in the late fifteenth century. The theology of the caput draconis is closely related to the meaning of the Caput melisma that serves as tenor of the masses by the anonymous English composer, Ockeghem, and Obrecht, and of the motet Salve regina by Richard Hygons that we will return to momentarily. These works, in all likelihood, functioned as polyphony for the 596 Journal of the American Musicological Society commemoration of Christ’s/Mary’s conquest of sin. More hypothetically, Ockeghem’s use of canon, the dragon illumination of his mass in the Chigi manuscript, Obrecht’s migration of the Caput melisma through all voices of his mass, and both composers’ employment of the cantus firmus in the lowest voice may also reflect their experimentation with how to portray this theme in music. It is even possible that the famous and seemingly inexplicable dissonances produced by the use of B in the bass of these two masses are overt musical symbols of the Devil, conspicuously flaunted by the composers. At the very least, the distinctive compositional features of these works support the caput draconis idea. The traditional focus on the dragon in the liturgy of Holy Week to Ascension points to use of these pieces during this period. Indeed, the very character of the ceremonial that gave birth to the English Caput Mass corroborates this observation. It is hardly surprising that the Caput Mass originated in an English liturgical milieu. The organizing principle of the Sarum Rite was standardization and ease of dissemination.154 Understood in light of the caput draconis teaching, the original Caput Mass looks like the kind of Sarum service that was seasonally specific, rather than one tied to a particular date. An intriguing detail of the transmission of the English Caput may help illustrate this point. The manuscript Trent 88 begins with four English polyphonic masses arranged as incomplete cycles, of which three are for four voices. The order of the four-voice works—the anonymous Veterem hominem, Caput, and Fuit homo—follows the liturgical order, respectively, of the chants on which these works were based: Epiphany season, Eastertide (presumably), and the Feast of John the Baptist (24 June) inaugurating the summer season.155 The Caput masses, 154. Terence Bailey’s examples of Sarum rubrics show that these directions avoid topographical references to specific places within individual churches and seem to be written with the church in general in mind (Processions of Sarum and the Western Church, x–xi). 155. The second work is Bedingham’s Missa Dueil angoisseus for three voices. Veterem hominem, Dueil angoisseus, and Caput are interspersed with other sacred compositions; Fuit homo follows immediately after Caput. Although the use of Dueil angoisseus has not yet been determined, I would venture that it has something to do with Passiontide for two reasons. The griefridden text of its tenor, taken from a song penned by Christine de Pizan, could be an allegorical reference to the Virgin’s lament at the foot of the Cross; and the presence of three works for Mary that follow immediately (a Marian Agnus Dei, the Ant. Ego dormio, and the Sequence Imperatrix angelorum) may support this view. In addition, the Missa Dueil angoisseus includes a setting for the Benedicamus Domino, with music borrowed from the Gloria (at the text “cum sancto spiritu”). The Benedicamus replaced the Ite missa est as the closing versicle of mass during penitential seasons (on its use in the Sarum rite, see Sandon, Use of Salisbury: The Ordinary of the Mass, 81–83). Since a Gloria is also present in the Missa Dueil angoisseus, however, perhaps the Benedicamus simply adapted the piece for penitential use. On the face of it, at least, the position of Bedingham’s work as the second of these four masses does not contradict the liturgical order that I suggest is adumbrated in the three other works. The arrangement of these four compositions can be seen in Nanie Bridgman, ed., Manuscrits de musique polyphonique, XVe et XVIe siècles: Italie, RISM B IV/5 (Munich: G. Henle, 1991), 473–74; and in Gerber, Sacred Music from the Caput Masses and Motet 597 then, find a home at the time of year when celebration of the dragon’s downfall reached its height. That is, they were probably sung from the moment of Christ’s Resurrection up until his Ascension. Given the origin of the Caput melisma in the Feast of Maundy Thursday and the importance of this day as the dawn of the New Covenant, we cannot abandon the idea that the masses were performed in the celebration of the Missa chrismalis, but prohibition of tropes on this day does make their use here less likely, as we have seen. Finally, the connection of the Caput Mass with Saint-Margaret’s parish church in London leaves open the possibility that processions and masses commemorating saints’ victories over dragons—those for St. George in Bruges, for instance —were also solemnized to the strains of the English or Continental Caput masses.156 For which cities or patrons did Ockeghem and Obrecht compose their respective works? Clearly, both men served in places where they were exposed to dragon effigies in Rogation processions. Ockeghem’s career includes sojourns in Paris, where he heard the Ant. Venit ad Petrum, and in Tours,157 where the dragon made his debut in the Palm Sunday procession and was then symbolically slain on Ascension. Obrecht would have witnessed local dragons marched through the streets of Bruges and Antwerp;158 Ockeghem, too, sojourned in Antwerp from 1443 to 1444.159 The English model of their Caput masses circulated in Cambrai, a city visited by both composers,160 and in Ferrara, where Obrecht briefly served Duke Hercules d’Este.161 We Cathedral at Trent). I am grateful to Prof. Gerber for allowing me to read her introduction prior to its publication and for her thoughts on these four masses. The complex interrelatedness of the repertories of Trent 88, 90 and 93 is thoroughly treated in Gerber (Sacred Music from the Cathedral at Trent) and in Reinhard Strohm, “Zur Rezeption der früher Cantus-firmus-Messe im deutschsprachigen Bereich,” in Deutsch-englische Musikbeziehungen, ed. Konold, 15–24; idem, “Trienter Codices,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher, (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1998), Sachteil, 9:804–10; and idem, “European Cathedral Music and the Trent Codices,” in I codici musicali trentini, ed. Peter Wright, 21, 23, 27. 156. Whatever the date of Easter in a given year, the feast of St. George (23 April) always falls between Easter and Ascension. 157. See above, p. 584; also Leeman L. Perkins, “Ockeghem, Jean de,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 18:312–26. 158. Obrecht’s years of service in Bruges are 1485–91 and 1498–1500 (see Wegman, Born for the Muses, 85, 133–60, 303–308; and Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 38–41). Planchart suggests that Obrecht wrote his Caput Mass for this city in the 1470s (“Fifteenth-Century Masses,” 17), but Strohm notes that no document backs up his presence there at this time (Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 147 and 254n167). Discant masses were sung in Bruges at the various stations of the Rogation processions of the church of St. Saviour’s (ibid., 35, 53–54). 159. For his dates in Antwerp, see M. Bovyn, “(van) Ockeghem’s te Dendermonde,” in Johannes Ockeghem en zijn Tijd, 57–58; and Strohm, Rise of European Music, 242. 160. Ockeghem in 1462 and 1464 (see Wright, “Dufay at Cambrai,” 208); Obrecht from 1484 to 1485 (Wegman, Born for the Muses, 83–85, 129–30, 133–38). 