Listeners unfamiliar with the music of Pierre de Manchicourt, or who might not even recognize his name, need not be ashamed. Indeed, Manchicourt is one of many 16th century composers whose life and works quietly slipped out of the picture of Western music history. Yet he belonged to the large group of outstanding polyphonic composers from the Low Countries who during the Renaissance played a leading part, perhaps even the leading part, in the European musical scene.

Pierre de Manchicourt belonged to the so-called 'fourth generation' of polyphonists from the Low Countries, a group rich in famous names such as Adriaan Willaert, Cipriano de Rore, Nicolas Gombert, Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crequillon, among many others. These composers were active in their homelands and abroad as singers, chapelmasters and teachers at the most exquisite and splendor-loving ecclesiastical and secular courts of popes, cardinals, bishops, emperors, kings, princes, dukes and nobles throughout Europe.

Manchicourt's biography is not well documented. We know that he died on 5 October 1564 in Madrid where he was serving as the first chapelmaster of the Spanish king Philip II. Since 1559 he had been the leader of 'Capilla Flamenca,' the famous choir Philip inherited from his father, Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), which consisted exclusively of singers and composers from the Low Countries. As a fervent defender of the Counter-Reformation, Philip stimulated his musicians above all in the direction of sacred music, just as his father had done before him. Consequently, most of the musicians in his service concentrated primarily on the ecclesiatical repertoire.

Manchicourt's output is no exception: the majority of his works are settings of the Ordinary of the Mass and motets on biblical or liturgical texts (such as antiphons and responsories). His secular French chansons mostly date from his earlier years, before he was engaged by Philp II, when he worked in France and the Low Countires as chorister in Arras and a choirmaster at both Tours Cathedral and Tournai Cathedral in Hainaut (in the south of what is now Belgium). Being an ordained clergyman, he was honored with a canonry at Arras Cathedral by the Bishop of Arras, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, who was at the same time the most important counselor and the 'prime minister' to Charles V and Philip II. In 1554, to curry Granvelle's favor, Manchicourt dedicated to the Bishop a collection of motets, published by the Leuven University printer Pierre Phalèse. This edition of fourteen five- and six-part works contain the motets Puer qui natus est (a5) and Audivi vocem de cœlo (a6). Subsequently, Granvelle did indeed favor Manchicourt when in 1559 the latter applied for and obtained the post of director of the Capilla Flamenca after the death of the former chapelmaster Nicolas Payen in February of that year. Thus Manchicourt's royal appointment took place while Philip was still staying in the Low Countries before moving permanently to Madrid in 1561.

In 1539, a motet book by Manchicourt was published by Pierre Attaingnant in Paris, who was one of the first music printers to devote an entire motet collection to a single composer; far more common and risk-free was the publication of anthologies of works by several composers. That Attaingnant chose Manchicourt is a clear sign of his reputation as the leader of the choir of Tours Cathedral. While most of Manchicourt's motets were published during his lifetime, his nineteen masses are, with some exceptions, preserved only in manuscript. One manuscript, copied about 1560 in Madrid (possibly by Manchicourt himself), contains his Requiem, together with three other masses and eleven motets. This manuscript must have belonged to the repertoire of the well-known monastery of Montserrat, where it is still preserved in company with a second manuscript containing no fewer than twelve masses by Manchicourt (MS. 768, c. 1545/55 and MS. 772, c. 1560).

The Missa de requiem, used for funerals or memorial services, is named after the first word of the Introit of the Mass ('Requiem ætername dona eis, Domine': 'Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord'). More than forty polyphonic Requiem masses of the 15th and 16th centuries are known, one of the most famous being the first preserved, composed by Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1415-1497). The earliest-known Requiem Mass was written by Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397-1474) but has lamentably been lost. These Requiem masses are made up of different parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, the texts of which remain essentially unchanged (Kyrie, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei), and of the Propers of the Mass whose texts do change according to the liturgical occasion.. Before the reforms of the Council of Trent (1543-1563) there were alternative texts for the Propers including the Gradual Si ambulem in medio umbræ mortis, selected by Manchicourt for his Requiem. The other parts of the Propers in his Requiem are the Introit Requiem æternam, the Offertory Domine Jesu Christe and the Communion Lux æterna. Characteristic for the Requiem Mass is the borrowing of the original Gregorian chant in the polyphonic parts, as cantus firmus or as a basis for paraphrase. Manchicourt places the plainchant mostly in the top voice, around which he composes four free parts in a slowly-moving, transparent contrapuntal fabric in masterly fashion, perfectly appropriate to the texts of the Mass for the Dead. Manchicourt does not aim at dramatic expression but is guided by the first words of the Mass: 'Requiem æternam,' the eternal rest God prepares for the people he unconditionally loves. The aura of profound serentiy created by Manchicourt in this work is very moving.

Reproduced with permission from Ignace Bossuyt, Prof. of Musicology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.