Jacopo de' Barbari, "Plan of Venice'', 1500 (Venice, Correr Museum)

Nicolas Gombert's First Book of Four-Voice Motets:

Anthology or Apologia?

Alan Lewis

Of the many musicians associated with the court of Charles V across his
long reign, none figures more prominently in the broader history of music
than Nicolas Gombert, recorded as a singer with the court chapel from
1526, and as its maistre des enfam from 1529 to about 1538. Gombert's
music epitomizes - and in large measure shaped - the direction of compo-
sitional style in the generation between Josquin and Palestrina, in the 1530s,
40s, and 50s. Only a handful of his surviving works are explicitly associ-
ated with the imperial court - one motet (Dicite in magn,i) celebrates the
birth of Philip II, another (Felix Austriae domus) was composed in honor of
the coronation of Ferdinand I as king of the Romans, and a third ( Qui colis
Ausoniam) commemorates a treaty between the pope and the emperor in
1533; another piece surviving only as a lute work incorporates the imper-
ial motto, 'Plus ultra', But his association with the court brought honour
both to the composer and to his patron, to judge from its emphasis on the
title page of prints of the composer's music. 1

Gombert's place in history was in some measure acknowledged by Claudio

Monteverdi's choice of Gombert's six-voice motet, In illo tempore loquente
jesu as the model for the parody Mass Monteverdi published as the stile
antico counter-weight to his stile nuovo Vespers collection of 1610, half a
century after the composer's death. Much as Palestrina's music has been
treated by scholars as emblematic of late-sixteenth-century polyphony,
Monteverdi's choice of Gombert's motet for his 1610 Mass can be seen as
his identification of the imperial composer's style as the stylistic archetype
of the previous generation. Gombert's prominence on the musical land-
scape was in no doubt to commentators of his own time, who saw in him a
figure of central importance. One of the most enthusiastic of these reports

1 On the title page of Gombert's first book of motets for four voices, published in Venice
by Scotto in 1539, it is Gombert's name, co be sure, that is most prominent, but the
name of his master appears as well, in the third line: GOMBERT! EXCELLENTIS I
SIMI ET INVENTIONE IN HAC ARTE I FACILE PRINCIPIS CHOR! CAROLI
QUINT! IMPERA- I toris Magistri .. .
48 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

comes from the German theorist Hermann Finck. In his Practica musica
(Wittenberg, 1556), Finck recalls the musical currents and composers of
the generations preceding his own, before going on to cite Gombert as the
leading composer of modern times:
Indeed, in our time there are new inventors {or innovators}, among whom it is
Nicolaus Gombert, ]osquin's disciple ofblessed memory, who has shown all musi-
cians the way, indeed the narrow path toward subtlety and imitations that have
to be searched out, and who is the author of music manifestly different from the
above [the preceding discussion of earlier composers}. For he shuns rests, and his
composition is fall of concordances in general, and of imitations in particular. 2
An even more telling index of the esteem in which Gombert was held by
his contemporaries is the degree to which his works were made available to
the musical public of his day. This dissemination came in several forms:
the inclusion of his works - masses and chansons, as well as the motets that
constitute· most of his musical output - in many manuscript and printed
anthologies from across Europe over several decades; the intabulation of his
works by numerous instrumentalists and editors, again widespread in date
and locale; and above all the printing (and reprinting) by the Venetian
printers Girolamo Scotto and Antonio Gardano of several collections
wholly devoted to his motets in the years from 1539 to 1552. 3

2 "Nostro vero tempore novi sunt inventores, in quibus est Nicolaus Gombert, Iosquini piae
memoriae discipulus, qui omnibus Musicis ostendit viam, imo semitam ad quaerendas fugas ac
subtilitatem, ac est author Musices plane diversae a superiori. Is enim vitat pausas, et illius
compositio est plena cum concordantiarum tum fugarum. " Hermann Finck, Practica musica
(Wittenburg, 1556), p. Aii.
The principal treatment of Gombert in the scholarly literature is by Joseph Schmidt-
Garg, Nicolas Gombert, Kapellmeister Kaiser Karls V: Leben und "Werk (1938; rpt. Tutzing,
1971); Schmidt-Garg also edited Gombert's music for the Corpus Memurabilis Musicae,
Series 6. Both Schmidt-Garg and George Nugent, who wrote the article on Gombert
in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musiciam, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980),
vol. 7, pp. 512-16, understood Finck to describe Gombert as a "pupil of]osquin of blessed
memory''. Since the passage in question follows directly on a distinctly past-tense reference
to Josquin, "Floruit tune etiam ]osquinus de Pratis'; I think the phrase describing Gombert
makes better sense as an acknowledgment of Gombert's own more recent (if as yet
undocumented) demise. The first unambiguous notice of Gombert's death comes in
1566, when Ludovico Guicciardini includes Gombert in a list of great composers, all of
whom he remarks are dead; this has provided a terminal date for the composer's life ever
since Schmidt-Garg's work
3 Between 1539 and 1552, the presses of Scotto and Gardano produced a total of four