161. See above, note 48. Strohm suggests that the six masses brought to Ferrara from Antwerp in 1447 included the English Caput and other insular works (Rise of European Music, 598 Journal of the American Musicological Society can reasonably conjecture that Ockeghem and Obrecht wrote their pieces in response to patronal or civic requests to provide music for the weeks of Easter season. Even after the last of these masses was composed in the 1480s, the Caput theme was still ripe for one final elaboration—a sign of the growing popularity of the Feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. As noted earlier, the Eton Choirbook (ca. 1500) contains a troped setting of Salve regina based on the Caput tenor by Richard Hygons (ca. 1435–ca. 1509), a musician of Wells Cathedral.162 Hygons’s disposition of the Caput melisma in his motet largely agrees with that of the three mass composers. As was customary in polyphonic settings of the Salve regina, he alternates stretches of music that include the cantus firmus with ones that do not, while still preserving the double cursus structure of the melisma found in the masses. Hygons first states the Caput melody at the second appearance of the word “hail,” following an opening section that omits the chant (“Hail, Queen” through the words “our hope” in the text below). This includes the same segments of the melisma that appear in the first cursus of the mass: a b a b a c c d e (cf. Table 2). His second statement undergirds the troped “O” phrases of the antiphon. Here sections of the cantus firmus are used only in the final hails to Mary—a b (in “O Clemens”) c (in “O pia”) c d e (in “O dulcis Maria salve”)—skipping over the verses of the tropes. Although not overtly “immaculist” in its sentiment, the Salve regina antiphon is nonetheless hospitable to the caput draconis theology. Note, for instance, how Eve’s sinfulness is distinguished from Mary’s virtue in the Salve text: Hail, Queen, Mother of mercy: life, sweetness, and our hope, hail. To you we exiles, sons of Eve, cry. We sigh to you, lamenting and weeping in this vale of 546). On their arrival, see Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400–1505: The Creation of a Musical Center in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 52; idem, “Dufay and Ferrara,” in Papers Read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference, ed. Atlas, 25. Religious spectacles related to the dragon were well known in Ferrara: around 1481, Duke Hercules performed the foot washing on Maundy Thursday and staged a Passion drama on Good Friday that involved “a large wooden head of a serpent, which opened and closed, and inside of which was the Limbo of the Holy Fathers. . . . An actor playing the role of Christ . . . went up to the head . . . saying ‘Atollite portas’ ” and led away fourteen men (the duke’s singers) “dressed in white, singing and praising God, while within the head were heard devils rattling chains and shooting off flames that reached the chapel’s ceiling” (Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 285–87; idem, “Music and Popular Religious Spectacle at Ferrara under Ercole I d’Este,” in Il teatro italiano del Rinascimento, ed. Lorch, 575–77). See Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 166–70, where the beast is called a dragon. In France and the Low Countries, the dragonarius was paid to carry the dragon in processions and see to its upkeep (Wright, “Palm Sunday Procession,” 351; Heupgen, Le Lumeçon, 16). 162. See Nicholas Sandon, “Hygons, Richard,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 12:14. On the Salve regina, see Harrison, “An English ‘Caput,’ ” Music and Letters 33 (1952): 203–14. Caput Masses and Motet 599 tears. O therefore, our advocate, turn these your merciful eyes toward us. And show us Jesus, the fruit of your womb after this exile. [Trope text] O kind, [trope text] O holy, [trope text] O sweet Virgin Mary, hail.163 Without comprehending the import of the tenor Caput, however, we would not necessarily associate this motet with the Immaculate Conception. The Eve-Mary contrast dates from time immemorial and was used in many contexts.164 It is the presence of the Caput melisma in this composition that underscores the dichotomy between Eve and Mary in the Salve regina prayer and “activates” the latent immaculist potential in this text. In Hygons’s motet, Mary is both the “New Eve” and “she who crushes the dragon’s head.” The unobtrusiveness of this connection to the Immaculate Conception is understandable. Although immaculist doctrine was on the rise, as we have noted, neither pope nor council made its acceptance obligatory. After about 1500, composers often eschewed overt symbolism in music destined for this feast in favor of subtler kinds of expression. With some notable exceptions, they avoided direct references to Mary’s conception, let alone to her role in conquering sin.165 Instead, they turned to allegorical language that suggested the Immaculate Conception indirectly through symbols borrowed from the Song of Songs.166 The well-known image of the Immaculate Virgin in which 163. Trope texts given in italics: “Salve, regina mater misericordiae: Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus, exules, filii Evae. Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. Eia ergo, advocate nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. Virgo mater ecclesiae / Aeterna porta gloriae / Esto nobis refugium / Apud Patrem et Filium. O Clemens, Virgo Clemens, virgo pia / Virgo dulcis, O Maria, / Exaudi preces omnium / Ad te pie clamantium,/ o pia, Funde preces tuo nato / Crucifixo, vulnerato, / Et pro nobis flagellato, / Spinis puncto, felle potato, o dulcis Virgo Maria.” 164. Twelfth-century commentator Rupert of Deutz shows the difference between Mary and Eve in his Commentary on the Song of Songs: “Come therefore Mary, come, for Eve flees to the hiding places. / Come and believe the evangelizing angel, for Eve believed the hissing serpent. / Come and crush the head of the serpent, for Eve, her head seduced and her belly satisfied, is bound by the tail of the serpent” (“Veni ergo maria ueni nam heua ad latebras fugit. / Veni et crede angelo euangelizanti nam heua credidit serpenti susurranti. / Veni et contere caput serpentis nam heva et capite illecta et ventre oblectata et cauda est obligata serpentis”); Ruperti Tuitiensis Commentaria in Canticum Canticorum, ed. Hrabanus Haacke (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1974), 48 (bk. 2). For a literary and musical instance of the Mary-Eve distinction, see Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 162–63; and for examples in art, see Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, 10–12; and Avril Henry, ed., Biblia pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition (Ithaca, NY, and New York: Cornell University Press, 1987), 48, 50. (I thank Jennifer Bloxam for pointing me to this block-book.) 165. Exceptions include Pierre de la Rue’s five-voice Missa Conceptio tua, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s motet Conceptio tua Dei genitrix virgo, a work for two voices and continuo from the late seventeenth century. 166. See Todd Borgerding, “The Motet and Spanish Religiosity, ca. 1550–1610” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997), 160–213 (chap. 4 “Symbolism in Text and Music: Spanish Motets for the Immaculate Conception”); Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 246–48; Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, 39–46. Examples of composite images of the Immaculate 600 Journal of the American Musicological Society the Woman of the Apocalypse wearing a crown of twelve stars is combined with the Woman of Genesis who treads the serpent underfoot appears regularly only in the late sixteenth century.167 Hygons’s Salve regina is unusual in the way its tenor transforms the Salve text into an immaculist allusion, although we do not even perceive this metamorphosis until we have recognized the theological implications of the Caput melisma. Another Salve regina more clearly linked to the Resurrection and the defeat of sin appears in an English illustration from the fourteenth-century De Bois Hours (Fig. 14). Here the unnotated Salve text is introduced by an illuminated letter “S” that depicts Christ stepping out of the tomb on Easter. At the bottom of the folio, a hybrid warrior, similar to that seen in the illumination of Ockeghem’s Mass in the Chigi Codex, engages a three-headed dragon in battle.168 If this type of dragon imagery is somewhat rare in late fifteenth-century Marian song, one polyphonic work for the Virgin literally proclaims her prowess as exterminator of all things reptilian. Virgin based on the Song of Songs include books of hours such as Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, W. 282 (fifteenth/sixteenth century, northern France), fol. 7r; and W. 449 (early sixteenth century, use of Toulouse, made in Tours), fol. 141v. In both manuscripts, the Virgin is surrounded by all her “signs:” she is the enclosed garden (hortus conclusus), the star of the sea (stella maris), chosen as the sun (electa ut sol), etc.; a published photograph illustrating this theme can be found in Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, plate 2. 