Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
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Composer Biography: Johannes Martini (c1440-c1498)
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Also called Giovanni or Zohanne. Martini isn’t an Italianate version of his name—there are Flemish Martinis
and variants.
Johannes Martini is not only a Franco-Flemish composer who spent most of his career in Italy. He’s also
such a big deal that the Power Families of the Sforzas and the d’Estes sought his expertise, and he was well
respected by other top-flight composer of his day, such as Josquin des Prez and Loyset Compere (c1445-
1518, blog post to come).
Ten of his Masses survive complete—an enormous number, considering how poor copying and
dissemination were before the advent of the printing press (1440) and how few people had access to
them—as well as motets and many other sacred works, including a large number of homophonic (unison
chant) psalm settings. His secular pieces had French and Italian texts, and there are others that were
probably intended as instrumental ensemble music.
Martini was probably born in Armentieres, although some sources say he was born in Brabant. Both towns
are still quite small and are about 150 miles apart.
He received his early musical training in Flanders, like most of his generation of musicians, and he left for
Italy when it was time to seek his fortune. He died in Ferrara in 1498 or thereabout.
Not much is known about his youth, but sometime before 1473, he became associated with the Duke of
Ferrara, Italy, named Ercole I d’Este. Ercole I was building a musical academy that was meant to compete
with other musical centers in Italy, and with luck, in Flanders and France as well.
In 1474, Martini turned up at the Sforza court chapel in Milan, engaged by Gaspar van Weebecke (c1445-
1516) along with Josquin des Prez and Loyset Compere (c1445-1518, blog post to come), probably the other
two biggest names of the time. Other Franco-Flemish composers were also at the Milan chapel, including
Alexander Agricola (c1445-1506, blog post to come), as part of the movement from Flanders toward Italy.
The Milan chapel was the most renowned collection of musicians anywhere in Europe at the time.
But Martini didn’t stay long, returning to Ferrara later in 1474. It isn’t known why he didn’t stay, although
with so many big names hanging out in Milan, it’s possible that he left to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
He maintained happy relationships with the other composers that he met there.
In 1475 in Ferrara, already in the service of Ercole I, Martini received a monthly wage increase. There’s no
record of what his wages were, but the increase was a ducat over whatever he had previously been getting
there.
He returned to Milan a few years later, as he’s listed in a pass for safe travel along with other singers after
the assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444-1476) in 1476. Despite his excellent taste in music,
Duke Sforza was a sadistic and malicious person, and was conspired against by three of his peers who’d
been wronged in one way or another (land grabs, public whipping, and the deflowering of a sister). The
public torture and executions of these noblemen and their servants left Milan in a rather unsavory state,
and the Duke’s assembly of musicians headed out to less tumultuous cities.
At any rate, Martini was well-paid, receiving a house and a larger salary than his peers in Ferrara.
Gaspar van Weerbecke (c1445-1516) went on a recruiting trip to France and Flanders, and in 1489, Martini
returned to Milan with Loyset Compere and Josquin des Prez. These three were each paid 5 ducats a
month, which was near the lowest rate of all the singers. (In 1474, records show that the highest salary paid
to papal singers was 36 ducats a year. These guys had gotten nearly double that.) This was a very good rate
for such a young singer. After 1492, the records stop mentioning Martini in 1492, which leads experts to
assume that he was probably the first of the three to die.
Most of his time was spent in Ferrara, but he did travel a little. In 1486, Martini traveled to Hungary as part
of a group installing Ercole I’s nephew as Archbishop of Esztergom. In 1487 and 1488, he made trips to
Rome to negotiate benefices given to him by Ercole I.
He was a friend of a court organist in Innsbruck, Austria, one Paul Hofhaimer (1459-1537). (They probably
knew each other through mutual friends from 1470s Milan.) Queen Consort Beatrice of Hungary (1457-
1508) asked Martini to intercede on her behalf and convince Hofhaimer to leave the Innsbruck court and
come to Hungary. By 1489, she became really insistent, because her own court organist had died. Ercole I
promised Beatrice that he’d send Martini to Innsbruck when they got home to Ferrara. It’s not clear
whether or not Martini went, but there are some manuscripts in Munich that originated in Innsbruck. At
any rate, Hofhaimer never left Innsbruck for Hungary. Beatrice gave up on getting him to come when her
husband’s death in 1490 and her political life overwhelmed other efforts.
But that wasn’t the last of Martini’s communication with the high and mighty. He was friend and mentor to
Ercole I’s daughter, young Isabelle d’Este (1474-1539), and their letters from her first three years (1490-
1493) in Mantua survive.
Isabella married Francesco Gonzaga (1466-1519) in 1490 at age 16, and her first letter from Martini arrived
six months later. The letter says that her father wanted him to go to Mantua and instruct her in singing.
