Vox Lucens

Program Notes

Time has erased much of what was once known about Jean Lhéritier, the composer we feature on this recording. Lhéritier is thus one of those Renaissance figures whose life is known to us not so much through historical records, but through the product of his work: his music. The story that this music tells, however, places him very much in the midst of the creative period that most defines the Renaissance in music.

Scholarship traces the arc of his life from ca. 1480 to some time after 1552. This period overlaps the mature years of Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450-1525), the originator of the polyphonic high Renaissance idiom, and ranges up to the youth of G. P. da Palestrina (1525-1594), the composer whose music largely sums up the final years of the idiom. Lhéritier bridges these two composers chronologically, as well as stylistically and personally. In his youth, Lhéritier had in fact been a student of Josquin's, possibly at the French court. He then followed the same path taken by Josquin and many other Franco- Flemish composers, and went to work in Italy, principally in Ferrara and Rome, but possibly also in Florence and Venice. During one of his later stays in Rome, Lhéritier may well have met the youthful Palestrina—whether he did or not, Palestrina would have been aware of Lhéritier's music through their common tenure at the Vatican. Indeed, Palestrina based one of his most expressive masses on a Lhéritier motet, Nigra sum.

Since we know so few details of Lhéritier's life, we must primarily seek to understand the man through his music.

Lhéritier, however, has not made the task easy for us, as he left comparatively few works (around 50), almost all of them sacred pieces, and almost all of these motets. Unlike the bulk of his contemporaries, Lhéritier wrote very few settings of large-scale works such as the Mass (only one setting) or the Magnificat (only three). What he has left us instead is a collection of delightful miniatures: sacred motets of comparatively short duration, ranging from 100 to 200 measures in modern notation. These are, from first to last, almost all beautifully personal and expressive music. They are the rarest of gems.

To anyone who sings this composer's works, it is obvious that he was himself a singer who knew how to write for the voice. Like his contemporary Jean Mouton, he wrote lines that flow like water, feel effortless on the voice, and are simply a pleasure to sing. What is so compelling about Lhéritier is how he then works these flowing lines into the rhetoric of the text. Sometimes he tempers the imitative flow of counterpoint, and seemingly out of nowhere aligns all the voices on the same rhythm so as to proclaim a key part of the text. More often than not, however, he works the rhetorical emphasis of the text into the piece through musical repetition.

The ending of Nigra sum (track 14) is a particularly good example of this: here, Lhéritier keeps bringing back the key final phrase of the text, over and over, building up the emotional heat with each repetition, and never quite letting the music come to a harmonic resolution until the very last time through. The composer knew what he was doing: Nigra sum is one of the opening love poems from the Song of Songs, and the line being repeated translates to “my king brings me into his chamber.” Even with all its layers of romantic heat, however, this remains music that can be heard as pious: this composition (one of three settings Lhéritier wrote of the poem) magnificently reconciles the romantic intent of the poetry with its sacred context in the Old Testament.

To some degree or other, all of the motets on this recording show this same concern with rhetoric and repetition. In other respects, however, Lhéritier's music reflects the changing styles of his times, and because his compositional career spanned so many of the most inventive and innovative years of the Renaissance idiom, his writing largely encapsulates the musical history of the mid-Renaissance. This is especially true with respect to the texture of the musical parts. In his earlier music, chiefly written in four parts, the texture often thins down to two parts, the so-called paired duet techniques popularized by Josquin (evidence that Lhéritier may have studied with Josquin). This effect is heard at the beginning of In te, Domine, speravi (track 11), where the sopranos are first paired with the tenors, then with the altos; the altos then continue in pair with the basses before the whole choir comes in on the same rhythm. Lhéritier uses the same technique again to begin the second half of the piece with extended soprano-alto and tenor-bass duets, again followed by an aligned declamatory section (on the text “I am weak”).

In later years, Lhéritier abandons this paired duet sound, and adopts the fuller continuous texture common in the later Renaissance. While the voicing sometimes thins out to two or three parts (as in Nigra sum or Surrexit pastor bonus, both five-part settings), it's never the same kind of complete texture shift as one gets with paired duets. While some of his later music remains in four parts, it generally tends to favor larger ensembles of five or six parts (as in Miserere mei, Domine, track 6). This shift to large ensembles is something we also hear in the music of contemporaries like Jacobus Clemens non Papa (ca. 1510 - ca. 1556).

One motet on this recording stands apart from the others. Locutus est Domine (track 7) tells the story of God sending Moses to Egypt, there to tell Pharaoh to set God's people free. The piece is scored for nine independent voices, which is very unusual for its time, and from practically the very first page is filled with Lhéritier's rhetorical repetitions. This is powerful music. Likewise, the Moses in this setting is no shrinking violet: as the music paints him, he is a towering and powerful figure whose voice echoes back and forth between all nine of the parts. This is the same ferocious Moses that Michelangelo carved for the tomb of Pope Julius and completed at about the time that our composer was in Rome. We can't help but speculate whether Lhéritier wasn't trying in this piece to give a voice to the Moses that Michelangelo's contemporaries described with the word terribilità.

Finally, while we're in the business of speculating, it's interesting to consider why Lhéritier should only have given us so few pieces. It's not for lack of having been appreciated during his lifetime, as his 50 or so pieces were copied and reprinted in about 100 different sources, ranging as far away as Spain and the Czech Republic. Another item of speculation: if Lhéritier was so appreciated by his contemporaries, why then is it that he wrote so few Mass settings or Magnificats, as these were actually the bread and butter work of Renaissance composers. For some reason, composing must not have been a primary focus of Lhéritier’s duties as a church musician. We might imagine then that when Lhéritier chose to put music to paper, it was not simply because he had to produce another Kyrie or Gloria to pay the bills, but because he genuinely had something he wanted to say through his music. We, some nearly 500 years later, are very fortunate indeed that he chose to speak to us in this way.

Translations