First page of the Mechelen Choir Book. The opening miniature is probably the young Charles V on a throne | Mechelen, Regionale Beeldbank.
The Mechelen Choir Book
Polyphonic Music in the Low Countries
The Mechelen Choir Book is one of the most beautiful and best-preserved music manuscripts from the 16th century. It was produced in around 1515 in the workshop of Petrus Alamire in Mechelen. The town on the Dyle was at that time the effective capital of the Low Countries and thanks to Margaret of Austria an important cultural centre.
The Choir Book contains the music for seven multi-part Latin masses: one by the composer Matthaeus Pipelare and six by the court singer and composer Pierre de la Rue. Numerous singers sang together from this large book, which was placed on a lectern. Petrus Alamire copied and sold luxury music manuscripts, decorated with miniaturespainted representations in a manuscript. . He supplied many music manuscripts commissioned by the court of Mechelen. These can be found today all over Europe. The Mechelen Choir Book was probably a present from Maximilian of Austria to his grandson, the later Emperor Charles V.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 1537, fol. 58v
Polyphonist Johannes Ockeghem (around 1410-1497), probably the singer with the glasses, sings from a choir book. Posthumous miniature (2nd quarter of the 16th century).
Polyphonic Music in the Low Countries
The Choir Book contains polyphonic – or multi-part – music. With monophonic music, such as Gregorian chant, everyone sings the same tune. Polyphony means that the composer combines several melodies, which are nevertheless attuned to each other. The new form of music developed from 1200 onwards. The musical directors of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris played an important role. They added a second and third voice to the Gregorian chant.
During the 15th and 16th centuries Franco-Flemish polyphony was the most important musical style at the great courts all over Western Europe. Franco-Flemish means here: on both sides of the language border that runs through the Low Countries and which played no part on an artistic level. The flourishing was due to the excellent choir schools of the cathedrals of Tournai, Cambrai and Liège and to important churches in for example, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels and Mons. There talented boys learned from a choirmaster how to embellish the mass with Gregorian chant and polyphonic song.
The composers and singers from the Low Countries were particularly popular in the rest of Europe. Polyphonists like Josquin des Prez, Jacob Obrecht, Adriaan Willaert and Philippus de Monte went to the important courts and churches and in so doing ensured the spread of the Franco-Flemish repertoire in Europe. The splendid choir books like those of Alamire also contributed.
Focal points
Mechelen, Regionale Beeldbank, Jan-Baptist De Noter, 1780
The Hof van Savoye, the town Palace of Margaret of Austria in Mechelen, was one of the first Renaissance buildings in the Low Countries. In the 17th and 18th century it was the seat of the Great Council of Mechelen, the highest court in the Netherlands until the French Revolution.
The Court of Margaret of Austria
Margaret of Austria was the only daughter of Maximilian of Austria and Mary of Burgundy. From 1507 she ruled the Habsburg Netherlands as regentman or woman who rules a country as a representative of the monarch. . She also played a diplomatic role in the conflicts between the Habsburgs and the French king about the borders of their territories in the Low Countries. After the death of her brother Philip the Fair in 1506 she oversaw the upbringing of his children, among them the later Emperor Charles V.
Margaret was highly educated and an important patron. She lived in Mechelen in one of the first Renaissance palaces in the Low Countries, the Hof van Savoye. She gave commissions to many sculptors, painters, illuminatorsartists who paint or draw depictions or decorative shapes in manuscripts. , glass-blowers, carpet-weavers, writers, composers… and made her court one of the most important centres of the Renaissance in North-West Europe.
Her ample library contained not only religious and didactic literature, but also chivalrous romances, songbooks and chronicles. She built a remarkable art collection, with works by resonant names like Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hieronymus Bosch. She also owned pieces by well-known Italian artists and even objects of Aztec and Arab origin. Such a many-facetted collect was also designed to express the power of the Habsburgs. Finally she was herself an active writer. She wrote, for example, a moving lament on the death of her brother, Philip the Fair.
London, The British Museum, WB.261
Conrat Meit (c. 1470/85-1550/51), Portrait Bust in Boxwood of Margaret of Austria (1515/25). Height 9 cm. The wood-carver and sculptor from Worms entered the service of Margaret of Austria before 1514.
‘My Heart Always Feels Longing’ by Pierre de la Rue
Pierre de la Rue was the favourite composer of Margaret of Austria. He was trained at the choir school of the cathedral of Tournai. In 1492 he entered the service of Margaret’s father, Maximilian of Austria and later of her brother, Philip the Fair. From 1506 to 1508 he was in charge of the court chapel of Joanna of Castile, Philip’s widow and the mother of Emperor Charles V. Afterwards he returned to the court in Mechelen.
Pierre de la Rue composed mainly in Latin and French. But one song by him in Dutch has been preserved: ‘My Heart Always Feels Longing’. This love song was also popular in Europe, like a few other Dutch-language ‘hits’. These were adapted and translated and often used for instrumental settings.
Polyphony flourished not only in the great churches and at the European courts. In the 16th century rich burghers also ordered songbooks for their own use. They contained besides church music also worldly songs, in French and Dutch. The musical culture of the burghers in this way contributed to the spread of Dutch-language polyphonic music. The spread of printing also played a role. For example, in the years after 1550 the Antwerp music printer Tielman Susato published eleven Dutch-language ‘musyck boexkens’. The civil war at the late 16th century put an end to the flourishing period of the Dutch multi-part song in the Southern Netherlands.
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Non-fiction
De Vlaamse Polyfonie
Davidsfonds, 2015.
Meerstemmigheid in beeld: zeven meesterwerken uit het atelier van Petrus Alamire
Davidsfonds, 2015.
The Mechelen Choirbook/Het Mechels Koorboek Study/Studie
Alamire Foundation/Davidsfonds, 2020.
Margareta van Oostenrijk. Parel van Bourgondië
Uitgeverij Elena, 2021.
De Hertogin. Margaretha van Oostenrijk, hertogin van Savooie 1480-1530
Querido, 1981.
Dames met klasse – Margareta van York en Margareta van Oostenrijk
Davidsfonds, 2005.
Een muziekgeschiedenis der Nederlanden
Amsterdam University Press, 2011.
De klanken van de keizer: Karel V en de polyfonie
Universitaire Pers, 1999.
Kinderen van de Renaissance: kunst en opvoeding aan het Habsburgse hof (1480-1530)
Lannoo, 2021.
De schatkamer van Alamire: muziek en miniaturen uit Keizer Karels tijd, 1500-1535
Davidsfonds, 1999.
Macht, vrouwen en politiek, 1477-1558: Maria van Bourgondië, Margareta van Oostenrijk, Maria van Hongarije
Van Halewyck, 2000.
Wij, Habsburgers
Houtekiet, 2022.
Het Nederlandse liefdeslied in de middeleeuwen
Prometheus, 2021.
Fiction
Suske en Wiske. De Kleine Postruiter (nr 186)
De Standaard, 1990.
De gestolen prinses
Davidsfonds/Infodok, 2009. (15+)
De nacht van Margaretha
Vantilt, 2000 (Toneelmonoloog).
De Gentse bruid
De Arbeiderspers, 2005.
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