Johannes Ockeghem Photo: CC BY S-A 4.0
This is an example of Flemish music from the 15th century - the Sanctus from the 'Missa Prolationum' by Johannes Ockeghem (1410/1425 – 1497).
Michael Stewart says: 'The Missa Prolationum has been described as "perhaps the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the fifteenth century".
Much like the Tallis ‘Miserere nostri’, we are dealing here with canons in different speeds, and in actual fact different ways of reading the same notation in different prolations, a sort of ancestor of the time signature.
The way Ockeghem expands the interval of the canons from the unison through to the octave predates Bach’s 'Goldberg Variations' technique by more than 200 years!'
Recorded in Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul by RNZ Concert
Producer/sound engineer: Darryl Stack