·different books of Gombert's motets, two each in four and five voices, plus a volume of
six-voice motets in which his works constitute the vast majority. During the same period,
these printers brought out only one book of motets in four voices, and one in five voices,
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'$ FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 49

Gombert's name disappears without comment from the imperial chapel

rolls at the end of the 1530s - roughly the time that the first collected
editions of his motets appeared in Venice. The course of his career over the
next decade or more was for many years unknown by modern scholars,
though he was known ultimately to have retired to Tournai, where he had
been enrolled as a canon since 1534. 4 His absence from the imperial chapel
was finally explained with Clement Miller's discovery of references to the
composer in the works of the humanist author Jerome Cardan. Two of
Cardan's treatises, De utilitate ex adversis capienda (Basel, 1561), and De
tranquillitate (1576), appeal to the example of Gombert's life. According to
Cardan's accounts, the composer was condemned to the galleys ("damnatus ad
triremes") for ravishing a boy in imperial service ("stupro pueri principalis").
Cardan clearly thought the punishment to have been beneficial:
The courage of Nicolas Gombert is to be commended no less than his good
fortune. For after he had been condemned to the triremes, while in chains
[lit: with chained foot} he composed those swan songs with which he earned
not only his pardon by the emperor, patron of all illustrious men, but also
received a priest's benefice, so that he spent the remainder of his life in tran-
quillity. Gombert's penalty was not a hard one, for he endured a punishment
he deserved. 5
This account provides useful information on several counts. First, it gives
an explanation of the end of documentary references to Gombert from the
imperial court. Though Cardan mentions no dates, the punishment must

by Jacquet of Mantua, though these books, like Gombert's, did run to several editions,
and a second book for five voices appeared later, in 1565. The third prominent composer
of the generation, Adrian Willaert, was represented by two books for four, and one book
each in five and six voices, plus the monumental compendium, Musica nova, in 1559. On
the work of Gardano, see Mary S. Lewis, Antonio Gardano: Venetian Music Printer 1538-
1569 (New York, 1988); on Scotto's work, see Jane A. Bernstein, Music Printing in
Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press, 1539-1572 (New York, 1998).
Of the 23 motets in Gomberr's First Book of Motets for Four Voices, for example, six can
be found in no other surviving sources; the remainder appear in from one to ten other
sources, not counting intabulations. Next to the dizzying array of concordances presented
by, for example, Arcadelt's First Book of Madrigals, which saw over 50 printed editions
alone, or Willaert's Paternoster, which appears in over twenty sources, this distribution is
relatively narrow, but it is comparable to that of the majority of Jacquet's and Willaert's
motets; it is a reasonable sign of the high esteem in which the pieces were held - remem-
bering that assessments of popularity based on dissemination can only represent whatever
fraction of the repertory has survived.
4 Schmidt-Garg, Nicolas Gombert, pp. 104-9.
5 Clement A. Miller, "Jerome Cardan on Gombert, Phinot, and Carpentras," The Musical
Quarterly 58 (1972), 413.
50 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

have been imposed between 1538 and 1540, as Gombert's name appears in
a chapel document of the former year, and is absent from one of the latter. 6
An autograph letter from Gombert that accompanied a gift of a motet
(tide unspecified) to Ferrante Gonzaga has survived, dated 1547. Miller
suggests that Gonzaga might well have been the source of Cardan's infor-
mation about Gombert's life; he was not only acquainted with the com-
poser, but was also a friend of Charles V, and in both of these connections
he could have been a conduit for information about Gombert's punish-
ment and pardon to his close associate, Cardan, who dedicated to him the
first edition of an earlier treatise, De subtilitate (1550).7

Cardan's account is not necessarily accurate in all particulars; his assertion

that Gombert "received a priest's benefice" as a reward for certain "swan
songs", at least, is not quite correct, for he was already a canon of Tournai
five years before his disappearance from the Chapel rolls. But the reference
to these "swan songs", by which Cardan asserts that Gombert also earned
the emperor's pardon, is intriguing; even if Cardan's account cannot be
taken literally in all particulars, it is tempting to try to guess what these
"swan songs" might have been. Might some of the composer's works actu-
ally have been composed or compiled specifically to placate the emperor?
And might the attempt have been successful?

Miller hypothesises that Cardan's reference is to the set of eight Magnificats

uniquely preserved in a presentation manuscript dated 1552. 8 To be sure,
the text of the Magnificat, with its emphasis on the mercy of God on the
"lowliness of his handmaid", and on "his servant Israel" would be well
calculated for such an offering. On the other hand, the composer's 1547
letter to Ferrante Gonzaga argues against the Magnificat manuscript being
identified with those "swan songs'', as its date demonstrates that Gombert
had his freedom at least five years before the Madrid manuscript was
compiled. I want to propose an alternative hypothesis: that Gombert's
First Book ofMotets for Four Voices, first published in 1539, at roughly the
same time as Gombert's punishment began, was designed as a propitiatory
gesture by its first printer, if not by Gombert himself. The date of the
collection, coinciding so neatly with Gombert's disappearance from the
imperial records, makes this hypothesis convenient; the contents of the
Book make it plausible.