Martini seems eager for the post, but begs for a couple of weeks’ delay so he can gather the necessary
supplies. In a later letter, he sends a secular composition for her to practice. Isabella had also received
dance lessons, but unlike most women in her circle, she made the arts an essential part of her life rather
than just superficial knowledge meant to impress suitors. In her study at the ducal palace, she had
Johannes Ockeghem’s Prennez sur moi worked out in marquetry, and many of the great artists of Italy were
on terms of mutual respect with her, including Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Titian (c1499-1576), and
writer Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529).
But I digress. Martini’s secular music was partly published by Ottaviano Petricci (1466-1539), and other
works, both sacred and secular survive. His surviving output includes 10 Masses, motets, psalms, hymns,
and secular songs, including chansons.
He wrote more Masses than motets (the sacred version of a madrigal), which was more typical of
Ockeghem’s generation than of Josquin’s. His musical style was also more conservative than Josquin’s.
In fact, Martini’s style refers back to the Burgundian School, especially in his Masses. There’s some stylistic
similarity to Jacob Obrecht (c1457-1505, blog post to come), harkening to the Dutch school. It’s thought
that Martini and Obrecht knew each other, or at least each others’ works. Obrecht was a guest in Ferrara in
1487 (Martini was in Rome for only part of that year, so they might have missed each other), and his music
is known to have circulated in Italy in the early 1480s.
Martini wrote some of the earliest examples of paraphrase Masses. Paraphrase is when the chant melody is
in the highest voice, rather than as cantus firmus in the tenor. Martini’s Missa domenicalis and Missa
ferialis, both tentatively dated to the 1470s, use paraphrase in the tenor voice, where cantus firmus usually
is, but also use the same melodic material in other voices. The paraphrase technique was to become one of
the predominant methods of Mass composition in the early 16
th
century.
Martini is the first composer known to have set psalms for double choirs singing antiphonally, a style that
would become famous under the direction of Adrian Willaert (c1490-1562) seventy years later, and is
probably most profoundly famous as a key element in works of the Baroque, especially those of J.S. Bach
(1685-1750). Nevertheless, the style of antiphonal double-choir psalms was strikingly innovative, but didn’t
catch on in his own lifetime or even shortly afterward.
In addition to his contrapuntal Masses, Martini also wrote motets with skillful imitative devices. His vesper
Psalms, written in collaboration with Johannes Brebis (late 15
th
century) for Ercole I, are simple chants.
His sacred pieces weren’t all serious. His Missa Cucu has a cantus firmus melody in the tenor, like so many
other pieces, but other voices display a well-developed imitative style, including the descending minor third
song of the cuckoo bird.
Martini wrote a Salve Regina, a Magnificat Secudi Toni, and an Ave Maris Stella, all in four voices. But he
wasn’t just doing variations on themes. The Salve Regina uses the double cantus firmus technique, where
the cantus firmus is repeated in canon by another voice, only transposed by a fourth or fifth. His Magnificat
set the odd-numbered verses in polyphony, except for the opening word, which, like the even-numbered
verses, is in plainchant. In those polyphonic verses, the cantus firmus moves from voice to voice. In his Ave
Maris Stella, after a brief introduction in the altus and bass, who sing in contrary motion, the discantus and
tenor paraphrase the plainsong, occasionally in imitation. Martini’s used of imitation in this piece is quite
skillful.
Martini wrote another Magnificat, only this one was in the third mode. There are also three Masses
collected in a single book, each with a Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus only (missing the Kyrie, Agnus Dei, and Ite
Missa Est), that are based on Barbingant’s Der ploben swancz, and a Missa Ma couche rit, based on
Ockeghem’s chanson by the same name, and a Missa Io ne tengo. In another book, there are three more
Masses, including a Missa Cela sans plus and a Missa La Matrinella.
Ottaviano Petrucci (1466-1539) printed several of Martini’s works, including both hymns and secular pieces.
One of the secular pieces is the widely disseminated three-part La Martinella. That piece and 21 others are
contained in a manuscript in Rome. Another is the Toujours bien, which is much like La Martinella in style.
Also among them is a textless four-part canon, the canon appearing an octave below the melody in two
voices and at a fifth below in the fourth.
More of Martini’s works are preserved in other manuscripts, including 17 secular pieces in the Banco rari,
which is a library of rare books in Florence.
The bulk of his secular music is in three parts, with texts in both Italian and French.
Martini wrote one of the most widely distributed works of the period, La Martinella. The piece unfolds in a
series of phrases, most featuring imitation between two voices (usually superius and tenor), and the third
voice rests or adds free counterpoint. The opening figure returns in various guises throughout, including in
varied inverted form at the midpoint.
He didn’t live a long life, but Johannes Martini certainly led a productive and interesting one. He’s thought
to have died around 1498 in Ferrara.
Sources
“A Dictionary of Early Music, from the Tro0ubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche.
Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.
“A History of Western Music,” bu K. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude B. Palisca. W.W. Norton
& Company, New York, 2010.
“The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New
York, 1988.
“Music in the Renaissance,” by Gustave Reese. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1959.
“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1997.