167. Vloberg, “Iconography of the Immaculate Conception,” 471; and Mayberry, “Controversy over the Immaculate Conception,” 213–14. Stratton explains that the blending of doctrines about the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception in the mid-sixteenth century, which occurred in part due to discussions at the Council of Trent, led to this definitive iconography for the latter feast (Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art, 58–66). It is this image that makes its way to New Spain, where the Virgin of Guadalupe, radiant in the sun and treading on the snake, was the main Marian devotional image. (I thank Drew Davies for informing me of this connection.) My own work on the Caput tradition began with my curiosity about the image of mulier amicta sole standing above the great red dragon’s head, found in many Apocalypse illuminations (see, e.g., Robertson, Guillaume de Machaut and Reims, 149, fig. 21). 168. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion, 171. Just as this unnotated Salve regina is connected to the Resurrection through the picture shown in Figure 14, so Hygons’s Salve, like the Caput masses, would likely have been appropriate for Eastertide because of its use of the tenor Caput. A different cantus firmus would mark the Salve for another purpose. Our understanding of the function of polyphonic Salves based on liturgical melodies other than the Salve regina chant is sketchy at best. Salves with unnamed tenors were often sung throughout the year, to judge from references in a number of churches (see, for example, Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 8, 23; Borgerding, “The Motet and Spanish Religiosity,” 91–106; Kristine K. Forney, “Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp,” EMH 7 [1987]: 3; and Wright, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 108–9). The Roman practice (adopted from the Franciscans) of spreading the Marian antiphons across the four seasons of the year, under which the Salve regina was assigned to the period of Trinity to Advent, was not universally followed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (ibid., 109; and Frank Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 2nd ed. [London: Routledge and Paul, 1963], 81–82). In some cases, however, a polyphonic Salve was in fact replaced by another Marian antiphon (see the instructions for Easter season in Antwerp Caput Masses and Motet 601 Figure 14 Christ stepping from the tomb on Easter in a historiated initial for Salve regina, from the De Bois Hours (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, ms. M.700, fol. 48v). Used by permission of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Alongside Hygons’s Salve for the Virgin in the Eton Choirbook is Fawkyner’s Motet Gaude rosa sine spina (Ex. 5). The text of this piece asserts that the Virgin “has no blemishes of uncleanliness, but everthing of virtue.” Even more significantly, “she is the one who crushed and overcame the serpent, destroying Eve’s guilt.”169 As Frank Ll. Harrison has noted, the music underlying the text “crushed and overcame the serpent” undulates conspicuously in two voices by means of a winding figure that is then repeated a step and Brussels in Forney, “Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp,” 10; and in Barbara Haggh, “Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony in Brussels, 1350–1500” [2 vols. PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1988], 1:397–98). 169. “. . . Nulla sordis labes / Cuncta sed virtutis habes . . . Haes est illa quae calcavit / Et serpentem superavit / Evae culpam dissipans” (Harrison, Eton Choirbook 2:162–74 [no. 32]). 602 Journal of the American Musicological Society Example 5 Fawkyner, Gaude rosa sine spina (mm. 87–94). After The Eton Choirbook 2, ed. Frank Ll. Harrison. $87 Š ð Ł Haec est Š − Ł Łý Ł Ł Ł ý Ł Ł Łý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ¹ Ł il  Ł ð Ł est il Haec -la quae $91 Ł Ł Ł Ł ý Š Ł Š −Ł -vit Łý Ł Ł Ł Ł Et −Ł ý %Š Ł + -pen Ł - - cal - ca Ł −Ł  - la Ł −Ł Ł ý Ł Ł Łý Ł Ł   Ł ð % Š+ - quae cal - ca Ł Ł Łý Ł Ł Ł Ł la quae Ł Łý ŁŁ Ł Ł Łý Ł Ł −Ł Ł vit Et cal - ca ser Ł Ł Ł ý Ł −Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ý −Ł Ł Ł vit Et - ser Ł pen - - Ł Ł ser ŁŁ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁýŁ Ł ŁŁ  Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Łý  tem - pen - - - ¼ tem ¹ Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł  su - pe - ra - vit Łý Ł   E - vae  Ł Ł Ł Ł ¦ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ý Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł - tem su-pe-ra - lower (mm. 92–93).170 One might easily imagine that such mimetic musical depiction would be the hallmark of immaculist compositions in the Renaissance. For reasons just mentioned, however, this was not to be. The heyday of snakes and the sinful caput as immaculist and Christological symbols in music had come and gone, and with them the need for music based on the Caput melody. The End of the Caput Masses The clash between good and evil crosses religious, cultural, social, and political boundaries. It is hardly surprising that a mass embodying this idea would appear in Western Europe in the mid-fifteenth century, finding its way into principal sources of music and inspiring two generations of imitators. Performed in England, Cambrai, and at least some of the cities of Paris, Tours, Antwerp, Bruges, and elsewhere, the Caput masses were no doubt beloved by church choirs eager to sing the destruction of Satan in Eastertide. 170. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 322. Caput Masses and Motet 603 As popular as they were, however, the Caput masses enjoyed only a brief existence.171 The three works that have come down to us span but forty years, from around 1445 until the late 1480s. Even taking into account the haphazard survival of sources, it is likely that if composers after Obrecht had continued to write masses on this tenor, traces of at least one of them would survive. The circumscribed existence of this Caput family contrasts sharply with the longevity of the L’homme armé works. Beginning in the late 1450s, masses celebrating the Armed Man were composed for the next two hundred years, until the mid-seventeenth century.172 Why did the Caput masses die? Although we can offer only conjecture on this point, the conceptual link between the Caput and Armed Man themes is once again evocative. The original Caput Mass echoes the reflective decades of the 1440s and 1450s that followed the major councils. Here great theological themes were explored and thorough discussions of “who crushes the head” were held. Healing and reform of the church in the wake of the tumultuous Avignon Papacy (1309–1403) and Schism (1378–1417), as well as protection of ecclesiastical doctrine from the Wycliffite and Lollard heresies, were paramount.173 In this climate, which likewise fostered the lively exchange of music,174 a composition that could realize in music the theme of the defeat of sin must have been attractive. