Josquin des Prez

Franco-Flemish musician

• Born: c. 1450-1455
• Birthplace: Possibly near Saint Quentin, France
• Died: August 27, 1521
• Place of death: Condé-sur-l'Escaut, Burgundian Hainaut (now in France)

Josquin was a Renaissance composer whose works covered a great variety of musical genres, both sacred and secular (mostly chansons). He also was a singer in various royal and aristocratic chapels, including the Papal Chapel. Modern scholarship regards him as the quintessential Renaissance musician.

Early Life

Almost no documents have survived that would shed light on the pre-1490’s life and work of Josquin des Prez (zhaw-skan day pray). His exact date and place of birth are not known, and the chronology of his works is still a matter of debate. Some argue that his style of composition developed from one almost entirely based on canonical imitation to one allowing for a greater degree of freedom and a more expressive setting of the text. Others posit that, from very early in his career, Josquin manipulated both linear polyphony and vertical harmony with equal ease which, in turn, makes it difficult to base a chronology of his works on style alone.

It has been hypothesized that Josquin was trained as a choirboy in Condé-sur-l’Escaut or its vicinity. From the evidence that has been preserved, it appears that Josquin spent most of his active musical life at various European courts: For instance, documents from 1475 place him in Aix-la-Chapelle, as a chapel singer for René I, duke of Anjou. From there Josquin might have been transferred, at the duke’s death in 1480, to the service of King Louis XI of France.

Life’s Work

Entering the service of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Milan shortly after 1483, Josquin is believed to have followed the cardinal to Rome in 1484. He is also mentioned as a cantor duchalis in documents issued by the house of Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Recent research suggests he might have been at the court of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, for a short period before 1490.

It is known that Josquin was a singer in the Papal Chapel under both Innocent VIII and Alexander VI where, it is speculated, he remained perhaps until 1495. He spent one year (1503-1504) as the maestro di cappella for Duke Ercole d’Este in Ferrara, where he composed chiefly masses and motets. He left in the spring of 1504, fleeing the plague. Josquin returned to this native land to spend the last seventeen years of his life as provost of Condé, and he was entombed in the church of Notre Dame there.

Josquin was one of the several Renaissance composers who recrafted the motet as an all-purpose piece of texted, polyphonic, sacred music. The motet in his hands became perhaps the most progressive form of sacred choral composition. Josquin based his more than fifty motets on a wide range of Latin texts, both biblical and nonbiblical. Like other Renaissance composers, he took the Humanistic view that texted music should at least partially reflect the structure and organization of speech.

Josquin infused his motets with an amount of harmonic freedom, included moderate chromaticism for dramatic color, and used intervallic inflections suggestive of intense emotions. His music followed closely the denotations of individual words (a technique known as word painting), as well as the more subtle nuances and suggestions embedded in these words. Such depictions are found in Dominus regnavit (the Lord reigneth) a four-part motet setting (music composed for a text) of Psalm 92 for the Office of Lauds, published posthumously in a 1539 Nuremberg anthology. Here Josquin conveyed the sense of ascension found in the words elevaverunt flumina (the floods have lifted up) through octave leaps, and he set the opening phrase Dominus regnavit to a series of repeated pitches to depict God sitting in majesty.

Formally, the Renaissance motet was divided into a prima pars and a secunda pars (the first part and the second part, respectively). Within this compositional frame, Josquin further divided each section into several subsections contrasted through meter and texture changes. This in turn caused such works to appear both visually and aurally as multisectional compositions based on clever interplays between polyphonic, imitative segments (with emphasis on imitative duets) and homophonic ones (where all the parts joined in simultaneously, in syllabic, declamatory music). Tu solus, qui facis mirabilia , a four-part motet printed in Venice in 1503 and perhaps one of Josquin’s earlier Milanese works illustrates this approach: The opening statement in the prima pars and the closing phrase in the secunda pars are set to long values in declamatory style thereby conferring a sense of architectural solidity on the whole structure. By contrast, the middle portions of both parts are more fluid and contrapuntal.

Josquin was at the forefront of Renaissance mass composition a fact recognized in his lifetime, when the Venetian Ottaviano dei Petrucci (1466-1539), the first music printer, produced a volume of masses by Josquin (Misse Josquin in 1502. Two more volumes followed, one printed in Venice (Missarum Josquin liber secundus , 1505), the other in Fossombrone (Missarum Josquin liber tertius , 1514). Apart from settings of individual mass movements, Josquin completed eighteen masses, some of which are known in more than one variant. These were settings of the Ordinary, and he was in agreement with all other Renaissance composers in using melodies from the traditional chant repertory as canti firmi. As the melodic line on which the whole composition was based, cantus firmus was the very foundation of the polyphonic mass, most frequently placed in the tenor, and subsequently imitated and developed in the other parts.

