Three successive Kings of France employed Johannes Ockeghem in their Royal Chapel: Charles VII, Louis XI, and Charles VIII. For his approximately forty years of devoted service he earned from them the honorific Premier chapelain, the position of Chapelmaster, and the lucrative office of Treasurer of St. Martin of Tours, the richest Abbey in the dominion. A majority of Ockeghem's sacred works certainly arose from his employment at the royal court; the lovely motet on Alma redemptoris mater, for instance, was certainly sung at the Royal Chapel, since its earliest source was copied for that body of singers during Ockeghem's tenure. The text is one of the four great Marian antiphons, which are sung at Vespers at the close of each day throughout the year—in this case from Advent until the Feast of the Purification (Feb. 2). It prays for mercy from her who was "Virgin both before and after" the annunciation of the angel Gabriel.

The plainchant "Alma redemptoris mater"—one of the most beautiful and memorable melodies in the entire Gregorian corpus, with its graceful opening melody arching through an entire octave—serves as structural foundation for Ockeghem's motet. This chant melody is transposed up a fifth and given in its entirety in the Altus voice. Both Guillaume Dufay and Josquin Desprez seem to have been familiar with Ockeghem's setting, since Dufay's motet, Alma redemptoris emulates its sparse opening texture—exposing the structural melody—and Josquin borrowed the beginning of the motet for his own Alma redemptoris/Ave regina coelorum.

Ockeghem's writing in Alma redemptoris mater is typical of the finest of fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish polyphony; his rhythms are often asymmetrical, his cadences elided, and his melodies proceed with motivic independence. The four voices, in a fairly high (celestial) tessitura, spin out their individual melodies in a never-ending tapestry of variation.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.