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, however, focus on the fundamental struggle between good and evil began to be allegorized as an apocalyptic battle between Christian West and Islamic East. As conciliar zeal waned and militaristic thinking arose, the Caput idea must have seemed increasingly esoteric. Representing sin as the head of a dragon, the Caput masses celebrated a challenging conceptual equation of ideas. In addition, musical means for depicting Christ or Mary triumphing over the head of the dragon were limited. The problem for composers was how to express these concepts clearly in music, while at the same time differentiating them from other, more workaday musical processes. Crushing the head of a beast musically proved, in the end, virtually indistinguishable from the standard technique of moving the cantus firmus lower in the polyphonic texture. It would have taken a fine eye to notice that the Caput melody was not simply sung in the bass, rather, that it was forced into the bass, as Ockeghem perhaps signals in his use of the alto clef for what was really the bassus voice and in his canon with its action phrase descendendo tenorem. The distinction may have been significant for the meaning of Ockeghem’s Mass, yet it risked going undetected. The same was probably true of Obrecht’s Mass, if the winding shape of his cantus firmus migration and the abasement of the tenor at the end of the Mass were used for the 171. Also noted in Bukofzer, “Caput : A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 227. 172. See the list of composers in Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 288. 173. Strohm, Rise of European Music, 13–22, 106–7. 174. Note for example that the duration of the Council of Basel (1431 to 1449) encompasses the presumed mid-1440s date of composition of the English Caput Mass. This event, as Strohm has shown, was crucial for the dissemination of English music on the Continent (ibid., 138). 604 Journal of the American Musicological Society purposes speculatively proposed here. In short, the only available musical means for depicting the suppression of the Caput turned out to be less than effective, once the theology that it referred to ceased to be on the tips of people’s tongues.175 Returning to pictures that illustrate Christ and his surrogates slaying dragons, we notice that another figure is available for musical depiction (Fig. 6). The one who crushes the head traces a journey that is quite a bit easier to portray in musical symbols. In works based on the L’homme armé melody, as Craig Wright has demonstrated, the Christian hero who conquers sin follows a recursive path in music through use of retrograde motion. This symbolism was more readily perceived, at least to the eye, and, for those who understood the cues, to the intellect and perhaps even the ear as well. The song of the Armed Man, moreover, could represent a real person, namely Jesus Christ and all Christ-like figures, rather than simply an abstraction. Not just saints, but also patrons, could arm themselves as soldiers of Christ and dispatch dragons in his name.176 Popular adulation of great, living men, including the aforementioned Duke Hercules of Ferrara, grew markedly in the fifteenth century. At the same time, the use of some of the more recondite, allegorical modes of representation—moralistic imagery in bestiaries to denote sin, for instance— declined.177 The transition to the vernacular L’homme armé from the Latin Caput, stark as it sounds linguistically, was less a rupture than a mirror of wider sociocultural currents. Composers experimenting with how to portray the victory of good over evil soon preferred the Armed Man imagery over that of the Caput.178 Quite simply, the L’homme armé melody contained more symbolic possibilities; better still, it was infinitely easier to harmonize. The Caput Mass, the Heavenly Caput Draconis, and Astronomer John Dunstaple As we have seen, large issues of religion and society are often manifested in ways that flourish simultaneously. In the case of the caput draconis idea, the theme of good triumphing over evil, symbolized by the caput draconis, was particularly ubiquitous. It was discussed in the grand councils of the fifteenth century. It was incorporated into the standard liturgical services of the church. 175. Even the diminishing number of surviving sources of the Caput masses—seven for the original English mass, two for Ockeghem’s, and one for Obrecht’s—seems to signal flagging interest in the Caput melody as a vehicle in music. 176. Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 175–76, 185, 188–89, 203–4. 177. For studies treating the glorification of Duke Hercules, see note 161 above. Production of bestiaries dropped off sharply at this time; see Ron Baxter, Bestiaries and Their Users in the Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton Publishing; London: Courtauld Institute, 1998), 166–81. 178. Along these lines, scholars who discuss the Caput Masses of Ockeghem and Obrecht, the only two composers who also composed Missae L’homme armé, often mention stylistic similarities between the Caput / L’homme armé works of each composer; see Fitch, Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Models, 42–61; and Wegman, Born for the Muses, 265–68. Caput Masses and Motet 605 It was depicted in religious art and drama. It was deeply rooted within the world of folkloric expression, where processions, incantations, and indigenous demon-banishments defined each and every town in Western Christendom. And it was embedded in the structural fabric, if not the actual pitches, of music. Oftentimes, symbols of such great sweep are mirrored in another place— the sky. This is certainly true of the caput draconis.179 The term caput draconis represented an important astronomical and astrological concept in the middle ages. Its two commonest associations have to do with the prediction of eclipses of the moon and sun, and the cluster of stars that form the head of the constellation Draco. Astronomers and astrologers knew how to foretell eclipses of the moon from ancient times.180 The moon moves in a circle inclined to the ecliptic, the apparent annual path of the sun through the zodiacal signs, by an angle of about 5 degrees. It intersects the ecliptic at two points: the ascending node at which the moon passes to the north, and the descending node at which it passes to the south. The former is called the caput draconis or “head of the dragon,” the latter the cauda draconis or “tail of the dragon.” The positions of the head and tail, or the nodes, regress along the ecliptic, that is, they move from east to west, opposite to the order of the signs of the zodiac, at the rate of about three minutes per day, completing a circuit of the ecliptic in about 18.6 years. A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun and full moon, on opposite sides of the earth, are close enough to the caput or cauda draconis that the moon passes, in whole or in part, through the shadow of the earth. A solar eclipse occurs when the sun and moon, on the same side of the earth, are close enough to the caput or cauda draconis that, as seen from some part of the surface of the earth, the moon passes in whole or in part in front of the sun.181 The caput and cauda draconis were so named by astronomers who thought that the shape formed by the movement of the moon through the head and tail resembled a dragon: “wide in the middle and narrow toward the ends” (Fig. 15), as thirteenth-century astronomer Sacrobosco describes 179. It is also true of the Armed Man theme; Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 118–27, 175– 202. 180. See Peter Whitfield, Astrology: A History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 13; Robert Wilson, Astronomy through the Ages: The Story of the Human Attempt to Understand the Universe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10, 31, and passim. 