'He composed more music after his death than when he was alive!'
Free Be-a-Maestro Newsletter 12 - 18 January 2013 - Be a maestro!
by Reinier Maliepaard
We all know The Three B's, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, indeed three really important composers in music history. Now I learn you the three J's: Josquin, Josquin, Josquin! Strange? Not at all. Now, anno 2013, Josquin Des Prez (d. 1521) can be seen as the most leading composer of the Renaissance. However, his contemporaries considered Josquin as an innovative top composer also.
Josquin's fame and reputation were so well established that music printers in the 16th century used his name for marketing purposes: the success of a music book was related to the number of Josquin's pieces in it. This means, that many pieces are not composed by Josquin at all and are misattributed to him. No wonder, that a 16th century saying was that Josquin composed more music after his death than when he was alive! Marketing or not, we know that many composers in the Post-Josquin generation used Josquin as a model and imitated his musical devices and style.
Popularity implies anecdotes, most apocryphal. There are many about Josquin, true or not. The important figure of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther (d. 1546) said about Josquin that he ruled the notes and that others were ruled by the notes. Then the anecdote about Josquin in Louis XII's court by the music theorist Glareanus (Dodekachordon, 1547): the king had not paid Josquin a promised amount, so Josquin composed a motet using Psalm 117, Memor esto verbi tui servo tuo (Remember your promise to your servant). The court was charmed by Josquin's cleverness and Louis XII paid him. Josquin answered with a setting on Psalm 119, Bonitatem fecisti cum servo tuo Domine (You have done well with your servant)*.
Glareanus tells that most likely the same king asked Josquin to compose a piece in which he could participate. Josquin -knowing the king had no musical skills- wrote a secular song, a chanson, where the voice of the king holds the single pitch D (frequently supported by the same pitch, an octave lower, in the bass) while the upper two voices work out a canon.
And Glareanus reports about the words 'Lascia fare mi' (meaning 'leave me alone' or 'leave it to me'), used by an unknown aristocrat to get people stop their complaints about him. Josquin wrote a complete Mass composition based on a soggetto (say: musical subject or theme) that is derived from these words: La-sol-fa-re-mi, which can be translated into our normal notes: A-G-F-D-E. So, the conversion from words into notes is done by the solmization syllables: ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la**. The five-note soggetto A-G-F-D-E appears throughout the mass (more than 200 times), in several variations as e.g. in a retrograde form (Mi-re-fa-sol-la).
Listen on YouTube to the Sanctus from Josquin's Missa La sol fa re mi (1502) and enjoy Josquin's imitation technique*** and the way the soggetto has been varied.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7lQconx8Qo
For dutch readers, study my mindmap on Josquin: click here
Notes
* Maybe we have to attribute this work to the French composer Carpentras, a contemporary of Josquin.
** This technique is called 'soggetto cavato', described by Zarlino (1558): Soggetto cavato dalle vocali di queste parole = a subject carved out of the vowels from these words. A nice example of an another 'soggetto cavato' is Josquin's 'Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae' which is based on 're-ut-re ut re-fa-mi-re' = 'Her-cu-les Dux Fer-ra-ri-ae'.
*** Imitation is the repetition of a melody shortly after its first appearance in a different voice.