The Treasury of Petrus Alamire: Music and Art in Flemish Court Manuscripts, 1500--1535.(Review)

The Treasury of Petrus Alamire: Music and Art in Flemish Court Manuscripts, 1500--1535. Edited by Herbert Kellman. Ghent: Ludion; distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 1999. [179 p. ISBN 90-5544-270-4. $45.]

The name "Alamire" immediately conjures up a series of beautifully copied and illuminated choirbooks containing the music of some of the greatest masters of Renaissance polyphony. The Alamire manuscripts are among the most highly prized treasures of several European libraries and archives, and they are regarded by musicologists as significant sources for the music of a large group of Franco-Flemish composers, including Johannes Ockeghem, Alexander Agricola, Heinrich Isaac, Josquin Desprez, Jean Mouton, and, above all, Pierre de Ia Rue, who is represented by almost his entire compositional output. The manuscripts were prepared as precious works of art, often carefully designed and illustrated. The majority were produced between ca. 1496 and 1534, a period when Alamire, that is, Petrus van den Hove-his pseudonym is derived from hexachord syllables--was a scribe associated first with the Marian Brotherhood in 's-Hertogenbosch and later with the courts of Philip the Fair, Marguerite of Austria, and the Archduke Charles (later Charles V). As many as fifty or so complete or partially complete choirbooks and partbooks copied under his supervision survive, as well as a few isolated fragments and loose folios. They contain over six hundred polyphonic compositions, more than 60 percent of which are Masses or Mass movements. Like other costly artifacts--tapestries, precious books, paintings--the manuscripts were regarded as symbols of the prestige and power of important rulers, and many were offered as gifts, to Henry VIII, John III of Portugal, Pope Leo X, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria, and others. Some were commissioned from members of the nobility or from wealthy merchants such as the Fugger family of Augsburg.

This is the first time a complete catalog of all the surviving Alamire manuscripts and fragments has been brought together in a single volume. Edited by Herbert Kellman as a project of the Alamire Foundation in Leuven, The Treasury of Petrus Alamire also includes essays by some of the leading scholars working in the field: Eugeen Schreurs, Eric Jas (who, with Kellman, was responsible for a large number of the catalog entries), Honey Meconi, Jacobijn Kiel, Flynn Warmington, and art historian Dagmar Thoss. The topics covered include Alamire's life (as calligrapher, musician, and diplomat), the question of the "school" of scribes working under his supervision, the extent of the repertory copied into these sources, the life of Pierre de Ia Rue, and the contribution of the Flemish miniaturists, principally of the Ghent-Bruges school. The book was published in conjunction with a 1999 exhibition in Leuven entitled Alamire's Treasury: Music and Miniatures from Charles V's Days, 1500-1535, which displayed recently di scovered fragments and parchment leaves as well as a series of the surviving manuscripts. Coinciding with the exhibition was an international colloquium, The Burgundian-Hapsburg Court Complex of Music Manuscripts (1500-1535) and the Workshop of Petrus Alamire; publication of the proceedings is in progress.

The important work of Kellman, undertaken since the late 1950s and continued by such scholars as Martin Picker, Martin Staehelin, and, in recent years, Flynn Warmington, has been crucial for furthering knowledge of the production and distribution of these manuscripts. It has taken some time for scholars to connect the series of manuscripts of the "Netherlands court complex," and research into the paleographical features of the group as a whole is a relatively new departure. Significant contributions by Kellman that have greatly facilitated subsequent exploration of the sources and music of late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Netherlandish composers include his article on works by Josquin in the Alamire manuscripts ("Josquin and the Courts of the Netherlands and France: The Evidence of the Sources," in Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference ... 1971, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky [London: Oxford University Press, 1976], 181-216), his article "Book Production and Book D istribution at the Netherlands Court" (in Formen und Probleme der Uberlieferung mehrstimmiger Musik im Zeitalter Josquins Desprez, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance, I/l; Wolfenbutteler Forschungen, 6 [Munich: Kraus International Publications, 1976], 14-17), and the series of entries on these ...