The Missa La sol fa re mi is a musical setting of the mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

 by Josquin des Prez

Josquin Des Prez

Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...

, first published in 1502. It is one of his most famous masses, and one of the earliest and most renowned examples of the soggetto cavato technique – the technique of deriving musical notes from the syllables of a phrase, in this case "Lascia fare mi" (Italian: "leave me alone").

Background

"Lascia fare mi" ("leave me alone", or possibly in a more idiomatic translation, "get lost") was supposedly a common phrase used by an unknown aristocrat to get people to stop pestering him with requests or complaints. The story was first reported by Glareanus

Heinrich Glarean

Heinrich Glarean was a Swiss music theorist, poet and humanist. He was born in Mollis and died in Freiburg....

, writing in 1547, who went on to say, "and then [Josquin] went on to write an entire mass, an exceedingly elegant work, based on these same words: thus, 'La sol fa re mi.'" The musical syllables La-Sol-Fa-Re-Mi correspond to A-G-F-D-E in the "natural" hexachord

Hexachord

In music, a hexachord is a collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...

, the six notes starting on C.

There have been several attempts to date the mass, and opinions of Josquin scholars differ, placing it variously between the late 1470s and the 1490s. Ottaviano Petrucci

Ottaviano Petrucci

Ottaviano Petrucci was an Italian printer. His Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, a collection of chansons printed in 1501, is commonly misidentified as the first book of sheet music printed from movable type. Actually that distinction belongs to the Roman printer Ulrich Han's Missale Romanum of 1476...

 published it in his first book of masses in 1502, one of the first books of music ever to be printed, which shows its importance and influence; indeed it was widely transmitted, in many other sources, in the early 16th century. The mass may have been written during Josquin's Roman

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 period, for example between 1490 and 1493, while Josquin was singing in the Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...

 choir. Its contrapuntal sophistication, as well as circumstantial evidence suggesting who the aristocrat may have been, perhaps indicate the later date. If the earlier date is correct, it would be the earliest mass ever written on solmization syllables; as it is, it is one of the earliest masses on a freely invented subject.

If the mass is dated to the 1490s, circumstantial evidence suggests that the aristocrat who told his supplicants to "get lost" may not have been an Italian at all, but a Turk. Prince Cem Sultan

Cem

Prince Cem , December 22, 1459 – February 25, 1495) was a pretender to the Ottoman throne in the 15th century. He was a son of Mehmed II the Conqueror and younger brother of Sultan Bayezid II. He was banished to Europe, first under the protection of the Knights Hospitaller of St...

, half-brother of Bayezid II

Bayezid II

Bayezid II or Sultân Bayezid-î Velî was the oldest son and successor of Mehmed II, ruling as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1481 to 1512...

, was being kept captive (in opulent luxury) in Rome during the period Josquin was there, and relentlessly implored Pope Innocent VIII (and later Alexander VI) for help in overthrowing his half-brother; the Pope in turn threatened Sultan Bayezid that he would release Cem if Bayezid ever renewed war against Christian Europe. Cem apparently made endless impossible promises and was singularly irritating; this in addition to the vogue in Italy in the 1490s for Turkish fashion (as seen in the turban Josquin wears in his woodcut portrait) has suggested that Josquin may have been poking fun at Cem with the mass – who also steadfastly refused to convert to Christianity.

The music

As is the case with most mass settings in the middle Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

, it consists of the following parts:

1. Kyrie
2. Gloria
3. Credo
4. Sanctus and Benedictus
5. Agnus Dei I, II and III

It is mainly in Phrygian mode

Phrygian mode

The Phrygian mode can refer to three different musical modes: the ancient Greek tonos or harmonia sometimes called Phrygian, formed on a particular set octave species or scales; the Medieval Phrygian mode, and the modern conception of the Phrygian mode as a diatonic scale, based on the latter...

, although with numerous shifts to Aeolian

Aeolian mode

The Aeolian mode is a musical mode or, in modern usage, a diatonic scale called the natural minor scale.The word "Aeolian" in the music theory of ancient Greece was an alternative name for what Aristoxenus called the Low Lydian tonos , nine semitones...

 and Dorian

Dorian mode

Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...

. The La-sol-fa-re-mi figure saturates the texture, appearing more than 200 times within the course of the mass. Most of the time it is in the tenor, suggesting that it may have originally been originally drafted as a cantus-firmus mass early in Josquin's career, and later reworked as a paraphrase mass

Paraphrase mass

A paraphrase mass is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, using as its basis an elaborated version of a cantus firmus, typically chosen from plainsong or some other sacred source...

 with the ostinato appearing in all voices in different permutations.

Not only does the five-note figure appear throughout, but it appears in compositional permutations such as retrograde

Retrograde

-Retrograde:* Retrograde motion, in astronomy, describes retrograde motions of celestial bodies relative to a gravitationally central object* Apparent retrograde motion, in astronomy, is the apparent motion of planets as observed from a particular vantage point...

 (Mi-Re-Fa-Sol-La), occasionally making palindromic

Palindrome

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....

 figures as a result of retrogrades appearing immediately before or after statements of the figure in its original form. In addition, Josquin uses the figure in each of the three hexachords available to Renaissance music theory: the natural hexachord beginning on C (giving A-G-F-D-E for the figure), the "hard" hexachord beginning on G (giving E-D-C-A-B natural for the figure), and the "soft" hexachord beginning on F (giving D-C-B flat-G-A for the figure). Sometimes he swaps hexachords in mid-figure, a compositional trick visible to the eye but difficult to hear. The motivic saturation characteristic to the piece, including use of permutations such as retrograde, is more commonly associated with music of the Second Viennese School

Second Viennese School

The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...

than the Renaissance, but Josquin was not only an innovator: he was working with a motivic cell which was singularly well-suited to such treatment.

The Missa La sol fa re mi remains one of Josquin's most famous masses, and is often performed and recorded.