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• Agricola, Alexander: De tous biens playne

Agricola, Alexander: De tous biens playne

(2 settings) for 3 instruments.

These two elaborated settings of Hayne van Ghizeghern´s De tous biens playne, probably the most frequently arranged rondeau of the fifteenth century, come from the unnumbered manuscript in the Cathedral Library in Segovia, that contains so many unique pieces from the end of the century. In both settings Agricola has Hayne´s tenor in more or less its original form, and adds two elaborate outer parts. Agricola composed three other settings which work the same way, but the present two are the most ornate.
Alexander Agricola was born somewhere in the Low Countries around 1446. like many distinguished northern musicians of his generation, he spent some of his working life in Italy (in his case in Milan and Florence), but he ended up working for Philip the Handsome, who was both Duke of Burgundy and King of Castille. Agricola died of the plague in Valladolid in 1506.
These two settings sometimes seem - at least on paper - at times rather unorthodox. In a couple of cases irregularities have been corrected (see below), but others have been left, on the assumption that these are virtuoso instrumental works that need a fast tempo (for instance, semibreve = 69-72) at which minor “crudities” will not be disturbing.
In this edition the original note values have been halved: I resisted the temptation to quarter the note values because I wanted the many cross rhythms to appear without ligatures (beams), which are often problematic. Editorial accidentals are printed small above the stave, applying to the one note. I have also transposed both pieces up a fifth, which brings the pieces within the compass of a wider range of instruments, for instance recorders. Of course there is no indication of instrumentation in the source, but these pieces may well have been intended at least partly for plucked instruments.