6
See Schmidt-Garg, Nicolas Gombert, p. 74.
7 Miller, "Jerome Cardan," pp. 414-15.
8 The manuscript is in Madrid's Biblioteca Nacional, Seccion de Mtisica, MS M. 2433.
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'S FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 51

Gombert's First Book is almost evenly divided between new works and
pieces that had been in circulation for some years. The earliest datable
work is the motet in honor of the birth of Philip II, who was born in May,
1527; several of the pieces in the collection appeared in Jacques Moderne's
anthologies of 1532, the Motetti de! Fiore; others appeared, in smaller
numbers in other anthologies of the 1530s. In all, just over half of the
23 motets in the 1539 edition had already been printed elsewhere by the
time the collected edition appeared.
Once thus collected, this repertory remained stable to a degree unusual
among the Venetian printers at this time, through four successive editions
across more than a decade. When Gardano issued his edition of the book
in 1541, he included exactly the same pieces Scotto had published two
years earlier, albeit with some changes in order. Scotto's second edition, also
in 1541, dropped nine of the original 23 pieces, replacing them with ten
motets by other composers (four by Morales, two each by Scotto and lvo,
and one each by Escobedo and Jacquet) creating a book more nearly an
anthology than a single-composer collection - but one whose title still
proclaimed it to be Gombert's First Book and one in which all the pieces
still by Gombert were retained from the earlier edition of the collection.
When, ten years later, Gardano brought out his second edition of the book,
it contained only nineteen motets (one reattributed to a composer other
than Gombert, and another headed '1ncerto Autore") - but all of those
nineteen were drawn from the 1539 collection.
This situation presents a significant contrast with the contemporaneous
editions of Jacquet's and Willaert's motets. In the four editions of Jacquet's
First Book a4, for example - three by Scotto and one by Gardano - there is
a common core of eleven motets, but each printer adapts the contents of
the first edition substantially for subsequent editions, deleting anywhere
from eight to a dozen pieces and substituting a variety of other motets by
the same composer to fill out the collection. 9
What is striking here is that no additional motets by Gombert himself were
ever incorporated in the collection. That the composition of Gombert's
First Book remained so relatively stable can hardly reflect difficulty in
obtaining further pieces by the composer. Even though he was never more
than a sojourner in Italy, enough of his other motets in four voices were
available even by 1541 for the compilation of a Second Book a4 (which saw
9 This practice of altering the contents of a collection through subsequent editions is
described in general in Mary S. Lewis, Antonio Gardano, 1, p. 461. Anne-Marie Bautier-
Tegnier discusses the situation with regard to Jacquet specifically in "Jachet de Mantoue,"
Revue Beige de Musicologie 6 (1952), pp. 101-19.
52 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

only a single edition each from Scotto and Gardano, printed in 1541 and
1542, respectively) . I would suggest that this is because the repertory of
the First Book carries an underlying message in the texts of its contents, a
message by which the composer, or his printer, or both, hoped to secure
his freedom.
If the relative stability of the contents of Gombert's First Book is striking,
so is the variation in the order of these contents from one edition to
another. Indeed, each of the four editions of Gombert's First Book seems at
first glance to have a slightly different order. 10 In Gardano's 1541 editon,
in which all the contents were drawn directly from the first edition, the
ordering is almost completely different, although the opening pair of pieces
remains the same. 11 Scotto's 1541 edition, incorporating ten motets by
various other composers in place of nine of Gombert's pieces, actually
presents nearly all the pieces retained from the first edition in the order
in which they originally appeared. Gardano's 15 51 edition, by contrast,
substantially smaller than the earlier editions, once again presents the
pieces retained from the earlier editions in yet another ordering.
Like most other collections of its time, Gombert's First Book is something
of a miscellany from a textual point of view; there is no overt sign that the
pieces are ordered by textual topic. Table 1 lists the contents of the First
Book, together with a precis of textual content for each piece. As this table
shows, the texts range from psalms (both whole and fragmentary) and other
Biblical texts to some quasi-liturgical texts (responsories and antiphons) to
Marian devotions, penitential prayers, and prayers for the dead; a lone piece,
Dicite in magni, is a secular motet for a state occasion. Perhaps predictably,
given the piety of the time, Marian devotions make up the largest category.
Seven texts are unambiguously addressed to the Virgin, an eighth (Quae est
ista) is a text usually associated liturgically with Feasts of the Virgin, and a
ninth, Quam pulchra es, comes from the Song of Songs, the body of love

