Today, academic detectives look for the real
Josquin. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
For my money, the greatest
composer who ever lived was the somewhat shadowy
figure of Josquin Desprez. Josquin defined the new
music of the Renaissance. You've probably heard his
L'homme armé masses. You've
surely heard his little choral piece El
Grillo -- the one that makes such a fine
imitation of a cricket.
When I was in graduate school, musicologists were
waging holy wars with one another over Josquin's
particulars. Today a few of those particulars are
in pretty good order. We know Josquin was born in
the northern part of France around 1440. That rough
date comes from the 1459 records of a Milan
cathedral which identify him as "Jodocho de frantia
biscantori." "Jodocho de frantia" was an Italian
version of his name. "Biscantori" meant a young
adult singer.
The spelling of his name changes from place to
place and time to time. Historians finally saw that
Josquin himself told us how he wanted his name
spelled in a five-voice motet, Illibata
Dei. He arranged the text to spell his name
out in an acrostic puzzle.
Much of what we know about Josquin's life is
spelled out that way in his music. When the Flemish
composer Johannes Ockeghem died, Josquin wrote a
heart-rending lament on his death. He has singers
reading the roll of great composers who learned
from Ockeghem and Josquin's name heads the list. If
he wasn't Ockeghem's actual student, he was
certainly his spiritual inheritor.
The title of a Josquin mass, the Missa
'Hercules Dux Ferrarie', tells who his
patron was, but this time Josquin did more. He
matched the vowels of "Hercules Dux Ferrarie" to
notes of the scale. The first e
suggests the syllable re. The second
vowel, u, suggests the syllable
ut which was the medieval
do, and so forth. He got
re-do-re-do-re-fa-mi-re, and that
binding thread runs through every movement of the
mass -- Ky-ri-e e-le-(e)-i-son. The only reason we
remember an obscure duke of Ferrara is that Josquin
wove that odd memorial around his name.
Josquin died in 1521, just past 80. With his
linguist's mind, his mathematician's mind -- his
wide-ranging genius mind -- he redirected western
music. At the end, he bequeathed his house and land
to the Church of Notre Dame in Condé. He
asked the church's singers to stop by his house
during festival processions and sing his settings
of the Pater Noster and Ave
Maria.
From that touching gesture music historians
conclude that Josquin had a choir at Condé
that could handle six-part harmony. That's a small
thing to make a point of, but it reminds us how
hard it is to read the record of 500 years ago.
Josquin wrote some of the loveliest music I know.
And I'm grateful to historians for any small bits
they can give me -- about the times and the person
who produced such music.
I'm John Lienhard at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Reese, G., Josquin Desprez. The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Stanley
Sadie, ed.). New York: MacMillan Publishers Ltd.,
1980, Vol. 9, pp. 713-738.
I am grateful to Carol Lienhard for considerable
expertise and assistance with this episode. The
only recording of Missa 'Hercules Dux
Ferrarie' that I've been able to find is one
I sang myself: Music of Bach, Josquin, and
Hindemith, The Berkeley Chamber Singers,
Music Library Recording No. 7075, 1959. Josquin's
Ave Maria, El Grillo and
L'homme Armé masses have been
recorded repeatedly.
For more on Josquin see Episode 781. For a picture of Josquin and
an extract from the New Grove, see the
following website:
http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/josquin.html.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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