181. The standard astronomical text in the middle ages, Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphera, describes the caput and cauda draconis in detail. For an edition, along with commentaries, see Lynn Thorndike, “The Sphere” of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 114–16, 141–42, 194, 243, 339, 405, 473; and for discussion of these passages, see Anna Marie E. Roos, Luminaries in the Natural World: The Sun and the Moon in England, 1400– 1720 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 34–37. See also Peter Apian, Astronomicum caesarium (Ingolstadt, 1540), chap. 18 (Apian’s figure of the caput draconis is reproduced here in Fig. 15); A. Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), 151; W. M. O’Neil, Early Astronomy from Babylonia to Copernicus (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1986), 29–34; The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology (New York and London: Norton, 1995), 71; and Whitfield, Astrology: A History, 91. 606 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 15 Peter Apian, figure of the caput draconis (Apian, Astronomicum caesareum [Ingolstadt, 1540], fig. FIII) Caput Masses and Motet 607 it.182 The head and tail were especially potent symbols in astrology, where they achieved practically the same status as the astrological signs. The positions of the caput draconis are regularly listed in astrological charts and astronomical tables from the middle ages (Figs. 16 and 17), and they formed part of any astronomer’s working vocabulary.183 Another caput draconis was the “head of the dragon” of the constellation Draco. Along with Scorpio, Hydra, and other serpentine constellations, the Dragon of the heavens represented the presence of evil in the world writ large across the sky. The four stars forming the Dragon’s trapezoid-shaped head were known collectively as the caput Draconis. Particularly interesting is the position of this caput Draconis in relation to the nearby constellation Hercules. Medieval myth and astronomy alike regarded Hercules as a figure of Christ. In light of this association, it is noteworthy that the foot of the kneeling Hercules presses down the head of Draco (Fig. 18): hereby Christ-like Hercules keeps evil continually in check in the sky.184 And through Hercules, we can draw yet another connection between the Caput and Armed Man themes. In the late middle ages, this hero’s name and persona were adopted by Obrecht’s patron, Duke Hercules of Ferrara, and memorialized in Josquin’s Missa Hercules dux Ferrarie. In this work, the mythological Hercules, his Ferrarese namesake, and Christ all become one.185 Just as Christ crushes the head of the dragon, so the sidereal and, through association, the terrestrial Hercules do battle against vice. These aspects of Christian astronomy and astrology are of interest because of the person whose name is sometimes linked with the anonymous English 182. Thorndike, “Sphere” of Sacrobosco, 141. 183. Coincidentally, the moon was an extremely important image in immaculist iconography (see Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 267–69). I have found no specific connections between the Marian symbolism in the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the caput draconis lunae, however. 184. We might thus elaborate slightly on Wright’s summation of the importance of the constellation Hercules: “Ultimately, Hercules was made fully divine and soared into the heavens to radiate forever as a constellation. There he shines brightly in the March sky, [with his foot on the dragon’s head (Draco),] in proximity to the lamb (Aries) and the warrior (Mars)” (Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 196; bracketed, emphasized text my addition). One of the glosses to Bede’s chapter on “The Signs of the Twelve Months” from his De temporum ratione mentions that Hercules’ right foot presses down on the head of the serpent (Draco); PL 90, col. 368. This work is translated in Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Faith Wallis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), but the glosses are available only in the edition in PL. Astronomer Hyginus’s classic work De astronomia, still read widely in the fifteenth century, also discusses Hercules’ position with respect to the head of Draco; Hyginus, Higini De astronomia, ed. Ghislaine Viré (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1992), 29 (bk. 2). The celestial orientation of Hercules and Draco is also said to commemorate Hercules’ eleventh labor, the defeat of the multiheaded dragon Ladon. For further discussion of Hercules’ Christ-like image, see Lorenzo Candelaria, “Hercules and Albrecht Dürer’s Das Meerwunder in a Chantbook from Renaissance Spain,” Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005): 15–19. 185. See Wright, Maze and the Warrior, 188–202. 608 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 16 Horoscope of King Edward III, showing the caput and cauda draconis in the upper right and lower left corners (London, British Library, Royal MS 12.F.XVII, fol. 153v). © the British Library. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. Caput Mass. John Dunstaple (ca. 1390–1453) was himself a noted astronomer and mathematician, as well as an accomplished composer. His English origin and dates of activity leave open the possibility that he could have written the first Caput Mass.186 Whereas no direct evidence presented 186. Margaret Bent, “Dunstaple, John,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 7:712. After I had completed my own work on the Caput Masses, Alejandro Planchart drew my attention to an abstract by Michael Long (“The Teeth of the Dragon: Astronomy and Music in the Later Middle Ages,” Abstracts of Papers Read of the FiftySixth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Oakland, California, 1990, n.p., n.d.), and I subsequently came across a reference to another, unpublished paper (1995) by Long (“Celestial Motion and Musical Structure in the Late Middle Ages”) in Richard Taruskin, The Caput Masses and Motet 609 Figure 17 “Table containing the movement of the caput draconis” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 674, fol. 39). Used by permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Oxford History of Western Music, 6 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1:475–77. Both mentions imply that the English Caput was informed by astronomical concerns. Although I agree that the mass was likely composed by a mathematician/astronomer/composer who was aware of the astronomical/astrological caput draconis, I believe that a central theological idea (the defeat of the caput draconis, or sin), rather than an astronomical one, inspired the work. 610 Journal of the American Musicological Society Figure 18 Constellation Hercules pressing down on the head of Draco (Albrecht Dürer, Imagines coeli septentrionales cum duodecim imaginibus zodiaci, detail; Map 1A; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; photo from Warner, The Sky Explored, 72) here advances this argument, it may be significant that the cosmological implications of caput draconis would have been well understood by a person like Dunstaple. Several medieval treatises include his astronomical works in miscellany volumes that group tracts written by a number of astronomers.187 In these sources, the caput draconis of the moon is frequently mentioned, with tables showing its positions, as just noted (Fig. 17). Clearly, then, Dunstaple was every bit as aware of caput draconis, a term of art in his field of scientific 187. See Margaret Bent, Dunstaple (London, New York, and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1981), 1; idem, “A New Canonic Gloria and the Changing Profile of Dunstaple,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 5 (1996): 45–46; and idem, “Dunstaple, John,” in New Grove, 7:711–12. Caput Masses and Motet 611 expertise, as