Josquin de Prez (jan 1, 1450 – jan 1, 1521)

Description:

often referred to simply as Josquin, was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime. Josquin wrote both sacred and secular music, and in all of the significant vocal forms of the age, including masses, motets, chansons and frottole. During the 16th century, he was praised for both his supreme melodic gift and his use of ingenious technical devices.

The first setting is the Missa L’Homme armé super voces musicales, in which
Josquin begins the cantus firmus on ascending pitches throughout the Mass (beginning on C and ending on A).

A. Introduction: Although a few of the composers we have studied were famous
during their lifetimes (and for a while thereafter), no one achieved the “star” status of
Josquin des Prez.
1. His reputation was legendary during his lifetime and continues to be so
today.
2. Not only was his music well known, but his personality also interested
his contemporaries.
3. The printing of his works assisted in the spread of his popularity.
4. His works not only display the technical prowess one expects of the
high style ca. 1500, but they also reflect humanist values in the lowering of style.
B. A Poet Born, Not Made
1. By the time Josquin died, music had moved from being considered part
of the quadrivium to part of rhetoric.
a. Music, in response to emerging attitudes toward humanism,
could express ideas, emotions, etc.
b. Compositions had to move the listeners.
2. The theorist Glareanus is responsible for the Josquin legend, as related
in his Dodecachordon (1547).

Josquin’s Career
1. Josquin began his career not far from where Du Fay had worked and
died (Cambrai).
2. Early on, he also worked in Aix-en-Provence (the opposite end of
France from Cambrai) and for the Sforza family of Milan.
3. In 1489 he went to Rome to work for the papal chapel choir.
4. Josquin was working for the Duke of Ferrara (the d’Este family) by the
time Petrucci’s volumes were printed.
a. Josquin composed the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae in honor
of the Duke.

For more, see "Ave Maria...Virgo Serena."

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