Jacob Arcadelt
Jacob Arcadelt (also “Jaques”) was a major composer of the generation after Josquin Desprez. It is possible he was a student of Josquin, being age 17 when the master died as Provost of the collegiate church at Condé-sur-l’Escaut in 1521. Like so many of his countrymen, Arcadelt, headed for the Mediterranean as a young man and there are various clues that he was in Florence c. 1530. Despite our offering of sections from one of his three Masses, it was in secular music, both in the French chanson and the Italian madrigal, that this Franco-Flemish musician excelled. He, with Verdelot and Costanzo Festa, practically invented the madrigal. Beginning in 1539 beautiful examples of this new form appeared in his printed collections until six books of them had been printed in Venice by 1544. More than 200 madrigals by Arcadelt have survived. During his Italian years Arcadelt was also gainfully employed as a singer in the Papal Chapel in Rome, for which he wrote motets, Lamentation sets and possibly the Mass featured here..
Apparently 20 years was enough to be away from his native country. In 1551 Arcadelt left the Papal Chapel and in 1554 he was in the service of Charles of Lorraine in France. He retired c. 1562 and died in Paris in 1568.
Deh! come trista
A madrigal lamenting the death of a Florentine dignitary, probably Alessandro dei’ Medici, who, in 1532, became the first hereditary ruler of Florence after its brief existence as a republic in the 1520s. Alessandro was assassinated in 1537. “Deh! come trista” is printed in Arcadelt’s fifth and last book of madrigals of 1544.
Tempo is slow . . . not entirely inappropriate for the elegiac content . . . and it allows the wonderful dissonant harmonies to sound.
Arcadelt: Deh! come trista
Deh, come trista dei esser fiorenza meco;
Poscia ch’el tuo piu bel de gli altri dei
Lasso non e piu teco;
Ond’ io gridando giorno et notte.
Doloroso men vo, fin ch’al ciel piace
Rendermi col mio deo lusata pace.
Missa Noe noe – Kyrie
Arcadelt: Missa Noe noe - Kyrie
Missa Noe noe – Gloria
Arcadelt: Missa Noe noe - Gloria
Missa Noe noe – Sanctus
The ‘Missa Noe noe’ a6 is one of Arcadelt’s three mass settings printed in ‘Missa tres’ (Paris, 1557). It is a parody mass on the Christmas motet, “Noe, noe, psallite”, by Jean Mouton, who was the master of the French Royal Chapel forty years earlier. A modern edition is found in Albert Seay ‘J. Arcadeldt: Opera omnia’ i965-71.
Arcadelt: Missa Noe noe - Sanctus
Missa Noe noe – Agnus
Arcadelt sets only two section of the Agnus Dei.
Arcadelt: Missa Noe noe - Agnus
Text:
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere
nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona
nobis pacem.
Translation:
Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of
the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of
the world, grant us Thy peace.
O felic’ occhi
Jacob Arcadelt "O felice occhi"
Text:
O felic’ occhi miei, felici voi, che sete car’ al mio sol perche sembianz’ havete de gli occhi che gli fusi dolc’ e rei, voi ben voi sete voi, voi felic’ et io et io, io no, che per quetar vostro desio, corr’ amirar l’onde mi struggo poi.