he was of the caput draconis theology in his roles as a churchman and composer. For a composer/astronomer, the expression caput draconis would have served not only as a musicotheological cue, but also as a learned reference. These observations, admittedly, may prove little more than passing curiosities, unless relevant information about Dunstaple’s career comes to light.188 They nonetheless round out our survey of the amazingly rich concept of “caput draconis” and of its place in late fifteenth-century life and thought. Ironically, the enigma of the Caput masses and motet may well be of our own making. We have read the meaning of “Caput” in the Ant. Venit ad Petrum only in its most literal sense, missed the significance of the designation “caput draconis” in the Lucca Choirbook, pondered the appropriateness of the dragon illuminations in the Chigi manuscript, and ignored the dragon association of the patron of Saint-Margaret’s church in London. Small wonder, given our preconceptions, that these works have remained so long inscrutable. Understanding instead that the Caput composers drew on a theology ultimately inspired by Genesis 3:15, we can comprehend these apparent anomalies as symbols of the victory of good over evil, deliberately incorporated in four works that celebrate Christ’s/Mary’s defeat of the dragon in the “time of grace.” This reading accounts for the “Caput connection” between the three masses and Hygons’s motet. It likewise offers an explanation for the immense popularity of the original English Caput Mass and the scope of its influence in late fifteenth-century Europe. It has long been assumed that Ockeghem and Obrecht preserved as much of the layout and planning of the English Caput as they could out of reverence for the insular model. Now it seems just as likely that these Continental composers relied on the original mass because they each needed to prepare a work for the courts and churches where they were employed. To be sure, the question of practical use is crucial. No doubt the clergy of churches with skilled choirs welcomed the arrival of the Caput Mass. Along with its potent theological ramifications, the piece had supernatural associations that would also appeal to lay persons and common folk observing the spectacle of the dragon between Easter and Ascension. Our tendency to ascribe the creation of music to homage of one composer for another is thus balanced by acknowledgment 188. The question of Dunstaple’s authorship of the Caput Mass is compounded by the fact that we know relatively little about his curriculum vitae. Conducting meaningful chant comparisons that might point to the place of origin of the work is a daunting task, then, because we do not know in which cities’ chant repertories to search; in addition, as noted earlier, the standardized nature of Sarum melodies makes telling melodic variants hard to spot. Nor is stylistic and technical musical analysis refined enough to help us identify a particular composer’s “fingerprint.” It remains entirely possible, then, that Dunstaple is in no way connected with the Caput Mass. He was not the only composer/astronomer active in the late fifteenth century: Polish music theorist Jan z Gl-ogowa (ca. 1445–1507) and Ockeghem both were stargazers as well as musicians. 612 Journal of the American Musicological Society of the vital role of liturgical use.189 Finally, in what appear to be ingenious depictions of the dragon through canon, illumination, cantus firmus migration, and pitches, it is possible that Ockeghem and Obrecht did more than simply borrow from a model. They may well have experimented with symbolic musical elements largely absent from this and other English models of the period, but entirely characteristic of Netherlandish music. In the post-conciliar fervor of the mid-fifteenth century, the Caput masses reinforced the vivid picture of Christ the Savior who annihilates the Devil. They did so in ways matched only by the Armed Man masses that supplanted them. The fact that people eventually lost track of, or interest in, the Caput theme belies the grand-scale thinking that is embedded in these works. Medieval worshippers had not one, but two mental images of the overthrow of Satan in theology and art: Christ and all Christian soldiers driving a spear into the dragon, and Mary standing atop the snake (Figs. 6 and 8). Only in music did one melody, for a time, draw together both themes under a single rubric. Encompassing this bifurcated theology, the three Caput masses and Hygons’s motet link the central message of the Gospel to the Virgin’s more traditional role in salvation history. At the same time, they underscore the remarkable fluidity of this multifaceted, yet ultimately unified, teaching. As symbolic as they are beautiful, the Caput masses and motet all but chart the course of the doctrine of redemption in the later middle ages. Appendix A Descriptions of Dragon Banners and Effigies in English and Continental Rogation Processions190 1. Sarum Procession on the First Two Rogation Days:191 Nona cantata et omnibus peractis quae ad processionem pertinent, ad gradum chori ordinetur processio . . . cum cruce. . . . Post haec diaconus et subdia189. No letter or archival document suggests that Ockeghem and Obrecht did anything but produce works for the same purpose as the English Caput. Understandably, they made as much use of the model as they possibly could. Strohm’s welcome caution against overvaluing aesthetic considerations at the expense of functional and social ones (Rise of European Music, 237–38), then, contrasts Philip Weller’s observation: “The Missa Caput in particular was used by at least two Franco-Flemish musicians (Ockeghem and Obrecht) as a stimulus and a ‘challenge’—even, more literally, as an outright model—in producing their own masses based on the ‘Caput’ melisma” (“An Old Head on Young Shoulders: The Spirits of England and France, IV, Missa Caput; V, Missa Veterem Hominem,” Early Music 26 [1998]: 353). Taruskin’s remarks in The Oxford History of Western Music (1:472–75) are similar to Weller’s. 190. English translations given on pp. 575–79 above. 191. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Don. b. 5, fol. 179v; London, British Library, Add. 57534, fol. 76r; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 637 (2024), fol. 94r (see Appendix B1). For a printed source, see the 1508 edition of the Sarum processional, edited by Henderson in Processionale ad Usum Insignis ac Praeclarae Ecclesiae Sarum, 104. Approximately the same text is Caput Masses and Motet 613 conus cum sacerdote et processione per medium chori et ecclesiae incedant et exeat processio. . . . Praeterea in principio processionis deferatur draco, tribus vexillis rubeis praecedentibus, secundo loco leo, tertio loco cetera vexilla; deinde sequatur processio suo ordine eodem modo et habitu. 2. Sarum Procession on the Third Rogation Day and Ascension:192 Feria tertia et quarta fiat processio in eundo et redeundo eodem modo et ordine quo praediximus, excepto quod in vigilia Ascensionis retrocedat draco, videlicet proximo loco ante crucem, tam in eundo quam in redeundo. In die Ascensionis Domini: Ordinetur processio sicut in die Pasche, excepto quod hac die vexilla processionem praecedant, prius videlicet leo; deinde minora vexilla per ordinem; ultimo loco draco. 3. Johannes Beleth:193 Draco, qui per triduum illud deportatur cum longa cauda et inflata, duobus diebus primis ante crucem et vexilla et post ultimo die retro vadit, significat diabolum qui per tria tempora ante legem et sub lege et tempore gratie, que per hos tres dies significantur, homines fefellit aut fallere captat. In duobus primis quasi dominus erat orbis. Unde Christus principem mundi vocat illum. In tempore vero gratie per Christum victus fuit, nec audet ita patenter regnare ut prius, sed per suggestiones latenter homines seducit, quos pigros videt in bonis operibus et remissos nec viam vite sectantes, sicut in deserto hostes infirmos Israel et debiles et eos, qui remanebant ultimi quasi aberrantes post tergum, interficiebant. Inde est, quod in primis duobus diebus precedit, in ultimo sequitur. 