Missa Prolationum

Album: Ockeghem: The Ockeghem Collection
Track: "Missa Prolationum" (Track #9)
Composer: Johannes Ockeghem
Instruments: 4 vocals
Musical Form: Cyclic Mass
Year: ~1460

Who says that beauty is the ultimate goal? Music, as any art form, ostensibly aspires to please the senses and stimulate our emotional center. However, for many of the self-proclaimed cognoscenti (myself included, at times), it also serves a higher intellectual purpose. We tip our caps to those artists who possess such technical skill that their quantifiable achievements seem out of the grasp of an ordinary practitioner. These artists appeal especially to those who appreciate more than enjoy (insomuch as those two things are mutually exclusive).

So it was, and is, with Johannes Ockeghem. An extremely skilled composer, Ockeghem composed, among other things, a thirty-six voice motet and a mass that was everywhere a double canon. For the latter composition, he wrote for four voices, two with original musical lines and two that mimicked the others, using the same pitch intervals but performing in different time signatures and at different absolute starting pitches. Constructing a listenable mass under such constraints is no small feat and Ockeghem is rightly viewed as a master at the manipulation and construction of vocal lines in the Renaissance style.

But is it really good music? This guy can play a piano upside-down, with his arms crossed and his head under the keyboard. Although the performance is impressive and no doubt took a lot of practice, what actual value does it have? Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that Ockeghem is on the same musical level as our kitschy piano-playing friend, but before we crown Ockeghem the king of Renaissance music, I think it's fair to ask the question.

In the visual arts, perhaps the closest analog to Ockeghem's technique would be a hand-drawn fractal (see here for an example), where an artist is able to construct a complex figure connecting some initial geometric shape using a series of simple rules. In this analogy, the initial shape is like Ockeghem's melody for a single voice, a melody that he replicates in the other voices using simple mathematical relationships. Although there is an undeniable beauty in fractals, particularly when iterated many times over by a computer (example), do such images really compare to the work of artists like Pablo Picasso or Leonardo Da Vinci? Likewise, how do Ockeghem's "trick" compositions really compare to the works other great composers of the Renaissance and beyond?

My personal feeling is that they lack the pathos of his peers' work, as well as much of his own. The example quoted here, "Missa Prolationum," is a fascinating listen the first time you hear it. The elaborate canons produce a sort of long-period rhythmic pulsation that can be entrancing to those unfamiliar, but over the course of an entire mass cycle or on repeat listenings, the novelty value quickly wears off. Eventually, it becomes clear that the melodic restrictions Ockeghem was forced to impose in order to create his compositional miracle are ultimately suffocating the piece.

I won't go as far as to recommend avoiding Ockeghem, or even avoiding the pieces discussed here. Rather, I'll just say not to expect a deep personal connection to the music. It is interesting, but little more.


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