‘Two Fellows from Ghent’: For the Obrecht and Agricola Quincentenaries

The lives and careers of Jacob Obrecht and Alexander Agricola may have had more points of contact than was suspected only ten years ago. Recent biographical discoveries allow one to envisage parallels within their musical outputs. This article considers a number of shared preoccupations that may thus be tentatively identified. These range from a playfully speculative stance in relation to musical and borrowed material, to a possible convergence of more concrete musical preoccupations towards the ends of their careers. Obrecht’s interest in Agricola’s work is explicit in his two responses to the latter’s famous tricinium, Si dedero, namely the cyclic mass based on it and Obrecht’s own short tricinium, Si sumpsero. Agricola’s output is here proposed as a possible context for the anomalous features (in terms of the rest of Obrecht’s work) of the presumably late Missa Maria zart, in particular its scope and superabundance of detail, a preponderance of asymmetrical sequences, and a kaleidoscopic approach to the (re)distribution of its borrowed material. Agricola’s cycle on In minen sinn (which may itself plausibly be regarded as late) provides an especially close context for Maria zart, and it is suggested that the two works might play key roles in defining the last flowering of the cantus firmus mass genre.