4. Praepositinus Cremonensis:194 In quibusdam autem ecclesiis maius representamus mysterium, nam in tribus precedentibus diebus precedit draco vexilla qui habet caudam plenam vento in found in the processional of 1555, edited by Wordsworth in Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901), 92. See also Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church, 25, 188–89. 192. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Don. b. 5, fol. 184r; London, British Library, Add. 57534, fol. 76r; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 637 (2024), fol. 106v (see Appendix B1). For published sources, see Henderson, ed., Processionale ad Usum Insignis ac Praeclarae Ecclesiae Sarum, 121; and Wordsworth, ed., Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury, 93. See also Daniel Rock, The Church of Our Fathers as Seen in St. Osmund’s Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury with Dissertations on the Belief and Ritual in England before and after the Coming of the Normans, new ed., ed. G. W. Hart and W. H. Frere, 4 vols. (London: Murray, 1905) 4:291–92. 193. Beleth, Johannis Beleth Summa de Ecclesiasticis Officiis, 236 (chap. 123, lines 30–42). I have standardized the spelling of this edition to conform to that used throughout this article, using in certain places the letters “u” instead of “v,” and “j” instead of “i.” 194. Corbett, Praepositini Cremonensis Tractatus de Officiis, 121. 614 Journal of the American Musicological Society signum quod in illis temporibus diabolus habuit potestatem in hominibus, qui erant quasi ventus, quia movebantur quolibet vento doctrine, et ipsum diabolum in idolis adorabant. Postremo sequitur draco, acuta cauda, in signum quod diabolus per passionem Domini et ascensionem potestatem suam amisit. 5. Guillelmus Durandus:195 Consuevit quoque quidam draco cum longa cauda erecta et inflate, duobus primis diebus ante crucem et vexilla portari; ultima vero die retro portatur quasi retro aspiciens et cauda vacua atque demissa et depressa. . . propter quod tertia die draco, quasi potestate propter fidei dilationem amissa, post crucem sequitur, cauda vacua et demissa et non longa . . . quasi fur retro aspiciens, si quis oberret et a rectitudine fidei cadat, quem ad se quasi cauda trahat et sibi incorporet. 6. Customary of Saint-Martin of Tours:196 Die lune ante Ascensionem, dicta Tertia et Sexta, vadi[t] processio ad Sanctum Julianum, et portat draconem juvenis quarte stationis, et exeunt vexilla post eum. . . . In Ascensione . . . post Tertiam, fit processio in capis sericis. Primo exeunt vexilla, post draco, quem portat juvenis quarte stationis revestitus. . . . Vexillis, sicut dicitur, exeuntibus et crucibus paratis sicut in Rogationibus. . . . Et intrantes ecclesiam Beati Martini dicunt, sub corona, nonum responsorium Non turbetur. Juvenis autem quarte stationis stat ante portam chori cum dracone, fixa lancea in foramine petre pavimenti, et, dum cantatur Agnus Dei, sub corona cantor incipit Gloria Patri, juveni inclinans. Juvenis, si potuerit, excutiendo frangit lanceam cum dracone, et ob hoc habet a capitulo quinque solidos. 195. Durandus, Guillelmi Duranti Rationale Divinorum Officiorum 2:503 (bk. 6, chap. 102, lines 148–73). For the words “portari . . . depressa,” the editors also give the following alternate reading: “precedere; ultima vero die quasi retro aspiciens, cauda vacua atque depressa retro sequitur.” 196. Fleuret, Consuetudines Ecclesiae Beati Martini Turonensis, 67–69. (Fleuret writes “drachone” with an “h.”) Caput Masses and Motet 615 Appendix B Dissemination of the Caput Melisma in a Sampling of Late Medieval Sources Abbreviations: B = Breviary G = Gradual K = Kyriale M = Missal P = Processional Sa = Sacramentary Se = Sequentiary T = Tonary nm = chant given, but no melisma, or no music, on word “caput” b, m, e = beginning, middle, end (of century) /1 or /2 = 1st half or 2nd half (of century) Folio numbers indicate the location of the Caput melisma. * = manuscript consulted by Bukofzer in “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study.” 1. Caput Melisma Found in the Following Manuscript and Printed Sources: Manuscript Type Date Fols. Origin of Source *Manchester, John Rylands Lib., MS lat. 24 *London, British Lib, Harley 2942 M 13/2 90 England, Exeter P 14 48–48v London, British Lib., Harley 3866 London, British Lib., Add, 57534 *San Marino, California, Huntington Library, MS EL 34 B 7 Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Bodley 637 (2024) Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Rawlinson Lit. e. 46 (15843) London, Lambeth Palace, Archiepiscopal Lib. 7 Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Don. b. 5 London, British Lib., Add. 12194a London, British Lib., Add. 17001 Use of Salisbury b Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Lauds Misc. 4 Cambrai, Bibl. mun. 78 (79) M P P 15 15 (m) 16 (b) P 15 (e) 58v England, Sarum P 15 50–51 England, Sarum G 14 60 England, Sarum M G G G, M P 14 (e) 13 (e) 14/15 composite 13 129 50v 60 86 151, nm England, Sarum England, Sarum England, Sarum England, Sarum England, Saint-Albans, Tynmouth France, Cambrai P, Se, 11/12 K T 11 Montpellier, Bibliothèque InterUniversitaire, Section Médicine, H 159 c Saint Petersburg, Russian Nat. Lib., M MS Latin Q v 175 *Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 1112 M London, British Lib., Add. 38723 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 1337 Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery 302 M G G 13 (ca. 1297) 13 (ca. 1225) 13 13/14 15 (1415–20) England, Huntingdonshire, Saint-Neots 113v, nm England, Norwich 48 England, Sarum 42v England, Sarum (nuns of Chester) 15, nm 162v France, Dijon, SaintBénigne 94 France, Paris 82 France, Paris 70 116 160 France, Paris France, Paris France, Paris 616 Journal of the American Musicological Society Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 861 Paris, Bibl. Mazarine 411 (241) M M 14/1 14 (ca. 1380) 14 13/2 121 151 France, Paris France, Paris, Notre Dame London, British Lib., Add. 16905 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 830 M M 107 104v Chicago, Newberry Lib., MS 181 P *Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 904d G 13 13 14v 88v–89 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, n.a.l. 541 G 13 78 *Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 903e Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanund Dombibliothek 1064 Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanund Dombibliothek 1105 f Münster in Westfalen, Archiv und Bibliothek des Bistums Münster, MS 9 Xanten, Stiftsarchiv und Bibliothek Sankt Viktor, MS 94 Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Rawlinson lit. d. 4 G P 11 15 (e) 67v ca. 17v P 16 (1573) 47v P 15 (e) France, Paris, Notre Dame France, Paris, SaintGermain l’Auxerrois France, Reims, Saint-Denis France, Rouen, Notre Dame France, Rouen, Notre Dame France, Saint-Yrieix Germany, Brauweiler, Sankt-Nikolaus Germany, Cologne, SanktMaria ad Gradus Germany, Münster Cathedral P 16 (1541) 22v P 14 61v (ca. 1369) aEdition bEdition 131v Germany, Xanten, SanktViktor Ireland, Dublin, Saint-John Evangelist in Frere, Graduale Sarisburiense (London: B. Quaritch, 1894). in Nicholas Sandon, ed., The Use of Salisbury: 4, The Masses and Ceremonies of Holy Week. c Edition in Paléographie musicale, 1st ser., 19 vols. (Solesmes, 1889–1974), vol. 8. I am indebted to Barbara Haggh-Huglo for alerting me to the Caput melismas both in this source and in the one from Saint Petersburg listed below, and for kindly sharing her transcription of the latter with me. dEdition in Henri Loriquet, Joseph Pothier, and Amand Collette, eds., Le graduel de l’église cathédrale de Rouen au XIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Rouen: Lecerf, 1907). eEdition in Paléographie musicale, 1st ser., 19 vols. (Solesmes, 1889–1974), vol. 13. My thanks to Alejandro Planchart for bringing this source to my attention. See also Bukofzer, “Caput: A Liturgico-Musical Study,” 231–47. f The four German sources in this table are catalogued in Huglo, ed., Les manuscrits du processional, RISM B XIV/1. In three of these manuscripts, either the Caput melisma is retexted as “Vos” and used as the first word of the following processional Ant. Vos vocatis me (Cologne 1105), or “caput” is set syllabically, with its melisma transferred to the beginning of Vos vocatis (Münster 9, Xantan 94); ibid., 1:214, 241, 278. Use of the Caput melody in the Ant. Vos vocatis me seems to be a German tradition (private communication from Michel Huglo). 