Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/507

OKEGHEM. quelque peine' and 'Ecce ancilla Domini,' and the papal chapel, one, 'De plus en plus.' Baini speaks of others at Rome, but does not name them, and though looked for since, they have not been found. A tradition asserts that costly music books containing many of Okeghem's works were destroyed when the imperial troops plundered the city in 1527, and his compositions at St. Martin's at Tours were probably lost in the same way. Ambros speaks of one motet, 'Alma redemptoris,' and three songs, 'D'ung aultre amer,' 'Aultre Venus,' and 'Rondo Royal' in MS. at Florence, and of other chansons at Rome and Dijon.

These compositions, insufficient as they are for forming a satisfactory judgment on Okeghem's powers, are sufficient to separate him very distinctly from his predecessors, and show the astonishing progress made during the forty years of his supremacy (1550–1590). He is regarded as the founder of the second or new Netherland school, in contradistinction to the older school of Dufay, Brasart, Eloy, Binchois and Faugues. Kiesewetter, who first made this classification, and has given numerous examples from the works of the earlier period, distinguishes Okeghem and his contemporaries 'by a greater facility in counterpoint and fertility in invention; their compositions, moreover, being no longer mere premeditated submissions to the contrapuntal operation, but for the most part being indicative of thought and sketched out with manifest design, being also full of ingenious contrivances of an obligato counterpoint, at that time just discovered, such as augmentation, diminution, inversion, imitation: together with canons and fugues of the most manifold description.' One of these canons has gone the round of the musical histories, but its solution has not always been successful, and Fétis has had to correct the editions given by Forkel, Kiesewetter, Burney and Hawkins. The 'Missa cujusvis toni,' which Kiesewetter, without sufficient reason, regards as a comical mass, is a work possibly written for the sake of his pupils, but more probably as an intellectual treat for the highly educated musicians who formed the church choirs in those days. It would be valued by them, not only as a test of their thorough acquaintance with the church modes, and an exercise in the transposition of the mass from one mode to the next, but also for the endless charm of variety, which the special characteristics of the various modes would impart to it. Many years after Okeghem's death it was still used by the great chapel choir at Munich, and the copy now exists there, with the notes and corrections made by those who actually sang from it. Another piece of Okeghem's, famous in its time, was a motet for 36 voices, which was probably (like Josquin's 'Qui habitat in adjutorio') written with 6 voices, the other parts being derived from them canonically.

As a teacher Okeghem stands alone in the whole history of music. 'Through his pupils the art was transplanted into all countries, and he must be regarded (for it can be proved by genealogy) as the founder of all schools from his own to the present age.' The names of Josquin and De la Rue stand foremost in the list of his pupils. Josquin, himself a great teacher, carried the new Netherland art into Italy, and the first important representatives both of German and French music, Isaac and Mouton, with many others less famous, learnt through him the Okeghem traditions. [ J. R. S.-B. ]

OLD HUNDREDTH TUNE, THE. The great popularity of this tune in England and America has given birth to much discussion respecting its origin and authorship. The greater part however of what has hitherto been written on the subject is either purely conjectural or based on an imperfect knowledge of the facts. The recent researches of Bovet, Douen, and others into the history of the Genevan Psalter have cleared up almost all difficulties, and shown that it was in that work that the tune first appeared. A brief sketch of the history of the Genevan Psalter will be given in a supplemental notice of. For the present it is enough to say that the 'Old Hundredth' was the melody adapted to Beza's version of the 134th Psalm included in the first instalment of psalms, 34 in number, added by him to the Genevan Psalter in 1551. No copy of that Psalter containing the tunes to these psalms is known of earlier date than 1554, but there is little doubt that they were added to the psalms either at the time of publication of the latter or in 1552; and, as will be seen in another article, this date falls within the time when Bourgeois was musical editor of the Genevan Psalter—that is, from 1542 to 1557. To Bourgeois therefore the tune in its present form may be ascribed, but how far it is original is uncertain. The greater part of the melodies in the Genevan Psalter are known to be adaptations of secular tunes of the time, and the 'Old Hundredth' is, no doubt, one of the number. Douen cites a melody from 'Chansons du XV$e$ Siècle publiées par G. Paris et A. Gevaert,' Paris, 1875, which commences as follows

to the words 'Il n'y a icy celluy Qui n'ait sa belle.'

It was a not uncommon practice of the old writers to construct new tunes by adding different terminations to the same fragment of older melody. The strain with which the 'Old Hundredth' commences seems to have been very popular from this point of view. We find it, with different endings, in 'Souter Liedekens