The most distinctive features of Ockeghem’s music are its varied, unpredictable
rhythms and long-breathed, overlapping phrases. Its texture of equally important though
highly independent melodic lines and its exploration of the bass register are progressive
features, but in many respects its unpredictable, “mystical” character, which virtually
defies analysis, evokes a Late Gothic spirit rather than displaying the clarity of the
emerging Renaissance style of his contemporaries.
Martin Picker
[See also: BUSNOYS, ANTOINE; CYCLIC MASS; DUFAY, GUILLAUME;
TINCTORIS, JOHANNES]
Ockeghem, Johannes. Collected Works, ed. Dragan Plamenac and Richard Wexler. 3 vols. N.p.:
American Musicological Society, 1947–92.
Goldberg, Clemens. Die Chansons johannes Ockeghems. Laaber: Laaber, 1992.
Lindmayr, Andrea. Quellenstudien zu den Motetten von Johannes Ockeghem. Laaber: Laaber,
1992.
Perkins, Leeman L. “The L’homme armé Masses of Busnoys and Ockeghem: A Comparison.”
Journal of Musicology 3 (1984): 363–96.
Picker, Martin. Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht: A Guide to Research. New York:
Garland, 1988.
Sparks, Edgar H. Cantus Firmus in the Mass and Motet, 1420–1520. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1963.
Thein, Wolfgang. Musikalischer Satz und Textdarbeitung im Werk von Johannes Ockeghem.
Tutzing: Schneider, 1992.
OCKHAM, WILLIAM OF
(William Occam; ca. 1285–1347). Born in Ockham in Surrey, England, William entered
a Franciscan convent at an early age. In 1306, he was ordained subdeacon at Southwark
in London and began his education at Oxford, where he lectured on Peter Lombard’s
Sententiae from 1317 to 1319. John Luttrell, the chancellor at Oxford, opposed Ockham’s
views. Pope John XXII called him to Avignon in 1323/24. A committee investigated
Ockham’s works and censured fifty-one propositions but did not formally condemn him.
In 1327, he met Michael of Cesena, the minister-general of the Franciscan order and
leader of the Spiritual Franciscans. Cesena requested Ockham to examine John XXII’s
constitutions on Franciscan poverty. Ockham declared them full of error and the
following year fled Avignon with Cesena and others. He was excommunicated in 1328.
He joined the emperor Louis of Bavaria in his dispute with the pope and in 1330 settled
at the Franciscan convent in Munich. In 1331, Ockham was expelled from the order and
sentenced to imprisonment. He died in Munich in 1347, still under Louis’s protective
care.
Ockham’s writings fall into three stages corresponding to his major residences: Oxford
(1306/07–23), Avignon (1323–28), and Germany (1330–47). At Oxford and Avignon, his
writings include his commentary on the Sententiae, later published in two parts: the
Ordinatio, his lectures on the first book, and the Reportatio, comprising notes taken at his
lectures. He also composed commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon; Summa logicae, his
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