The Franco-Flemish composer Johannes Regis (also known as Jehan Leroy) was born c1425 and died (?) in Soignies, c1496. The commonness of his name has led to considerable confusion over Regis' biography. He is almost certainly the Jehan Leroy first recorded in 1451 serving as master of the choristers at the collegiate church of St Vincent, Soignies (18 km north of Mons, diocese of Cambrai). References to Regis that appear to place him in Mons, Ghent and 's-Hertogenbosch have all been shown to involve other men, while the assertion that he was choirmaster at Antwerp in 1463 derives from the misreading of a document from Cambrai. Archival records concerning yet another man named Johannes Regis, who served as chevecier at the church of St Martin, Tours, reveal intriguing connections with singers and officials of the French royal chapel, including the composer Johannes Ockeghem. It is unlikely this Regis was a composer, however, since in none of the many references to him is there any indication that he was a musician, or that he was involved in musical activities of any kind.
The mid-15th century saw the emergence of an impressive musical establishment at St Vincent: during the 1450s Regis' colleagues there included the composers Binchois, Guillaume de Malbecque and Jacobus de Clibano. In November 1460, the chapter of Cambrai Cathedral deputed Guillaume Du Fay to invite Regis to become master of the choirboys there. Regis ultimately turned down Cambrai's offer and remained at St Vincent, where in 1462 he was named scholasticus, a position he held for the rest of his life. At Soignies the scholasticus was responsible not only for directing the chapter school and drafting the acts and correspondence of the chapter, but also for carrying out the duties otherwise associated with a cantor, including leading the choir on double feasts and other important liturgical occasions. The office of scholasticus was dissolved at Regis' death, which, according to pay records from St Vincent, probably occurred in the early summer of 1496.
In contrast to the peripatetic careers of many of his contemporaries, there is no record of Regis ever having worked or travelled outside the diocese of Cambrai, and his ties both to Du Fay and to Cambrai Cathedral apparently remained strong. He is mentioned as having been Du Fay's clerc in the latter's executors' account, and is among the musicians named in Loyset Compère's motet Omnium bonorum plena (composed probably for the dedication of Cambrai Cathedral in 1472). Moreover it is at Cambrai that we find the earliest evidence of music by him: between 1462 and 1465, three of his works (now lost) were copied into the cathedral's choirbooks. These included a Missa crucis, a Regina caeli laetare, and a Missa ‘L'homme armé’, the last of these being the earliest recorded ‘L'homme armé’ mass. Evidence that he enjoyed a broader reputation by the 1470s comes from three theoretical treatises by Johannes Tinctoris, who grouped Regis with Ockeghem, Busnoys, Caron and Faugues as leading composers of the generation after Du Fay and Binchois. From this same decade date the earliest extant copies of his works (the songs S'il vous plaist and Puisque ma dame, and the Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’/‘Ne timeas Maria’). His motet Clangat plebs flores existed by 1477, when Tinctoris praised the work for its compositional varietas in his Liber de arte contrapuncti. His masses and songs may pre-date most or all of the motets, though a detailed chronology is hindered by the relative lateness of some of the more important sources of his music. Nearly half of the pieces in the original motet section of the Chigi Codex are securely attributable to Regis, a degree of representation comparable to that of Ockeghem in the mass corpus of the same manuscript, and it seems likely the collection was intended in part as a retrospective of works by the two recently-deceased composers. Six of Regis' 11 Latin-texted works appear in Petrucci's prints (four of them in the Motetti a cinque of 1508), an unusually high number for a composer of his generation.
The ‘L'homme armé’ mass described by Tinctoris cannot be identified with his Missa ‘Dum sacrum mysterium’/‘L'homme armé’, thus making Regis one of the few composers known to have written two masses on the ‘L'homme armé’ melody. Striking in the ‘Dum sacrum’ mass is Regis' treatment of borrowed materials, including the combination of sacred and secular cantus firmi. Though the ‘L'homme armé’ tune serves as the principal cantus firmus (often transposed and set in inexact canon), it carries various texts drawn from the office of St Michael. Other texts and melodies from this same office are added at different points, with the result that at times three of the four voices are based on pre-existing melodies. Transposition and the combining of multiple cantus firmi are also prominent features of his remarkably long Missa ‘Ecce ancilla Domini’/‘Ne timeas Maria’, for which Du Fay's Missa ‘Ecce ancilla’/‘Beata es Maria’ apparently served as a point of departure. Like Du Fay, Regis employed two musically and liturgically related chants; however, rather than presenting these successively in the tenor alone, he had them sound simultaneously in the tenor and bassus. He added to the web of borrowed material by introducing five further Marian antiphons (with their texts) at various places in the work, though without ever utilizing more than two at a time.
Regis' most innovative and influential works are his cantus-firmus motets in five voices. These represent one of the earliest sustained attempts to compose in five parts and appear to have been models for younger musicians such as Obrecht, Compère, Weerbeke and Josquin. Most of the motets are laid out in two sections in contrasting mensurations, with the tenor cantus firmus set as an axial voice in the middle of the texture. This disposition of voices, with two parts in distinct ranges lying beneath the tenor, extends the notated range downward in some cases (three of the motets descend to D) and facilitates Regis' varied treatment of the cantus firmus. Though set initially as a structural foundation in longer note values, the tenor is subsequently integrated into the contrapuntal fabric of the other voices. In Clangat plebs flores/Sicut lilium this results in an uneven distribution of the three statements of the cantus firmus over the two sections, with the last two statements squeezed into the final quarter of the piece. Evident in all of Regis' works, though especially marked in the motets, is an interest in sonorous effects. This manifests itself through the careful spacing of vertical sonorities, frequent and sharp textural contrasts, and a liberal use of explicit accidentals. In Lux solempnis adest/Repleti sunt omnes, perhaps his most accomplished work, Regis employs the tenor within a five-voice texture so sparingly that a single cantus-firmus statement is sufficient to span one of the longer motets of the 15th century. Two of the five-voice motets depart from his usual practice. O admirabile commercium is in three sections and mixes various liturgical and popular melodies associated with Christmas in a manner reminiscent of the masses. Ave Maria … virgo serena seems not to be based on a structural tenor (it lacks an inner voice part in its unique source) and employs paired imitation more systematically than in Regis' other works, in which contrapuntal coherence stems largely from the subtle interlacing of small rhythmic-melodic motives. The three-voice Ave Maria is organized on the smaller scale of secular songs, with neatly contoured melodic lines and brief imitative passages. More generally, Regis' preference for chanson-like melodies in his Latin-texted works (recalling the melodic styles of Du Fay and especially Binchois) sets him apart from his contemporaries and may be related to his extended personal contact with these composers.
Textural contrasts and the combining of texts mark his two extant songs as well. In its presumably original three-voice version the rondeau S'il vous plaist consists in large part of a series of shifting duos. The four-voice Puisque ma dame/Je m'en voy combines its primary poem with a second, incompletely preserved text in the contratenor altus in a way that finds no counterpart among songs of the period.
Sean Gallagher
