A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Okeghem, Joannes
OKEGHEM, Joannes, born early in the 15th century, probably at Termonde in East Flanders, where a family of that name then resided. The form Ockenheim was introduced by Glarean, and has been very generally copied, but Okeghem (with such slight variations as Okenghem, Okekem, etc.) appears on his compositions and in all important documents relating to him. As he belonged to the college of singers in Antwerp cathedral in 1443, we may place his birth as early as 1415 or 1420. There is some reason for supposing Binchois to have been his master, but in any case there was no lack of excellent musicians at the time when he was a boy. He gave up his place at Antwerp in 1444, and soon afterwards entered the service of the king of France. In 1461, the year of Charles VII's death, he is mentioned as head of the chapel. With Louis XI he appears to have been in great favour, and was by him appointed treasurer of the church of St. Martin's at Tours, where he resided the greater part of his life. He is said to have served three kings of France for forty years, and resigned his position at Tours soon after the year 1490. He then lived in retirement for many years and died about the year 1513 nearly 100 years old.
No wonder if by this time he was somewhat out of fashion, and that the invention of music-printing at the beginning of the 16th century was more to the advantage of his distinguished pupils than to his own. In the earliest of Petrucci's publications five French chansons are given; but no mass or motet bearing Okeghem's name was printed till many years after his death, and even then the mass which Petreius published, 'Missa cujusvis toni,' seems to have been chosen on account of its special scientific interest, and no others were printed entire. Extracts from the 'Missa Prolationum' were given in various theoretical treatises, but both these masses exhibit Okeghem as a great teacher, rather than a great church composer. The Brussels library possesses two MS. masses, 'Pour quelque peine' and 'Ecce ancilla Domini,' and the papal chapel, one, 'De plus en plus.' Baini speaks of others at Rome, but does not name them, and though looked for since, they have not been found. A tradition asserts that costly music books containing many of Okeghem's works were destroyed when the imperial troops plundered the city in 1527, and his compositions at St. Martin's at Tours were probably lost in the same way. Ambros speaks of one motet, 'Alma redemptoris,' and three songs, 'D'ung aultre amer,' 'Aultre Venus,' and 'Rondo Royal' in MS. at Florence, and of other chansons at Rome and Dijon.
These compositions, insufficient as they are for forming a satisfactory judgment on Okeghem's powers, are sufficient to separate him very distinctly from his predecessors, and show the astonishing progress made during the forty years of his supremacy (1550–1590). He is regarded as the founder of the second or new Netherland school, in contradistinction to the older school of Dufay, Brasart, Eloy, Binchois and Faugues. Kiesewetter, who first made this classification, and has given numerous examples from the works of the earlier period, distinguishes Okeghem and his contemporaries 'by a greater facility in counterpoint and fertility in invention; their compositions, moreover, being no longer mere premeditated submissions to the contrapuntal operation, but for the most part being indicative of thought and sketched out with manifest design,[1] being also full of ingenious contrivances of an obligato counterpoint, at that time just discovered, such as augmentation, diminution, inversion, imitation: together with canons and fugues of the most manifold description.' One of these canons has gone the round of the musical histories, but its solution has not always been successful, and Fétis has had to correct the editions given by Forkel, Kiesewetter, Burney and Hawkins. The 'Missa cujusvis toni,' which Kiesewetter, without sufficient reason, regards as a comical mass, is a work possibly written for the sake of his pupils, but more probably as an intellectual treat for the highly educated musicians who formed the church choirs in those days. It would be valued by them, not only as a test of their thorough acquaintance with the church modes, and an exercise in the transposition of the mass from one mode to the next, but also for the endless charm of variety, which the special characteristics of the various modes would impart to it. Many years after Okeghem's death it was still used by the great chapel choir at Munich, and the copy now exists there, with the notes and corrections made by those who actually sang from it. Another piece of Okeghem's, famous in its time, was a motet for 36 voices, which was probably (like Josquin's 'Qui habitat in adjutorio') written with 6 voices, the other parts being derived from them canonically.[2]
As a teacher Okeghem stands alone in the whole history of music. 'Through his pupils the art was transplanted into all countries, and he must be regarded (for it can be proved by genealogy) as the founder of all schools from his own to the present age.'[3] The names of Josquin[4] and De la Rue stand foremost in the list of his pupils. Josquin, himself a great teacher, carried the new Netherland art into Italy, and the first important representatives both of German and French music, Isaac and Mouton, with many others less famous, learnt through him the Okeghem traditions.