The Cantus Firmi of the Requiem Masses from the School of Manuel Mendes: Aspects of Musical Structure and Affiliation on the Portuguese Chant Sources

Abstract

In the course of this article, which centres on the corpus of Requiem masses produced by composers of the school of Manuel Mendes available in modern editions, consideration is given to various aspects of the structure of the cantus firmi and of the interaction between polyphony and the plainsong variants contained in Portuguese sources of liturgical music of the 16th and 17th centuries. On the basis of a sample made up of ten printed and manuscript sources this article shows the relationship of different intervalic structures in the cantusfirmi, taking concrete variants or versions of the plainsong of the missa pro defunctis, and clarifies the basis of the polyphony itself, as in the case of certain sections of the Requiem masses by Manuel Mendes, Frei Manuel Cardoso and Estêvão de Brito, in which we can observe an inconsistency in the pre-existing material and the plainsong traditionally associated with the missa pro defunctis, which forces us to equate the role played by the different liturgical-musical traditions in the process of constituting this repertoire.