10
During the 1540s both these printers and their northern colleagues began to experiment
with ordering their publications according to evolving understandings of polyphonic
mode, or what Harold Powers has termed "tonal type", a combination of factors inclu-
ding vocal ranges (indicated by cleffing), tonal system or transposition (i.e. natural or flat),
and final. See "Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony," journal of
the American Musicological Society 24 (1981), pp.428-70. But in the case of none of the
successive editions of Gombert's First Book a4, do considerations of mode or tonal type
seem persuasively to govern the ordering of the collection.
11
This kind of variation in order or contents did not always happen when the two Venetian
printers brought out competing (or complementary?) editions of a given collection in
close succession. Gardano's 1542 printing of Gombert's Second Book a4, for example,
exactly follows the order of Scotto's 1541 edition throughout.
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'S FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 53

poetry readily allegorized in Marian or more broadly Christian terms. There

is no evidence of any effort to group these Marian pieces together, even
when they share attributes of tonal type. Nor are the two motets in honour
of John the Baptist (Inter natos and Fuit homo) adjacent in either of the two
editions in which both appear. (The first edition from each printer includes
both pieces; in the two remaining editions, one or both were omitted).

Table I: Contents of Gombert's First Book a4

(Scotto's 1539 edition)

1 Domine, pater Plea for deliverance from sins of the flesh

2 Miserere pie Jesu
II. Paree eis Domine
3 Venite filii
II. Servite Domino
4 Dicite in magni
II : Laeta dies
5 Ecce nunc tempus
6 0 gloriosa Dei genicrix
II: Quae est isra
7 Ave regina
8 Virgo prudentissima
9 Salvum me fac
II: Propter miseriam
10 Duo rogavi te Domine
11 Levavi oculos meos
II: Dominus custodit re
12 Saluto re sancta virgo
II: Subvenias mihi
13 Quae est isra
II: Et sicut dies
14 0 gloriosa Domina
15 Super flumina
16 Inter natos
17 Quam pulchra es
18 Ave sanctissima Maria
19 Fuit homo
II: Hie praecursor
20 Aspice Domine
II: Muro tuo
21 Dignare me
II: 0 Regina poli
22 Fidelium Deus
23 Domine, si tu es
II: Cumque vidisset
Plea for mercy and pardon for all those who have no
other intercessors
Psalm: "Come, children, and I will teach you the fear
of the Lord"; "happy are they who trust in him"
Imperial motet celebrating the birth of Philip II
From 2 Corinthians: "Now is the acceptable time"
Marian: prayer for the Virgin's intercession
Marian: prayer to be remembered "in all sadness"
Marian: Generic praise of Virgin
Psalm 11/12: prayer for deliverance, especially from false
accusations
Prayer for deliverance from lies, and for provision for
needs
Psalm of deliverance (120/121): "From where is my help
to come? From the Lord"
Marian: prayer for deliverance from sin: "let me not
perish in my sin, but help in my need"
Marian: Generic praise of Virgin
Marian: prayer for the Virgin's intercession
Psalm of exile (138/139): "By the waters of Babylon"
John the Baptist text
Text from the Song of Songs
Marian: praise and prayer for deliverance from evil
John the Baptist text (responsory form)
Possibly an apologetic for the imperial Sack of Rome in
1527; responsory form
Marian: "Make me worthy; give me victory over my
enemies; "I commend myself to you"
Prayer for pardon for the faithful departed
Biblical; quasi-responsory; prayer for rescue from the sea
54 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

But on closer inspection a different picture comes into focus; out of the
seeming miscellany of the texts some striking themes emerge. Pleas for
deliverance - from one's own sin, from external evils, from falsehoods, and
finally from sea and storm - make up a large proportion of the collection.
Leavening these themes are pieces reflecting Gombert's service to the impe-
rial court - as if a reminder of faithful service. 12 It seems entirely possible
that the selection of pieces included in the first edition of the collection,
and even some aspects of their ordering, do reflect a plan related to the sad
circumstances of the composer's own life. While a few of the texts (partic-
ularly numbers 8, 13, 16, 17, and 19 - devotions to the Virgin and to John
the Baptist, and a text from the Song of Songs) have little or no relation
to this constellation of pleas, the rhetorical force of the ordering of the
other pieces, particularly as the collection begins, is considerable: the
progression of texts seems almost to follow the logic of an argument. Since .
the argument is carried out through the Biblical and devotional texts of the
composer's works, its rhetorical means are limited, but it does make its
point repeatedly. 13
Each of the four editions of Gombert's First Book begins with the same pair
of motets, Domine, pater et Deus vitae meae and Miserere pie Jesu. These
two both share a tonal type (their combination of clefs, signature, and
final) otherwise not found in the collection; perhaps that was the reason
for their consistent position. But in a context of widely variable ordering
from one edition to another, this seems slightly unlikely; the dates of the
early editions were, in any case, on the early end for demonstrable modal
ordering in Venetian collections. Both of these are substantial and well-
crafted pieces, and could have justified pride of place in the Book on their
own strength. But alongside musical considerations, I would like to suggest
that it may have been the texts of these motets that led the printers to give
them priority of position again and again. 14 The opening text is focussed
on - indeed, preoccupied with - sins of a particularly carnal sort:
12
Nos. 4 and 20 are Dicite in magni (for the birth of Philip II) and Aspice domine, respec-
tively; I have argued that Aspice domine can be read as a musical apologia for the Sack of
Rome by imperial soldiers in 1527; see Alan Lewis, ibidem. It may be only coincidence
that these two works are placed symmetrically - that is, they are the fourth piece from
the beginning and the fourth piece from the end of the collection.
13 That Josquin's Memor esto verbum servo tui makes use of a Biblical text seems not to have
diminished its effectiveness as a request for an overdue commission.
14 Although considerable scholarly attention has gone to the ordering of collections of
polyphony based on musical considerations such as voice combinations and modal order,
little has been paid to the possible textual motivations for scribes' and publishers' deci-
sions about order. That Amico selected Mouton's Per lignum salvi facti sumus as the
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'$ FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 55

