Throughout the Middle Ages, veneration of local martyrs and miracle workers continually increased, leading to the creation of location-specific liturgical services and music to celebrate these saints’ feast days. One such creation is Matthaeus Pipelare’s Missa de Sancto Livino. Pipelare drew from a large body of texts and liturgical chant unique to Ghent, ultimately weaving twenty plainsong melodies into his polyphonic mass. His methods of integration varied; while he seldom quoted these chants in their entirety, he typically quoted portions faithfully or modestly paraphrased them. His mass demonstrates that local traditions of liturgy and chant exerted influence upon sacred polyphonic compositions.

Examination of the relationship between Pipelare’s mass and its plainsong sources allows the discovery that Pierre de la Rue’s Missa de Sancto Job was modeled directly upon Pipelare’s Missa de Sancto Livino. La Rue’s treatment of Pipelare’s cantus firmi and melodic motives demonstrates that he was not familiar with the plainsong melodies in their original contexts, or, at the least, he used Pipelare’s mass as his source. La Rue’s mass therefore is another example of the widespread practice in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of finding inspiration for new polyphonic compositions in the materials of existing polyphonic works. Tables and schematic diagrams show the distribution of texts and melodies within the Missa de Sancto Livino and the Missa de Sancto Job.

Works: Matthaeus Pipelare: Missa de Sancto Livino (171, 177, 184-98); Pierre de la Rue: Missa de Sancto Job (199-213).

Sources: Matthaeus Pipelare: Missa de Sancto Livino (200-213).

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Amanda Jensen