In addition to using chants, Josquin had a marked preference for incorporating secular songs, melodies borrowed from other composers, or melodic lines of his own invention as canti firmi. Such was the case, for instance, with the tune L’Homme armé (the armed man), of uncertain origin but very popular throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which Josquin used as the cantus firmus for both the Missa L’Homme armé sexti toni (composed in the sixth tone or mode) and the L’Homme armé super voces musicales (where the tune was successively transposed to different degrees of the medieval/Renaissance six-step scale known as a hexachord). The mass D’Ung aultre amer takes its point of departure from a chanson by another famous Renaissance composer, Jean d’Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497), while the mass Fortuna disperata is based on a piece attributed to the Burgundian composer Antoine Busnoys (c. 1430-1492).

Josquin, like his predecessors and contemporaries, favored the canon (or fuga), which meant the writing of two or more parts in strict imitation. The canon whether based on direct, inverted, or retrograde imitation, in rhythmic augmentation or diminution could be utilized as one of several sections of a larger piece such as a mass, or as piece of smaller dimensions standing on its own. The tenor and superius (soprano) of Josquin’s Missa ad fugam are written in strict imitation (canon) throughout, with the remaining two parts in a freer style, and his Missa sine nomine includes canons in paired voices.

In terms of secular music, Josquin’s main contribution were his polyphonic chansons (songs) many of which, like some of his masses and motets, employed pre-existing tunes. It is still a matter of speculation how many of the chansons were originally composed for instrumental performance rather than vocal. A very small number of which the authenticity is still doubted were based on Italian texts. The remaining ones were settings of French poetry. His earlier works in this group, like Cela sans plus , were conceived along the lines of the fifteenth century French and Burgundian formes fixes, such as the rondeau or virelai, with music rigorously adhering to the formal patterns of the poetry being set, and with canonic imitation being used extensively. Mille regretz , first published as a lute arrangement, represents a later stage in his treatment of the chanson, where the approach to form is much freer, and the number of parts is increased to four, five, and even six. One of Josquin’s most famous chansons is his setting of Nymphes des bois , the elegy written by the French poet and historiographer Jean Molinet (1435-1507) at the death of Jean d’Ockeghem.

Significance

Josquin’s reputation as a brilliant composer was established after his death, but even during his lifetime he was held in esteem by his contemporaries: Thus the Humanist Paolo Cortese and the music theorists Franchino Gaffurio(1451-1522) and Pietro Aaron (c. 1480-1545), all writing during the first two decades of the sixteenth century, regarded Josquin as one of the most prominent composers of their time, and Martin Luther referred to him as “the master of notes.” The Italian music publisher Ottaviano dei Petrucci began each of the four volumes of his first motet anthology with a piece by Josquin. In 1545, the Antwerp printer Tilman Susato printed a volume entirely devoted to Josquin, including about twenty-four chansons.

The composer’s death was lamented by poetic luminaries of the period, and numerous musical tributes were paid by both contemporary and later composers who used quotations from Josquin’s music and even incorporated titles of his motets in their own works. Two modern editions of Josquin’s works were published in Amsterdam between 1921 and 1969.

Bibliography

Elders, Willem, and Frits de Haen, eds. Proceedings of the International Josquin Symposium, Utrecht 1986. Utrecht, the Netherlands: Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1991. A collection based on papers given at a symposium, focusing on aspects of Josquin’s life and works and discussing a variety of manuscripts in which these works have been preserved.

Merkley, Paul, and Lora L. M. Merkley. Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999. Discusses a large number of newly discovered documents relating to musical life at the chapel of Galeazzo Sforza in Milan, and presents the most recent scholarship on Josquin’s life and works.

Reese, Gustave, and Jeremy Noble. “Josquin Desprez.” In Josquin, Palestrina, Lassus, Byrd, Victoria, edited by Gustave Reese. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Represents the state of Josquin scholarship in the early 1980’s, with informative discussions of selected masses, motets, and chansons.

Sherr, Richard. The Josquin Companion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A collection of essays on Josquin’s career, including detailed analytical studies of individual works by him. Includes one CD containing mass movements, motets, and chansons.