Piety and Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Holland: The Choirbooks of St Peter's Church, Leiden by Eric Jas

Abstract

Reviewed by: Piety and Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Holland: The Choirbooks of St Peter's Church, Leiden by Eric Jas Michael Eisenberg Piety and Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Holland: The Choirbooks of St Peter's Church, Leiden. By Eric Jas. (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music.) Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018. [xvi, 414 p. ISBN 9781783273263 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781787443198 (e-book), price varies.] Tables, music examples, appendixes, list of compositions, composers, concordant manuscripts and printed editions, bibliography, index. This insightful study reconstructs the cultural life and activities of the Netherlandish cotidianes or zeven-getijdencolleges, ecclesiastical colleges dedicated to the realization of the Divine Office liturgy. Moving from archival sources to the musical record, Eric Jas explores the repertorial wealth found in six surviving manuscripts commissioned for the zeven-getijdencollege of St. Peter's Church of Leiden to understand how this repository sheds light on local music making and ritual. The author probes how the compilation of this testimony reveals particular aesthetic and liturgical tendencies and also addresses its unique contribution in expanding our knowledge of the Renaissance liturgical polyphonic music corpus and in verifying accurate attributions in concordant manuscripts. Now conserved in the archives of the Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken and at the Stedelijk Museum "De Lakenhal," the Leiden manuscripts first appeared in digitized format in 2010, in conjunction with a five-year recording project, described at https://www.erfgoedleiden.nl/schatkamer/koorboeken-pieterskerk/bladeren-in-koorboeken (accessed 24 June 2020). Peter De Groot and the Egidius Kwartet have made this repertoire available in its entirety in the complete recorded cycle on compact disc (De Leidse Koorboeken, vols. 1–6, Etcetera Records KTC 1410–15 [2010–15], CD). While this book's focus revolves around this invaluable and rare musical patrimony, its general consideration of music making in community also proves of deep interest. Indeed, in addition to examining the norms and [End Page 294] daily responsibilities of members of the zeven-getijdencollege communities at large, Jas also documents what might be construed as typical behavior, activities, and protocols for a Netherlandish music scribe operating in the sixteenth century in the employ of disparate ecclesiastical institutions. All these varied aspects combine to yield a significant and stimulating reading on a specific subsection of Renaissance ecclesiastical musical life in the northern Low Countries. The opening chapter surveys the history and role of the zevengetijdencolleges in Holland and offers a detailed account of twenty-eight individual instantiations in cities including Rotterdam, the Hague, Amsterdam, and Haar lem, but also representing smaller communities like Rosendaal and Medemblik. Prior to these individual case studies, Jas begins with an indepth examination of the zevengetijdencolleges' historical institution, organization, and daily life, drawing information from an array of existing archival sources, including transcriptions and translations (transmitted in appendix 1) of often amusing complaints about participating singers and their choirmasters. The laundry list of infractions includes showing up late, drinking on the job, chatting during the liturgy, and unbefitting fraternization. Often foundation letters, correspondence, and contracts reference how both singers and sancmeesters (nonsinging administrative officials) occasionally flouted their duties and neglected fulfilling expectations for appropriate professional conduct. Repudiations of quarreling or improper attire, remonstrances against singing poorly and failing to respond with the timely "amen," and injunctions to arriving late and leaving early to and from service all allude to the type of abuses that councilmen lending oversight to the colleges might encounter, and these same documentary sources often describe specific penalties to be dispensed for such infringements, albeit not always necessarily enforced (appendix 1, pp. 198–205 et passim). Rather than investigating the performance of the liturgical hours of the Divine Office solely in terms of their function as a devotional practice, this enlightening monograph also elucidates the pragmatic and pivotal role this liturgy played in daily community life throughout the Low Countries from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries through an exhaustive treatment of data on collegiate churches flourishing in the northern Low Countries and particularly Holland. This role seems to have both lent prestige to local civic identity and also offered meaningful service to prominent community members through the access it availed to regular singing of Masses for the dead, performance for civic celebrations, and so on...