Friday Soirée: Mensuration Canons
Oh dear. What started as something simple again becomes complicated and a bit circular* without my intending it, but that may be suitable because the subject is the musical canon, specifically the "mensuration canon".
Let's keep it simple. Perhaps you recall that a "canon" is a musical device in which one musical line, or "voice" (whether vocal or not), strictly imitates another voice. In its simplest form, the first voice deploys a series of notes in a particular rhythmic pattern and then another voice deploys exactly the same notes with exactly the same rhythmic pattern. Often more than two voices are used.
Not surprisingly, composers love to show off their technical skills and the simple canon is rarely used in such a direct way and there are any number of variations developed by over achieving composers. Use lots of voices, use strict imitation but start the "tune" on different pitches for each voice, play the tune forwards and backwards, play the tune upside down, etc. J.S.Bach was very fond of canonical techniques; my favorite Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould's "liner notes", 1956 release) almost burst from their abundance of imitative counterpoint.
Now, if you need a really, really complicated type of canon to really, really show off, try the "mensuration canon", or "tempo canon". In this remarkable delicacy the voices use the same tune but each at a different speed (or "tempo"). Could that ever sound — good? Hold on, we'll get there.
So this topic came up because some time back Alex Ross pointed out in his blog ("Renée v. Maria", 7 March 2009) an amusing, synthetic example of a mensuration canon, this one manufactured by YouTube denizen MMmusing, who likes to put these things together. (Consider, e.g., his "The Rite of Appalachian Spring".)
In this case we hear the combined voices of Maria Callas (on top) and Renée Fleming (on bottom) singing Puccini's famous aria "O mio babbino caro" (from the one-act opera Gianni Schicchi ) at the same time but with different tempi. Let's listen (it takes under 3 minutes).
[YouTube URL for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Certainly it's amusing, also informative, but I also found it strangely compelling and worth listening to more than once.
But then, on to real examples. Ross, in his blog posting, mentions a number of famous examples ("famous" being a relative term, of course), all of which have points of interest. But my interest was particularly drawn to the mention of a mass, "Missa l'homme armé Super voces musicales" (1502) by Josquin des Prez, certainly a master of Renaissance polyphonic counterpoint.
The name of the mass setting comes from the fact that Josquin use the tune of a popular melody, "L'Homme Armé", for his musical material throughout the mass (a relatively popular idea in the day–think of it as a 16th-century mash-up).
In one section of the mass, the second Agnus Dei setting, Josquin writes a mensuration canon in 3 parts, each part moving at a different speed. The middle voice is the slowest; the lowest sounding voice sings at twice the speed of the middle voice, and the top voice at three times the speed. Such a show off!
I have to admit that I don't hear any of that, at least on first hearing, although I can easily see it in the notated music (see a bit of it at the Wikipedia page on the mass). But what does it matter if the music is good, and this music is quite wonderful.
Here is the entire Agnus Dei II, lasting about 7.5 minutes. Alas, the performance is uncredited by the uploader.
[YouTube URL for those who don't see the embedded player.]
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* The "circularity" came about, for me, when I read in MMmusing's notes at the YouTube page that he was inspired to do the Fleming/Callas canon by a blog posting from Soho the Dog, aka pianist Matthew Guerrieri, one of the very few music-related blogers I read besides Alex Ross. On the subject of Flemming and Callas singing the Puccini, Guerrieri contributed a limerick:
"O mio babbino": the right tempo for?
Have Fleming and Callas keep score—
By the time that Renée
Gets to "Dio, vorrei,"
La Divina could toss in a Suor.
Now, at the risk of spoiling the joke, I'll mention that Suor refers to Suor Angelica, another one-act opera by Puccini which, along with the above mentioned Gianni Schicchi and Il tabarro make up a trio of one-act operas referred to as Il trittico. Enough.