“CAPUT” AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FOUR-PART HARMONY
The direct adoption from the English of the cyclic Mass as the standard “high” genre, and the way the
“Tinctoris generation” of continental musicians further developed all its compositional techniques, can be
illustrated with a trio of Masses all based on the same cantus firmus melody: a grandiose neuma or
supermelisma on caput (“head”), the concluding word of an antiphon, Venit ad Petrum (“He came to
Peter”), that was sung at Salisbury Cathedral for the ceremony of “washing the feet” on Maundy Thursday
during Holy Week preceding Easter. “Do not wash only my feet, but also my hands and my head,” said
Peter to Jesus in the Gospel according to John, in a line that became the antiphon that begat the Masses.
Sometime around 1440, an anonymous English composer (whose anonymity does not preclude his
being a well-known personage) turned this magnificent melisma into a cantus firmus by following the
procedures described above and produced a Mass similar in principle to Leonel’s Alma Redemptoris
Mater Mass, but much, much grander in scale. The vastness of the conception suggests no mere chapel