Domine pater et Deus vitae meae extollentiam oculorum meorum ne dederis

mihi et omne desiderium pravum averte a me. Aufor a me veneris concupiscen-
tias et concubitus concupiscentiae ne apprehendant me et animae irreverenti et
ejfrunito ne tradas me.

("Lord, Father and God of my life, do not give me lifting up of my eyes,

and turn away from me every depraved desire. Take from me the desire of
love, and let not desires of copulation take hold of me, and do not hand me
over to an irreverent and unbridled spirit.") 15
The second of the pair, Miserere pie ]esu is a plea for divine mercy on the
souls of those who have no other intercessors, that they might be delivered
from punishment for their sins:
Miserere pie ]esu super acerbissimam passionem tuam et gloriosam resurrectionem
tuam, miserere animabus illis, quae apud te singulares non habent intercessores, et
quibus non est ul/,a conso/,atio neque spes ul/,a in tormentis, nisi quod ad imaginem
tuam creatae sunt, et sacra fide insigniti sunt.
(2a pars) Paree eis Domine, et defonde plasma tuum in eis, et ne des gloriam
nominis tui, deprecamus alteri: opera manuum tuarum ne despicias, sed porrige
eis manum dexteram tuam, et Libera eas de angustiis et poenis inforni, et perducas
ad consortium supernorum civium propter nomen sanctum tuum.

("Have mercy, holy Jesus, beyond your most bitter passion and your glorious
resurrection; have mercy on the souls of those who, alone before you, do not
have intercessors, and for whom there is no consolation, and no other hope
in their torment than that they have been created in your image, and are
signed by holy faith.
(2nd part) Spare them, Lord, and let your rising voice defend them, and do
not, we pray, give the glory of your name to another. Do not despise the
works of your hands, but stretch out your right hand to them, and set them
free from anguish and the pains of Hell, and lead them into the fellowship
of the citizens above, for the sake of your holy name.")

That such texts should open the first printed collection of Gombert's motets,
and then consistently retain this position in three subsequent printings,

opening piece in his first collection (1521-3) may have been for a purely practical
reason: it is a short piece, which allows Josqi,iin's Miserere mei Deus also to begin on the
same page. But it may equally well have been a textual pun: the pioneer of printing from
carved wooden blocks would surely have been at least aware of the literal meaning of the
liturgical words: "By the wood we are saved".
IS The text set by Gombert is even slightly more lurid in its specificity than its scriptural
source, Ecclesiasticus 23:4-6. Gomberr's version of the phrase "et omne desiderium" adds
the word "pravum" (depraved), not present in the Biblical text.
56 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

becomes noteworthy given the fairly obvious relevance of these two poly-
phonic prayers to the composer's own situation at the very time they were
first being printed. To judge from the biographical testimony of Cardan,
release from carnal desires, and liberation from the torments of punishment
were both very much live issues for the composer. 16
These opening prayers give way to a psalm-motet proclaiming the dual
intention of teaching children the fear of the Lord, and placing confidence
in God. (This surely has particular resonance in the light of the composer's
employment as maistre des enfans.) The motet on the birth of Philip II
follows, as if to recall Gombert's loyal service to his master. Then comes a
motet drawn from 2 Corinthians, a text used liturgically on Ash Wednesday:
Now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation. As servants of God we
have commended ourselves in every way, in much patience, in sleepless nights, in
frequent prayers, in many hardships, and genuine love.
Enough, the rhetoric seems to cry; now is the time for pardon.
After two prayers to the Virgin for her intercession and care, and a third more
general piece of Marian devotion, come two texts (nos. 9 and 10) expressly
asking for deliverance from false accusations and lies. (The first of these,
Salvum me foe, is a long setting of Psalm 11/12, a text different from the
well-known motet of the same incipit by Jacquet, based on Psalm 68/69.)
A setting of the whole of Psalm 120/121, "I lift up my eyes to the hills"

