You may remember this post of mine:
• Renaissance polyphony: the Franco-Flemish school.
This school of music flourished for two whole centuries, roughly from 1400 to 1600. Though I haven’t been posting about it lately, I continue to enjoy it.
Antoine Busnois (1430–1492) is one of the most famous composers in the second generation of the Franco-Flemish school. He’s almost up there with Johannes Ockeghem. And I just ran into a piece by him called In hydraulis. I really like it! But why did he call it that? You don’t hear many songs about hydraulics.
It turns out the lyrics are a description of Pythagorean music theory based on simple fractions and also a homage to his colleague Ockeghem: in 1467, when Busnois wrote this piece, he had recently joined Ockeghem working at the court of Burgundy. The first two words just happen to mention a ‘hydraulis’, which is an ancient kind of water organ.
According to Wikipedia,
The hydraulis is the name of a Greek instrument created by Ctesibius of Alexandria. The hydraulis has a reservoir of air which is inserted into a cistern of water. The air is pushed into the reservoir with hand pumps, and exits the reservoir as pressurized air to blow through the pipes. The reservoir is open on the bottom, allowing water to maintain the pressure on the air as the air supply fluctuates from either the pumps pushing more air in, or the pipes letting air out.
But why was Busnois writing a song about a hydraulis? Translated into English, the lyrics of In hydraulis start like this:
Once when Pythagoras was wondering
at the tones in water organs and the tonalities
of hammers, having followed with his eyes the surfaces
according to the inequalities of the weights,
he discovered the essence of music:
the proportions of epitritus and hemiola,
epogdous and duple, for they lead to
the harmony of fourth, fifth, and also
tone and octave, while they connect
the species of the monochord.
These lyrics are remarkably scholarly, and I’d like to know why. I had to look up some of these words, but it was worthwhile.
The ‘epitritus’ is a ratio of 4:3, which is called a ‘fourth’ in music. The ‘hemiola’ is a ratio of 3:2, which is a ‘fifth’. The ‘epogdous’ is a ratio of 9:8, or a ‘second’, also called an interval of a ‘tone’ since it’s approximately one step up the white keys on a piano. The ‘duple’ is obviously 2:1, or an octave. So Busnois is reviewing how some simple fractions give some of the most important intervals in music. And of course, we attribute this discovery to Pythagoras—though nobody really knows exactly what Pythagoras did.
The ‘monochord’ is a one-stringed instrument supposedly used by Pythagoras to study harmony. And there’s a popular but pretty clearly false legend that Pythagoras noticed these ratios by hitting some hammers in a blacksmith’s shop and comparing their weights! It just doesn’t work like that with hammers.
• Wikipedia, Pythagorean hammers.
The lyrics continue:
Ockeghem, you who sing before all
in the service of the King of the French,
Strengthen the practice of your generation,
examining these things on occasion in the
halls of the Duke of Burgundy in your fatherland.
Through me, Busnoys, unworthy musician
of the illustrious Count of Charolais,
may you be greeted for your merits as the
highest trope-uttering Cephas,
Farewell, true image of Orpheus.
I don’t know why he says farewell — to Ockeghem? Ockeghem hadn’t died. ‘Cephas’ is another name for the apostle Peter, ‘rock’ of the church, so Busnois seems to be saying that Ockeghem played a similar role in the Burgundian musical tradition (which is true).
Here’s a live version of In hydraulis by the group Blue Heron, with captions in Latin and English:
I know Blue Heron because they’re recording Ockeghem’s complete songs in honor of his 600th birthday. But the pungent leading-tones in this piece by Busnois—seventh tones, desperately eager to resolve to the tonic—remind me a bit more of Guillaume Dufa, from the first generation of the Franco-Flemish school, than the more smoothed-down harmonies of Ockeghem.
Busnois could also craft catchy melodies like Dufay. Indeed, he may have written L’homme arme, one of the most popular songs of the entire Renaissance!
The recording of In hydraulis at the top of this page was made by another group who specializes in this era: Pomerium. It’s better recorded and more peppy. If you like this kind of music, I urge you to check out everything by Pomerium. But this version of In hydraulis not live and it doesn’t have lyrics!
This paper does a detailed analysis of the Latin lyrics of In hydraulis and claims to notice a lot of patterns in them. I’ll just quote the part about ratios.
• David Howlett, Busnois’ motet In hydraulis: an exercse in textual reconstruction and analysis, Plainsong and Medieval Music 4 (1995), 185–191.
Kevin Arlin wrote:
Yes, that’s interesting! And when I looked up “epitritus” (meaning a frequency ratio of 4:3) I found this:
Epitrite. (poetry, Ancient Greek and Latin prosody) A metrical foot consisting of three long syllables and one short syllable.
A song about music theory, wow, impressive! Talk about appropriate use of one’s tools!