who speak directly within the narrative were set polyphonically, and finally the words of Christ were
also so set, leaving only the voice of the Gospel narrator or evangelist in chant.
EX. 18-9C Jacobus Gallus, Mirabile mysterium, mm. 43–47The earliest complete polyphonic setting of the Passion text—including the evangelist narration, the
exordium or sung title (“The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to...”), and a conclusio or final
prayer—dates from the first decade of the sixteenth century. Each of its sources names a different
composer; Rhau picked it up in 1538 and issued it in print for the first time, attributing it (surely wrongly)
to Obrecht. Its Italian origin (or at least its Italianate orientation; some sources attribute it to a French-
born composer named Antoine de Longueval) is evident from its use of falsobordone, a way of setting
psalm tones in four-part harmony (triads in what we now call root position) that was developed “by ear”
in imitation of fauxbourdon (see Ex. 18-10). This setting already shows a tendency to treat parts of the
choir antiphonally for dramatic effect.
In Gallus’s St. John Passion, two four-part choirs, differentiated in range, are treated in antiphony. The
low choir is reserved for the vox Christi, the voice of Christ, whose gravity it betokens. The high choir
takes the parts of all other characters, such as the thief who speaks to Jesus from the adjoining cross, and
also the Evangelist during the narration of the Seven Last Words, when the narrator and the voice of Christ
are the only two “characters” in play. The combined choirs represent the turba: at these moments the
setting takes on the traditional, impressively thundering, harmonically static but rhythmically active
quality of the falsobordone.
EX. 18-10 From the “Longueval” Passion, mm. 10–21