Brumel's musical contributions included masses, motets, and French chansons in the late medieval polyphonic style. Around 1500, European music was undergoing a shift from the sequential composition of individual voices to a more fluid, simultaneous approach. Brumel, a key player in this musical evolution, demonstrated this transition in his compositions. Early works adhered to the older style, while later pieces embraced the polyphonic fluidity characteristic of the Josquin generation.
Like Josquin, Brumel belonged to the third generation of the Franco-Flemish school and witnessed the migration of many composers to Italy. Musical equality of voices was a primary concern. Brumel's famous masses, especially the twelve-voice Missa Et ecce terræ motus, demonstrated isorhythmic skill and maintained an inventive, idiosyncratic melodic line that challenged singers with a wide vocal range.
The title of this mass, "Et ecce terrae motus," refers to the Easter antiphon "And behold, there was a great earthquake," which is used as a cantus firmus, a pre-existing melody that forms the basis of a polyphonic composition. So this mass has nothing to do with earthquakes, although you could say that the music itself is a kind of earthquake, or at least it can shake the listener, because it is the pinnacle of Renaissance polyphonic choral writing in its complexity with 12 voices. Careful listening will reveal why Brumel chose to write in so many parts: he needed them to decorate his colossal harmonic pillars. In doing so, he effectively abandoned polyphony in the sense of independent yet interrelated melodic lines and resorted to sequences and figurations that were atypical for his time.
Brumel's Mass "Et ecce terrae motus" was deservedly famous during the composer's lifetime and remains one of the true marvels of Renaissance choral writing, with its unusual scoring for 12 voices and its carefully constructed melodic detail against astonishingly long stretches of slowly moving harmonic blocks.
Throughout his career, Brumel experimented with various compositional techniques, using cantus firmus and paraphrase methods. In his Missa pro defunctis, a late work, Brumel innovatively included the Dies Irae in alternate polyphony, making it one of the earliest surviving polyphonic requiems.
Listen to two works: first Missa Et ecce terrae motus, by amarcord & Calmus Ensemble - an incredibly beautiful work:
Listen next to the Sequentia Dies irae, Dies illa from Brumel's Missa pro defunctis à 4, the earliest "Dies irae" ever written, performed by the Ensemble Barock vokal and Concerto Æquales under the direction of Michael Form:
Choral Masterworks