16 I do not mean to suggest, on this evidence, that this is in any sense "confessional" music.
It is not clear that the composer himself took a personal interest in these texts, however
apt they may seem in hindsight to have been to his life - or indeed that the choice of
text necessarily belonged to the composer in the first place. The text of Domine pater
may have had some special function in the devotional environment of the imperial court
or its Chapel; two of Gomberr's musical colleagues in the Chapel, Thomas Crecquillon
and Cornelius Carris, both wrote motets on texts very close to that of Gomberr's motet,
and Georg Frenner, a composer in the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty in the
1550s and 60s, composed a Domine pater in which concern fleshly lust is raised to an
even higher pitch. The religious fervour of Charles V, which eventually culminated in his
abdication of the throne and retirement to the monastary of San Jeronimo at Yuste,
is left in no doubt by his biographers, although there is no particular emphasis on fleshly
sins in that fervour. It is easy to imagine his favourite devotional texts being set poly-
phonically by successive members of his musical entourage, much as his motto, Plus
ultra, was turned into a musical work by Gombert himself The text of Domine pater
might even have had old family resonances for Charles: one version of this very passage
from Ecclesiasticus appears as a suffrage in the surviving fragments of a Book of Hours
made for a distant ancestor, Blanche of Burgundy, in the second quarter of the four-
teenth century. (Her prayer book is now in the Beinecke Library at Yale University
(MS. 390) . Domine pater appears on fol. 25, reproduced in Roger S. Wieck, Time
Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New York, 1988), p. 29, fig. 1.
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'S FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 57

follows, bearing a message of consolation and hope in the face of trouble.

Of the remaining dozen pieces, all but four echo the themes of deliverance,
pardon, or imperial service sounded so far, none more eloquently than the
two final ones. Fidelium Deus omnium is a prayer for the dead:
Fidelium Deus omnium, conditor et redemptor animabus omnium fidelium
defunctorum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum: ut indulgentiam, quam
semper optaverunt, piis supplicationibus consequantur.
("God, creator and redeemer of all the faithful, grant remission of all sins to
the souls of all the faithful dead, that they may perceive the kindness for
which they have always hoped by their pious prayers.")
Domine si tu es, drawn from the story of Peter trying to walk to Jesus across
the water, is built around a dramatic cry for deliverance from a watery death:
Domine, si tu es, jube me venire ad te super aquas. Et extendens manum appre-
hendit eum: et dixit Jesus: Modicae fidei, quare dubitasti?
(2a pars) Cumque vidisset ventum validum venientem, timuit: et cum coepisset
mergi, clamavit: Domine, salvum me foe. Et extendens manum apprehendit
eum: et dixit Jesus: Modicae fidei, quare dubitasti?
("Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you over the waters. And stretching out
his hand he caught hold of him, and Jesus said, 'You of little faith, why do
you doubt?'
(2nd part) When he saw the strong wind coming on, he was afraid, and as he
began to sink, he cried out, 'Lord, save me' . And stretching out his hand he
caught hold of him, and Jesus said, 'You of little faith, why do you doubt?'")
This piece, with its dramatic (and, for Gombert, quite uncharacteristic)
homophonic declamation for the words, Et dixit Jesus in both partes, and
the words timuit and clamavit: Domine, sa/vum me Jae in the secunda pars,
makes a vivid closing gesture for the book, on both musical and textual
grounds; it is a piece that takes on a particularly powerful meaning against
the background of its composer's exile on the high seas. 17

Gombert cannot have composed all the works comprising his First Book in
response to his own predicament - indeed, by the time that predicament
arose, it would have been too late, especially since a number of the works

17 I owe thanks to Dr. Michele Fromson for first suggesting the possible interpretation of
this text. An analysis of this piece was the focus of Imogene Horsley, "Fugue and Mode
in 16th-century Vocal Polyphony," in Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A
Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan LaRue (New York, 1966), pp. 406-22; Horsley
makes no reference to Gombert's extraordinary interruptions of the polyphonic texture
in the service of the text.
58 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

in the book had been in circulation since early in the 1530s. But it seems
entirely possible that Scotto, knowing of the composer's plight, might have
assembled the collection as a kind of musical appeal in the composer's
behalf
This seems all the more plausible when one considers Scotto's second edi-
tion of this same book, printed in 1541. As I noted earlier, this edition is
marked by several omissions from the first edition, and an even greater
number of additions of pieces by other composers. Nearly all the works
retained from the 1539 edition appear in the same order they did there,
as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Contents of Gombert's First Book a4 (Scotto's 1541 edition)

