Capilla Flamenca

With the support of the Flemish government

Today's programme introduces us to the riches of the musical world of the later 15^th century. The work of Alexander Agricola, who will be our guide, belongs in terms of style to the third generation of Franco-Flemish composers associated particularly with Agricola's younger contemporaries Josquin Desprez (c1450–1521) and Jacob Obrecht (1457/8–1505).

Alexander Agricola was born in Ghent around 1446. Nothing is known of his childhood and youth and even his later life is quite sparcely documented. In the years  1475–1476 he was a cleric of the Cathedral in Cambrai, in the later 1480s he was in the service of the French king, and ten years later he was active in Italy.  The composer's last employer was the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Fair, and it was when he was travelling with the Duke's court to Spain that Agricola succumbed to plague, in Vallodolid on the 15^th of August 1506.

The typical secular musical genre of Agricola's day was the chanson, usually three-part and in terms of texts exploiting what are known as the fixed forms that were the legacy of medieval musical culture (rondeau, virelai, ballade). One of the typical features of Agricola's secular music, which dominates his work, is the abundant exploitation of existing musical material. This is the case of the folk melody In mijnen sin hadde ick verkoren, which Agricola like many other composers reworked into a three-part chanson, but also took as the basis of his four-part mass. Unfortnately we do not know the chronology of the creation of this mass, but given its scale and quality we can suppose that this was a mature work produced for an exceptional occasion.

It is no accident that part of the programme today consists of instrumental music. Alexander Agricola was a brilliant player of stringed instruments and in his work we find a considerable number of purely instrumental pieces (here Pater meus agricola est). The musical practice of the time, however, also recognised the combination of instruments and voices, and this is reflected in the profile of the Capilla flamenca ensemble.

Jan Baťa