Jacob Obrecht: a restless musical mind

Fabrice Fitch surveys a 15th century composer praised for his music's sheer loveliness

Jacob Obrecht, painted by Hans Memling in 1496 (Lebrecht Music & Arts)

The generation of composers born around 1450 used to be known as the ‘Josquin-generation’ after their most famous member, but in the last 20 years or so it has been recognised how many of them were creative personalities of quite comparable stature. This generation is significant too in that, for the first time, the number of truly first-rate composers whose fame has survived down to us can no longer be counted on the fingers of one hand: here is a group of musicians to match what Renaissance painting, sculpture and architecture have to offer.

One of the most intriguing and strangely lovable is Jacob Obrecht. I say ‘loveable’ because we know more about him than about most of these contemporaries. He was born in Ghent, probably around 1457/8, the son of one of the official city trumpeters. This musical background must have helped determine Obrecht’s vocation, and after having been trained as a choirboy he began to carve out a career for himself as chapel-master in his homeland’s many cathedral establishments. He seems to have been a restless character, never staying in the same place for very long, partly because his attention to his duties was sometimes found lacking (though to be fair, it’s not clear whether active negligence was ever conclusively proven).

By the time he reached his 30s his fame as a composer had spread throughout Europe, prompting the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este, to invite him to join his chapel in 1487/8. The arrangement fell through after a year due to Ercole’s inability to secure for Obrecht an ecclesiastical post. The return to the North, to the drudge of daily singing, teaching and administration, must have seemed like a defeat. More than a decade later, Ercole (who seems to have been remarkably persistent) invited him back in replacement of Josquin, who had left earlier in the same year, 1504. On the way Obrecht stopped at the court of the emperor Maximilian, for whom he may have written two of his late masterpieces, the masses Maria zart and Sub tuum presidium. But just as Obrecht achieved what must have been a cherished dream, disaster struck: within six months, Ercole died of plague, his successor sacked him, and he himself caught plague and died in the summer of 1505. It’s a sad story, but one whose known details give us a true sense of a composer’s career. That sense of closeness is emphasised because, uniquely for this period, we even know what he looked like: in the late 1480s he had his portrait made – it still survives, and in true Flemish realist fashion you can even see the stubble on his chin.

Obrecht’s music was praised by one of the great scholars of the music of this period, Gustave Reese, for its sheer loveliness - the sort of language that attests to a powerful quality that is as difficult to put into words as it is palpably experienced. Obrecht has a feeling for rich sonorities, for sensuous lines exuding a powerful sense of direction, and a sense of musical architecture equal to that of his greatest contemporaries. There is also something fantastical about his greatest pieces: the Missa Sub tuum presidium, which has already been mentioned, begins with three voices and adds a voice with each movement. In addition, each new voices introduces a new plainchant tune that is combined with the others, culminating in the seven-voice Agnus dei, the final section of which crowns the work with the appearance of one of the most famous Marian plainchants of all, Regina celi. It’s a fabulous moment, crowning a conception of true boldness and grandeur, all the more striking for the short duration of the individual movements: a strange, many-sided gem. Not surprisingly, it has been recorded more often than any of Obrecht’s masses (twice in the 1960s alone), and although none of these recordings is entirely satisfactory, they each have something to say.

The earliest of these, with choirboys of the Peterskirche, Leipzig and Capella Lipsiensis under Dietrich Knöthe, although not easily available at present and somewhat flawed in terms of intonation, is still worth seeking out because it gives the best account of the piece’s architectural sweep (buy through Amazon). It’s also the only account to use choirboys for the top line (which is practically unchanging in all five movements), which is probably the scoring Obrecht had in mind. Of the more recent, the one by Ars nova under Paul Hillier is clean and comes closest to Knöthe’s account in terms of proportions, and the Clerks’ Group for ASV (buy from Amazon) also includes a number of fine performances of motets otherwise unavailable (on which more later). Like Knöthe’s, the most recent, by Capella de la Torre, features instruments as well as voices, and though tempo decisions are sometimes frustrating (as with the Clerks), the resulting sonic image is frequently compelling (Amazon).