Domine, pater unchanged

2 Miserere pie Jesu unchanged
3 Veni te filii unchanged
4 Morales: Inclina, Domine, aurem Psalm 85/86 (complete): a prayer for mercy
II. In die tribulationis and deliverance in time of trouble.
III. Confitebor tibi
5 Scotto In illo tempore
6 0 gloriosa Dei genitrix unchanged
7 Ave regina unchanged
8 Virgo prudentissima unchanged
9 Salvum me fac unchanged
I 0 Morales Sancta et immaculata Familiar Marian text
II: Benedicta tu
11 Morales Sancte Antoni Familiar responsory for Feast of Sr Anthony
II: Sancte Antoni gemma
12 Morales Antequam comedam Prayer for deliverance from God's indignation
13 0 gloriosa Domina oldNo. 14
14 Inter natos oldNo. 16
15 Quam pulchra es old No. 11
16 Ave sanctissima Maria old No. 18
17 Scotto Peccata mea domine
II: Quoniam iniquitatem
18 Saluto te sancta virgo relocated: old No. 12
II: Subvenias mihi
19 Ivo Paree mihi domini Prayer for forgiveness
II: Peccavi, quid faciam
20 Ivo (?) Ego infelix peccator Prayer for forgiveness
21 Jacquet Nos pueri tibi Moret originally for Francesco Gonzaga
II: Rogamus deum optimum
22 Escobedo Exurge quare obdormis Psalm-fragment; plea for protection
II: Quoniam humilita est
23 Levavi oculos meos relocated: old No. 11
24 Domine, si tu es unchanged
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'S FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 59

Nor are Gombert's works alone of interest. Indeed, the particular works
chosen to fill out the volume - and the composers who provided them -
are in some cases highly suggestive. Two of the composers, Morales and
Escobedo ("Scobedo" in the print) are from Spain, where Charles V and
his court spent much of their time. 18 Both of the pieces by Ivo are on texts
concerned with sin and pardon; that by Jacquet deals with the offering of
children, and that by Escobedo is, again, a plea for help: 'do not reject us
for ever'. And although two of Morales' works (Sancta et immaculata and
Sancte Antoni) are of a purely devotional nature, the others can hardly be
read as innocently. lnclina, Domine is a very substantial work. Its three
partes present the complete text of Psalm 85/86, an extended prayer for
mercy, which, at 17 verses, is by some margin the longest in the collection.
Morales' fourth contribution, Antequam comedam suspiro, has a more con-
cise, but in its turn somewhat perplexing text; whatever its fine shades of
meaning, its burden is still very much to the point:
Antequam comedam suspiro et tanquam in undantes aquae, sic rugitus meus,
quia timor, quem timebam, evenit mihi, et quod verebar, accidit mJhi.
(2a pars) Nonne dissimulavi? Nonne quievit? Et venit super me indignatio tua,
Domine. Ecce, non est auxilium mihi in me, et necessaria quoque mei recesserunt
a me.

("I sigh before I feast, and as in the surging of waters, so I frown, because fear,
which I feared, follows me, and the thing from which I shrink happens to me.
(2nd part) Have I not hidden? Does it not rest? Moreover, your indignation
comes over me, Lord. Behold, there is no help for me in myself, and my
friends also keep away from me.")

It would be difficult for any four-line text to come much closer than to
expressing Gombert's personal situation in 1541. This can hardly be a
random substitution - particularly when Scotto takes care not simply to
drop the piece it replaces (Saluto te, sancta virgo Maria, a large and eloquent
Marian motet which also includes a plea for deliverance), but relocates that
piece to a later point in the book. The works omitted in Scotto's 1541 print
nearly all had merit under my hypothesis: Dicite in magni and Aspice domine
I read as reflecting Gombert's imperial service, Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile
as a rhetorical flourish underscoring the time for pardon; Duo rogavi te,

18
Morales had been in Rome since 1535, Escobedo arrived there the following year;
Morales had sung before the emperor at the entry of Charles V into Rome in 1536, and
had composed a motet (jubilate Deo, omnis terra, a6) celebrating a peace treaty between
Charles V and Francis I; he also composed a Mass based on Gomberr's motet, Arpice
domine, printed in 1544.
60 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

Domine and Dignare me, laudare te both include prayers for deliverance;
Super flumina babylonis, with its watery exile theme, would seem well suited
to a programmatic purpose of this sort; and Fidelium Deus omnium is, as I
have noted, a prayer for posthumous pardon. Of the motets omitted in the
1541 print, only Quae est ista!Et sicut dies seems truly irrelevant to the argu-
ment I think Scotto is trying to assemble. But nearly all of the pieces with
which Scotto replaces these - both the works by Ivo, the Escobedo motet,
and two of the items by Morales, in particular - make the point more
strongly yet. Even if it meant presenting part of the argument for forgive-
ness through the music of other composers, Scotto's adjustments to the First
Book in his second edition strengthen the underlying theme of transgression
and pardon - the very theme answered (eventually) by Gombert's release.

