Free Time Will Tell by Donald Greig

bass phrase a fourth higher and a breve later. Where the
bassus
would sing the first note to the value of a breve, the
contratenor
would sing the same note pitched a fourth higher. But there was a different mensuration sign for the
contratenor
, effectively a tempo marking which meant that the part would be sung at a faster speed than the basses. That principle would hold for the eight other
contratenor
singers as well, and the net effect would be that they would overtake their bass colleagues. The image of a race was, Andrew realised, quite appropriate and also explained why there were only eight
bassus
parts, yet nine
contratenor
parts. Otherwise the
contratenors
would be holding long notes waiting for their colleagues to catch up.
    Andrew could imagine most of it. He heard the texture thickening like a musical stew from the lower, steady notes upwards. All his early attempts had produced loose, almost abstract lines for the basses, but now that he had correctly identified the note values, what had originally seemed a dull harmonic underpinning was revealed as a free expression of genuine melodic force. At first anticipating and then echoing the faster-moving
contratenor
line, the technical assurance of the complex canon was astonishing. Above these duelling parts the
tenor
part moved serenely in a sequence of slow-moving notes like a stretched-out plainchant tune, though not one that Andrew had thus far been able to identify. Above that, the more obviously decorative
discantus
parts chased after one another to produce bright cascades of running scales. The compositional design was astonishing and, more than ever, Andrew was convinced that this was the work of a composer at the top of his game.
    It worked. It really did. It was everything he had expected it to be, and,
marvellously
, as someone like Tinctoris might have said, it all fitted together. It had everything, as far as Andrew could tell. The final test would be hearing it sung, of course, but it was already more than promising. The canon between the
contratenor
and
bassus
at the interval of the fourth was centre stage, the same interval as Ockeghem’s chanson
Prenez sur moi
– though that didn’t prove it was by Ockeghem. It could be another composer referring to that work, or an unrelated echo of the same musical device.
    Yet why had this
Miserere mei
never been performed? A piece this large had to be a commission of some kind, which required advance planning and organisation. And the number of singers required for its performance far exceeded that of any one choral institution. Given the vocal ranges, it was doubtful that boys would have sung the
discantus
lines but, if they had, then they would have been singing at the very least three-to-a-part which would mean twenty-seven of them; no choir school at the time had more than eighteen. And without boys, it required thirty-two adults at a time when the largest choir numbered only twenty-four.
    The motet had to have been written for a big state occasion. Louis XI’s funeral in 1483? Impossible. The paranoid, ascetic King was buried without state ceremony. But maybe Ockeghem, as
premier chapelain
and Treasurer of St Martin at Tours, both direct royal appointments, had written it as a tribute to his patron? The only other possible occasion would have been one where several choirs gathered together, such as the event in Cambrai at which Compère’s
Omnium bonorum plena
was first performed. Three choirs – those of the French and Burgundian courts, and of the Cathedral at Cambrai – had joined forces to sing the new piece in which several of the singers were named.
    Andrew knew he was missing something and that there were other musicologists who would have better hypotheses to offer. All of them would be in Tours. He’d perused the conference proceedings on the first flight, noted its usual ragbag of topics – a keynote paper which would summarise the state of Ockeghemian