- Composer: Johannes Ockeghem
- Period: Renaissance (1450-1599)
Review
"Take from me your example …" begins the text to perhaps the most-studied piece of music from the entire Renaissance. Johannes Ockeghem apparently composed Prenez sur moi, an ingenious puzzle canon, in the 1450s or 1460s, and it makes an appearance with others of his chansons in several central French chansonniers of the time. However, starting with a posthumous publication by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1504, Prenez sur moi began its second life as an intellectual curiosity. This piece, with a (now-lost) thirty-six-voice motet and the esoteric Missa cuiusvis toni and Missa Prolationem, provided the basis for Ockeghem's reputation in the sixteenth century -- a reputation, interestingly, based more on his perceived intellectual prowess than on the purely aural qualities of his music. Rampant quotation of these pieces by sixteenth-century theorists has largely cemented the same (incomplete) image of Ockeghem even today. However, among the reams of analysis produced on this chanson, some appreciation for "elegance" and simplicity finally has taken hold.In the earliest manuscript source for the piece, the Copenhagen Chansonnier, Prenez sur moi is presented as a single line of music. The text, a rondeau cinquain (one of the fixed forms, with a five-line refrain), speaks of the bliss -- and pain -- of Love. The hortatory first line of the refrain may be read both in the surface, erotic sense, and as a clue to the realization of the musical setting: a strict three-in-one canon. The elegance of the manuscript's notation gives the necessary information for realizing this canon only by this clue, and by the key signature. Six flats and sharps (in three pairs, one for each voice) tell each of the three singers where to locate their first note by reference to solmization symbols. The first voice, for instance, is told his note has a fa (indicated by a flat sign) two notes above, and a fa two notes below, which gives him his starting pitch of A; the other two voices enter on pitches a fourth and a seventh above, respectively.
The renowned theorist Heinrich Glareanus, writing in 1547, called this piece a "Catholicon," or universal piece, and comparing it to Ockeghem's Missa cuiusvis toni (Mass to be sung in any mode). This has led to much misguided speculation about rendering Prenez sur moi in different keys. However, musicologist David Fallows has instead called the chanson a "tonal pun"-- he notes that the universal aspect of the piece is that the three voices sing the very same melody in different modes. In other words, each individual singer proceeds in a different key simultaneously, but in the one proper solution to the canon, this individualistic "taking example" from one another yields a most pleasant-indeed elegant-sounding concord.
~ All Music Guide