Scotto's first edition of 1539 is the only one of the four prints of the col-
lection to bear a dedication. In the customary flowery terms, the printer
offers the book to the Gran Marchese de! Vttsto. This was the tide of the
Spanish nobleman and general Alfonso d'Avalos (1502-1546), appointed
governor of Milan the previous year by Charles V. Alfonso, who remained
the imperial representative in Milan until his death, is better known to
music historians for his literary contributions than for his purely musical
enthusiasm, for he wrote the texts of two of the most famous madrigals
of the century, Arcadelt's II bianco e dolce cigno and Rore's Ancor che col
partire. 19 But, if Scotto's dedicatory prose is to believed, his appreciation
and advocacy of Gombert's music were decisive in Scotto's decision to
publish the First Book:
To the Great Marchese de! Vasto I {from] Geronimo Scotto. I It is a great oversight,
most Illustrious Prince, which seems to be my own, not to publish the Music and
compositions of Nicolas Gombert, knowing fall well the artifice, the invention,
and the harmony which are born of his truly Divine genius. But had the matter
not been resolved for me by your Excellency, great doubts would have been born
in me, because in bringi.ng such work forward one would become indebted to the
glory of the famous Gombert, coming into light only under its shadow ... .20

19
See Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, trans. Alexander Krappe, Roger Sessions, and
Oliver Strunk (3 vols.; Princeton, 1949), p. 186, p. 269, and pp. 403-4. D'Avalos' years
in Milan are chronicled in the Storia di Milano (Milan, 1953-56), vol. 9, passim.; his polit-
ical and strategic correspondence with Charles Vis available in Jacobo Stuart Fitz-James y
Falco, duque de Alba, Correspondencia de Carlos V con el Marques de! Vasto Gobernador
de! Milanesado (Anos 1540-42) (Madrid, 1926).
20
'llL GRAN MARCHESE DEL v,t!STO I Geronimo Scotto. I GRAN manchamento Illustrissimo
Principe mi pareua che douessi esser' il mio a non publicare la Musica, e le compositioni
 NICOLAS GOMBERT'S FIRST BOOK OF FOUR-VOICE MOTETS 61

Whatever the actual role played by Alfonso in Scotto's decision to publish

the collection, the dedication of a book of motets by the imperial maistre
des enfons to this creative aristocrat, in his new official capacity as the
emperor's lieutenant in Italy is clearly no accident. Just as that year's collec-
tions of Jacquet's four- · and five-voice motets are both dedicated to the
composer's employer, Ercole Cardinal Gonzaga of Mantua, the works of
Gombert, an imperial servant, were a well-chosen offering to another
statesman, the (relatively) local representative of the distant Habsburg
authority. And if my hypothesis about Scotto's design of the book as a plea
for imperial mercy on a disgraced composer is correct, the dedication to
Alfonso d'Avalos makes good sense: the book expressing the argument, if
argument it is, was dedicated to a man whose important imperial position
might work to the composer's advantage.

Might Gombert's First Book indeed have been assembled by Scotto as a

response to Gombert's punishment, perhaps with the hope of securing his
pardon? And if so, was the effort successful? We know from Cardan that
the composer owed his ultimate pardon and release to the "swan songs"
that he offe~ed to the emperor, composed, Cardan said, "with chained
foot". If Cardan is being literal, then he clearly cannot have meant the First
Book: enough of its contents were broadly distributed before Gombert's
disappearance from the chapel to rule out their composition after his
departure from the court, "with chained foot" or otherwise. A broader
reading of Cardan's expression, on the other hand, as reference to a collec-
tion that appeared during the time of the composer's punishment, may
indeed point to the First Book, a collection .that not only includes pieces
overtly composed for the imperial cause, but that also bears a title that
reflects well on the emperor, and a dedication to one of the emperor's prin-
cipal political servants. Even more persuasive are the musical and textual
contents of the book, with their repeated pleas for help, pardon, redemption,
and rescue - pleas all set, in the first edition of the book, to music by the
offending composer himself, and in the second Scotto edition set primarily
by Gombert, but echoed (and reinforced) by some of his leading musical
colleagues, and in particular two Spaniards whose works were not yet widely
known.

di Nicolo Gomberth: Conoscendo massimamente l'artificio, f'inuentione, & harmonia che

dal suo ueramente Diuino ingegno nasce. Ma grandissimo dubbio sarebbe nato in me, se ii
soggetto di uostra Eccellentia non me l'hauesse risoluto, perche hauendo d uenire fi1roa tal'
opera pemaua si togliessi il suo debito al/a gloria del fomoso Gomberth, non uenendo a luce
sotto l'ombra di quella. "
62 THE EMPIRE RESOUNDS

As an argument on behalf of its composer, Gombert's First Book presents a

compelling case. We already know that his freedom followed within a few
years of its publication, and that a near-contemporary with connections to
both the composer's imperial patron and to his post-pardon correspondent,
Ferrante Gonzaga, credits his music with having secured his release. In light
of this conjunction of evidence, it seems likely indeed that this collection is
that set of "swan songs" of which Cardan writes, and that, as an argument,
no less than as a collection of polyphony, the book was successful.