Masses (review)

Johannes Martini (ca. 1430/40-1497) is a composer much more talked about than heard. While this fact does not in itself distinguish him from many other fifteenth-century composers, in Martini's case the discrepancy is particularly acute. Detailed studies by Elaine Moohan ("Sources of Sacred Music for the Chapel Choir of Ercole I d'Este, 1471-1505, and the Masses of Johannes Martini" [Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 1993]) and Murray Steib ("A Composer Looks at His Model: Polyphonic Borrowing in Masses from the Late Fifteenth Century," Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 46 [1996]: 5-41), the editors of the two volumes under review, along with the work of several other scholars, most notably J. Peter Burkholder ("Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Century," Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 [1985]: 470-523) and the late Adelyn Peck Leverett ("A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the Manuscript Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, 91 (1378)" [Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1990]), have testified strongly to his historical importance. Thus it is all the more surprising that this new edition is the first time most of Martini's Masses have appeared in print. To have all of his Masses together in a uniform edition is thus long overdue and very welcome, and this publication should prove the spur to a closer understanding of Martini's style and, one hopes, more performances. A-R Editions is to be congratulated for adding this two-volume set to its series Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, nicely complementing the volume of the same composer's secular pieces, edited by Edward G. Evans, that formed the first volume in the series published way back in 1975.

Part of Martini's historical attraction resides in the nature of the principal source of his Masses, the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense MS α.M.1.13, which was likely copied under the composer's supervision for the chapel of Duke Ercole I d'Este of Ferrara, where he spent much of his career. This source apparently embodies Martini's own variations for a number of pieces (the variant readings for parts of his own Missa Ma bouche rit and MissaCucu are sensibly edited separately in the edition). We are thus in the unusual position, with all but three of the Masses, of having copies almost directly from the horse's mouth, and since those other three all survive as unica, the editors' choices of readings were ready-made. The edition comprises thirteen Masses, eleven of them copied under Martini's name (only four of which were hitherto available in modern publications) and two assigned to him by scholars. The latter—Nos amis and Au chant de l'alouete—are logically and helpfully included here chiefly due to the fact that other modern editions are lacking.

Little is known for sure of Martini's life before he arrived at the Este court in Ferrara, which, but for a brief sojourn in Milan, would remain the composer's home from the early 1470s until his death in 1497. Like his younger contemporary Franchinus Gaffurius (1451-1522) in Milan, Martini thus clearly had a powerful role in shaping the music of a single important institution over a long period of time. Certainly Martini was an individual voice—he largely avoids, for example, the kind of constructivist complexities that absorbed some of his contemporaries, preferring instead an often quite freely varied approach to his models...