LP Adriano 3

Description

That Adriaen Willaert was already a composer of distinction even before he became Kapellmeister at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice is proven by the fact that another second mass by his hand was recorded in a Manuscript (a large choir book illuminated with calligraphy) produced for the illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap van s’Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands (you will find the first mass from this manuscript, Missa sex vocum super ‘Benedicta’ on the LP Adriano 2).
The title side of this mass does not mention a name, only the composer, Adrianus Willart.
It was catalogued as a Missa sine nomine, a Mass without a name.

It is believed to have been composed between 1522 and 1527, during the time Willaert was a member of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este’s music chapel at Ferrara in Italy.
What is striking at first glance in this composition is that one of the tenor voices sings a cantus firmus (a ‘given, fixed, basic voice’ as the foundation of each part of the mass, to which the other voices are added) that consists of the same 13 notes each time: mi ut mi sol mi ut fa mi fa mi re re mi.
Musicologist Joshua Rifkin, in an article he wrote about the mass, claims to have discovered a sogetto cavato delle parole with this note sequence. This is a composition technique, common for the time, in which the notes of a melody, in this case the cantus firmus, are derived from the vowels of certain words.
The notes used to tone are those of the guidonic hexacord, the series of the 6 notes ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la. For example, the word Maria (Ma-ri-a) is ‘translated’ into the notes la mi la.

According to Rifkin, the cantus firmus of the mass perfectly fits the words ‘Primus Ippolitus Cardinalis Estensis’ (Ippolito I, Cardinal d’Este). The mass is thus is almost certainly (through a hidden message in the music) an ode to the Cardinal of Ferrara who was its patron.
So this rediscovered Mass without a name by Adriaen Willaert, which we have now sung as a world premiere, can rightly bear the name Missa Ippolito.