Interview with Cees Wagemakers

Cees Wagemakers is a Dutch music editor, researcher and specialist in Renaissance and early Baroque vocal music who became closely associated with Donemus through his extensive work transcribing historical music manuscripts into modern notation. He is not primarily known as a composer, but as an editor and transcriber who uncovered, reconstructed and prepared hundreds of forgotten works from European archives and libraries for modern performers and choirs.

Davo van Peursen asked him some questions about his work as transcriber.

Where does your interest in Early Music come from (with capitals, because that’s how I feel about it)?

In the 1990s I was a member of a chamber choir with which we occasionally sang Early Music. I wasn’t any more captivated by it than by the Russian choral music we also often sang there. But around 1990, when my wife and I visited my in-laws who lived in a care home, I heard music coming through the front door of their neighbours that stopped me in my tracks. I stood listening until it ended. I rang their bell and asked what I had just heard. They had no idea. It was coming from the television. It turned out to be the closing section of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin. The next day I bought the CD, and the enjoyment began. This prompted us to visit the Festival Oude Muziek in Utrecht, which we have attended every year since 1991.In 1990 Dutch television broadcast the “Florentine Games,” and repeated it in 1991. These were the intermediperformed in 1589 at the wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christina of Lorraine in Florence (La Pellegrina). Beautifully staged, sung and performed by outstanding Early Music specialists (Taverner Consort & Choir, Andrew Parrott). At the wedding of one of Ferdinando’s great-uncles in 1539, intermedi had also been performed. These too were later released by Donemus (Le Nozze di Firenze, 1539). My wife and I were enchanted by this television broadcast. During a holiday in 1991, after much searching in Turin, we managed to obtain both the CD and the videotape. Early Music appealed to us more and more.

Gradually my interest broadened to other composers, such as Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero, Cristóbal de Morales and Juan del Encina (all Spaniards), whom I greatly admire and whose music deeply moves me. That may sound solemn, and it is meant that way. I could tell another beautiful story about the music of Victoria and Cererols, but perhaps another time.

In 1999 I began singing again in chamber choirs in ’s-Hertogenbosch and Groningen, where I was then living, and there too Early Music was my favourite.

But the real obsession came around 2008, when I received a CD with music by Virgilio Mazzocchi. I wanted to see the notes of that music, to see how it was written — the lines, the texture. Until then I would always go to the university library in Utrecht, which has a large collection of old music. I looked there to see whether there were works that the chamber choirs I sang with could perhaps perform. Then I found old editions of Mazzocchi’s music online in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. That old 1647 edition in white mensural notation required some study. The notes themselves were still readable, once you replace the diamond shapes with the oval noteheads of modern notation and learn how to deal with ligatures. The texts posed another problem: Italian publishers used no punctuation, hyphens or other marks. For motets you need knowledge of Latin (which I have), and for madrigals enough Italian (which I also have). I had learned how notes and text should appear on paper in secondary school, where we had music lessons for years. The strange thing is that once I find something interesting, I never forget it. Singing from sight had also refreshed my memory. In short: I knew how it should look on paper.

After the volume containing Mazzocchi’s motet (Scelta di Motetti), I wanted more. I had caught the bug. I learned how to search libraries in Washington, Paris, London, Kassel, Jena, Bologna and Munich, among others. It became a kind of hoarding. I could never get enough of it.

How does the process work in practice, from archive to edition?

When searching a library for music by a particular composer, or even just broadly for five-part madrigals, I would always find a book — sometimes incomplete. For example, I once read in the Tijdschrift voor Oude Muziek that the Deventer City Archives held books with motets by Melchior Vulpius. I immediately went there with a camera. I photographed all seven books page by page and started working on them at home, only to discover that one book was missing. It was also missing online in the Bavarian State Library. All that effort for nothing. Fortunately I later found other works by Vulpius that were also published by Donemus.Anyway, once I had found a book that looked interesting, I downloaded it — sometimes page by page — and took it to the print shop. Then I got to work with the prints: first the notes, then the text. The wonderful thing about Early Music is that once you make it sound, you immediately hear whether there are mistakes in it or not. Early Music simply always works. With modern music — as I call twentieth-century music — you just have to believe that it was inspired. To me it often sounds very artificial and decidedly unpleasant to my ears.

Then there is the text. The Latin texts of motets are no problem; they can often be found on cpdl.org. Madrigals with Italian texts require a bit more knowledge of Italian. But that always worked out as well. After that, the whole thing has to be neatly laid out on the page. That too did not cause too many difficulties.

And then I ended up with a stack of printouts half a metre high. My wife asked me what I was going to do with them. Naturally I wanted choirs to start working with this music. Most of it was far too beautiful to remain gathering dust in a library. I wanted to find a publisher. Eventually, in 2015, I arrived at Donemus, where I left a portfolio. Davo’s response was that although it was not really their “line of business,” it looked so beautiful that they were interested. After adapting things to the standard format and dealing with some typographical issues, the first volume appeared at the end of that year, I believe Il Lauro Secco. It still needed an English foreword, but that also worked out with some help from Wikipedia, the Enciclopedia Treccani and other sources. Once everything was ready, I sent it to Tobias, the final editor, who added the Donemus house style. Then Aleksandra uploaded everything to the webshop.

I aimed to find music that had not yet been published in modern notation.

The biggest challenges?

Once you have transcribed some 250 books, it becomes difficult to find enjoyable unknown music. It still exists, but the search becomes harder. Spanish Renaissance music, for example, is kept in libraries in Spain and Portugal, but these are almost impossible to download from: poor copies, incomplete material, hidden behind a kind of firewall. A pity, because I find that music magnificent. After hearing Alonso Lobo’s heartbreakingly beautiful Lamentations of Jeremiah, I began searching for more of his music and found it in the Vatican Library. Donemus has published two books of his masses and motets.

A few years ago a new challenge arose: physical problems made the work more difficult. My eyesight deteriorated (age-related macular degeneration — after all, I was already 80), and a spasm in my hand made it hard to use the mouse on my computer properly.

After 35,000 to 40,000 pages of Early Music, you eventually know it all. In short: I allowed myself to stop.

What motivates me most in this work?

Once I discovered how much unknown music was still lying around gathering dust, I felt it was urgently necessary to “unpack” it. I saw it as archaeology: you retrieve something from the Mediterranean Sea and begin cleaning it, removing encrustations and growth. And when you then discover a jewel, it gives such satisfaction. You want to share it. That is how it was for me with Early Music as well. Especially in the second half of the sixteenth century, an enormous number of books with beautiful music were published in Italy. Unknown composers, but wonderful music! Usually in partbooks. I then turned these into scores, the way we prefer to see them today.

What can we still expect in the coming years?

I allow myself to stop making transcriptions. I phrase it deliberately that way. I would still like to continue for a while, because it keeps me occupied. One should not think of a quiet old age! But when my body no longer cooperates, that causes frustration. I have not found another passion since I stopped transcribing a year and a half ago. For now I am waiting for the remaining volumes to appear — there are still roughly another hundred. Tobias could not keep up with my pace over the past ten years. There were months in which I delivered three books.

Once everything is in the webshop there will be around 250 titles. I can hardly believe it myself. But it certainly is wonderful.