2. Caput Melisma Not Found in the Following Manuscript and Printed Sources: Manuscript Type Date Brussels, Bibl. royale 19389 (Cat.429) M Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 369 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 135 13 M, B 13 M 13/2 Origin of Source Belgium, Brabant, Saint-Martin de Quesnat England, Lewes England, London or perhaps Canterbury Caput Masses and Motet London, British Lib., Nero E viii London, British Lib., Harl. 2945 Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Hatton 3 (4134) Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Selden supra 37 (3415) New York, Pierpont Morgan Lib. M. 107 (formerly 8) Oxford, Saint John’s College London, 1530, Processionale ad usum Sarum Oxford, Bodleian Lib., lat. lit. b 5 (32940) Douai, Bibl. mun. 90 Arras, Bibl. mun. 444 (888) Arras, Bibl. mun. 437 (1011) Brussels, Bibl. royale II 3823 ) (Fétis 1172) Auxerre, Bibl. mun. 51 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 17312 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 1105 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 17311 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 845 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 842 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 595 617 G P G n.g. 15 (m) 15 (m) England, Sarum England, Sarum England, Sarum P 15 England, Sarum M G 14 (ca. 1320) England, Sarum, possibly Cambridge 16 (1502) England, Sarum, published 16 (1530) England, Sarum, published in Antwerp 15 (m) England, York M M G G 12 13 (e) 13 12 France, Anchin France, Arras France, Arras, Saint-Vaast France, Auvergne (Cluniac) M M M M M M M, B 13–15 13 13 (1265–72) 14/1 14/2 14 (1325) 13–14 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 17310 Provins, Bibl. mun. 12 (24) Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 16823 M G M 13–14 13 13/2 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 17307 M 12 (e) Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 17318 M 12 Brussels, Bibl. royale II 3824 (Fétis 1173) Rouen, Bibl. mun. 249 (A.280) Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, n.a.l. 1773 Limoges, Bibl. mun. 2 (17) Rouen, Bibl. mun. 250 (A.233) Le Mans, Bibl. mun. 437 Douai, Bibl. mun. 113 Paris, Bibl. Mazarine 405 (731) Abbéville, Bibl. mun. 7 London, British Lib., Egerton 857 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 110 Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève 93 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 13255 Brussels, Bibl. royale 1799 Brussels, Bibl. royale 4334 Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève 1259 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 197 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 1022 G 13 (m) France, Auxerre France, Auxerre France, Bec France, Cambrai France, Châlons-sur-Marne France, Châlons-sur-Marne France, Châlons-sur-Marne, Saint-Etienne France, Chartres France, Chartres, Saint-Père France, Compiègne, SaintCorneille France, Compiègne, SaintCorneille France, Compiègne, SaintCorneille France, Dijon, Saint-Bénigne G M G G M G M M G G M G P P M G B, M 12–14 13 (b) 14 14 14/1 14/15 13/1 13/14 12 14 12 13 13 (e) 13 (e) 13/1 13 (e) 13 France, Eu, Saint-Laurent France, Evreux France, Fontevrault France, Jumièges France, Le Mans France, Marchiennes France, Meaux, Saint-Faron France, Noyon France, Noyon France, Paris France, Paris France, Paris, Cluniac France, Paris, Notre Dame France, Paris, Notre Dame France, Paris, Sainte-Geneviève France, Paris, Saint-Victor France, Paris, Saint-Victor P P 618 Journal of the American Musicological Society Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 14452 Reims, Bibl. mun. 224 (C.128) Troyes, Bibl. mun.1951 Reims, Bibl. mun. 221 (C.201) Laon, Bibl. mun. 236 Reims, Bibl. mun. 266 (C.263) Reims, Bibl. mun. 217 (C.202) Reims, Bibl. mun. 264 (C.169/183) Rouen, Bibl. mun. 308 (A.2) Rouen, Bibl. mun. 277 (Y.50) Rouen, Bibl. mun. 289 (A.355) G M M M M G M G M G M 13 14/2 12/2 12 11 15 14 13 15 (e) 13 14 (e) Rouen, Bibl. mun. 276 (A.459) Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève 99 (BB.1.fol.10) Sens, Bibl. mun. 16–17 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 10502 Provins, Bibl. mun. 11 (4) Valenciennes, Bibl. mun. 121 (114) Tours, Bibl. mun. 206 Paris, Bibl. nat. de France, lat. 9434 Tours, Bibl. mun., Diocèse 01 (ancien Petit Séminaire 583) Troyes, Bibl. mun. 1047 Laon, Bibl. mun. 240 Vendôme, Bibl. mun. 221 bis Verdun, Bibl. mun. 98 Verdun, Bibl. mun. 759 Cologne, Historisches Archiv der Stadt W.F.270 Vatican City, BAV, Reg. lat. 2049 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 201 M 13 M, G 13?/14? France, Paris, Saint-Victor France, Reims France, Reims France, Reims France, Reims France, Reims, Saint-Denis France, Reims, Saint-Denis France, Reims, Saint-Thierry France, Rouen, Notre Dame France, Rouen, Notre Dame France, Rouen, Notre Dame, Collège de Saint-Esprit France, Rouen, Saint-Ouen France, Senlis G M M M P G Sa France, Sens France, Sens France, Sens France, Saint-Amand France, Tours France, Tours France, Tours, Saint-Martin (?) 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Trent: Provincia autonoma di Trento, Servizi beni librari e archivistici, 1996. Abstract God’s dramatic curse of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, as recorded in Genesis 3:14–15, contains a theological ambiguity that played out in the visual arts, literature, and, as this article contends, music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Translations of this passage leave in doubt whether a male, a female, or both, will defeat sin by crushing Satan’s head (“caput”). This issue lies at the heart of the three Caput masses by an anonymous Englishman, Johannes Ockeghem, and Jacob Obrecht, and the Caput Motet for the Virgin by Richard Hygons from the Eton Choirbook. Fifteenth-century discussions of the roles of Christ and Mary in confronting sin, often called the “head of the dragon,” help unravel the meaning of these works. The Caput masses are Christ-focused and emphasize the Savior or one of his surrogates suppressing the beast’s head, as seen in illumination, rubric, and canon found in the masses. Folklorically based rituals and concepts of liturgical time are similarly built around the idea of the temporary reign of the Devil, who is ultimately trodden down by Christ. Hygons’s motet appears after celebration of the Immaculate Conception was authorized in the late fifteenth century. This feast proclaimed Mary’s conquest of sin through her own trampling on the dragon; the motet stresses Marian elements of the Caput theology, especially the contrast between the Virgin’s spotlessness and Eve’s corruption. Features of the Caput tradition mirror topics discussed in astrological and astronomical treatises and suggest that the composer of the original Caput Mass may also have been an astronomer. The disappearance of the Caput tradition signals its lasting influence through its progeny, which rise up in yet another renowned family of polyphonic masses. Together, the Caput masses and motet encompass the multifaceted doctrine of Redemption from the late middle ages under one highly symbolic Caput rubric.