Okeghem’s musical legacy in the Iberian Peninsula and Pedro de Escobar’s Missa de Requiem

Jean de Okeghem, maître de chapelle of King Louis XI, visited Spain in c. 1469 on a diplomatic mission to the court of King Enrique IV. Although no precise documentation concerning his probable interaction with musicians at the Spanish courts is known, it is likely that he brought over examples of his music which became well known in Spanish court circles. Particular interest in musicology has been paid to the fact that a fragment of Okeghem’s famous Requiem mass, the Tract Sicut cervus, is included in a composite Requiem mass of Spanish origin copied in MS Tarazona 5. Further, this particular Tract by Okeghem has been loosely connected with a similar Tract composed by Pedro de Escobar in his own Requiem mass copied into Tarazona 2/3 (the earliest surviving Spanish complete Requiem), but no further links or influences have thus far been detected. In this paper, I shall attempt to demonstrate that close examination of the Requiem masses by Okeghem and Escobar seen also in the context of other music composed in the environment of Seville—especially by Pedro de Escobar—is in fact indicative that there is some common ground shared between the Requiems of the early Franco-Flemish master and Escobar especially, which is highly significant in terms of the development of the early Missa pro defunctis.