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Ave festiva ferculis and Josquin's Spanish Reputation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
Tarazona 2/3, a cathedral manuscript preserving mostly the music of Peñalosa and his Spanish contemporaries, contains one motet, with the text ‘Ave festiva ferculis’, attributed to ‘Jusquin’. It is a strange piece of music, clearly not the work of Josquin des Prez, but also very unusual within the manuscript, and its misattribution suggests that Josquin's actual music was not a familiar icon in Spain c.1530. This impression is supported by the sources, which reveal a real Spanish Josquin craze beginning in the 1540s, but a much spottier picture, emphasizing the early sacred music, in the decades before. Josquin's strong influence on Spanish music came late.
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References
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the International Conference ‘New Directions in Josquin Scholarship’, held at Princeton in October 1999. I am grateful to Rob Wegman for putting this conference together and to the participants for a very stimulating discussion, some of which is incorporated into this published version.Google Scholar
1 Tarazona 2/3 was originally a single manuscript, but was divided in the late sixteenth century into inner and outer portions. See Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400–1550, 5 vols., ed. Charles Hamm and Herbert Kellman, Renaissance Manuscript Studies, 1 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1979–88), sigla TaraC 2 and TaraC 3. There are rumours of an imminent restoration that will reconstruct its former order. For some recent discussions of the manuscript and its origin, see Hardie, Jane Morlet, ‘The Motets of Francisco de Peñalosa and their Manuscript Sources’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1983), esp. pp. 42–52; Tessa Wendy Knighton, ‘Music and Musicians at the Court of Fernando of Aragon, 1474–1516’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1983), esp. vol. i, pp. 137–44, later published as Tess Knighton, Música y músicos en la corte de Fernando el Católico 1474–1516, trans. Luis Gago (Zaragoza, 2001), 117–21; Kenneth Kreitner, ‘Franco-Flemish Elements in Tarazona 2 and 3’, Revista de musicología, 16 (1993), 2567–86; Emilio Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454: Study and Edition in the Context of the Iberian and Continental Manuscript Traditions’ (Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1992), esp. vol. i, pp. 237–44; and Roberta Freund (Schwartz), ‘Sevilla 5-5-20, Tarazona 2/3 y otras fuentes de la música ibérica del siglo XVI: Una reconsideración de relaciones’, Fuentes musicales en la península ibérica, ed. Maricarmen Gómez and Màrius Bernardó (Lleida, 2001), 203–17.Google Scholar
2 Knighton, ‘Music and Musicians’, i, 139–40 (Música y músicos, 119); see also Freund (Schwartz), ‘Sevilla 5-5-20, Tarazona 2/3 y otras fuentes de la música ibérica’, 212–16.Google Scholar
3 Kreitner, ‘Franco-Flemish Elements’, 2576–8; see also Honey Meconi, ‘La Rue, Pierre de’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn (London, 2001), xiv, 282–9 (p. 287).Google Scholar
4 I am grateful to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for this translation and for certain details of the reading and interpretation.Google Scholar
5 Kreitner, ‘Franco-Flemish Elements’, 2571, 2575.Google Scholar
6 The only other example known to me is Ave rosa speciosa, an anonymous unicum in the Chigi Codex which has been attributed to Regis by Edward F. Houghton in ‘A “New” Motet by Johannes Regis’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 33 (1983), 49–74. I am grateful to someone at the Princeton conference – I am sorry that I cannot remember who it was – for drawing it to my attention.Google Scholar
7 I can think of only two people in Spain who could conceivably be the subject of an attribution to ‘Jusquin’. One is a singer named Gasquin de Claquin, who joined the Aragonese royal chapel in April 1479, served there till 1492, and then disappeared from the records (see Knighton, ‘Music and Musicians’, ii, 13–23; Música y músicos, 171–5), who would probably be too early to have written this piece. The other is Josse Van Steelandt, a singer in Philip the Fair's chapel on both of his trips to Spain; see for example Edmond Vander Straeten, La musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXe siècle, vii: Les musiciens néerlandais en Espagne (Brussels, 1885), 152–70, 274; I am grateful to Jeffrey Dean for mentioning him to me. There is no evidence that Claquin was a composer; on the possibility that Steelandt was, see below, note 14.Google Scholar
8 Robert Stevenson, ‘Josquin in the Music of Spain and Portugal’, Josquin des Prez, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky (London, 1976), 217–46 (p. 217).Google Scholar
9 See Baker, Norma Klein, ‘An Unnumbered Manuscript of Polyphony in the Archives of the Cathedral of Segovia’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1978), esp. vol. i, pp. 34–62, and the inventory in vol. ii. For an updating of some of these debates, see for example Martin Picker, ‘Henricus Isaac and Fortuna desperata’; Honey Meconi, ‘Poliziano, Primavera, and Perugia 431: New Light on Fortuna desperata’; and Joshua Rifkin, ‘Busnoys and Italy: The Evidence of the Songs’, Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music, ed. Paula Higgins (Oxford, 1999), 431–45, 465–503, 505–71.Google Scholar
10 An instructive example is Barcelona 454/A, which, according to Ros-Fábregas in ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 18–28, 97–100, originated in the north and came to Catalonia with a number of northern pieces, several of them anonymous, already copied; Spanish pieces were later added, but the original corpus remained distinct in handwriting and, one would think, musical style. Would these anonymous pieces have registered with the book's users as foreign?Google Scholar
11 On these sources, see Census-Catalogue, iv, 203–15; Robert Stevenson, ‘The Toledo Manuscript Polyphonic Choirbooks and Some Other Lost or Little Known Flemish Sources’, Fontes artis musicae, 20 (1973), 87–107; and Michael John Noone, ‘Andrés de Torrentes (1510-1580): Spanish Polyphonist and Chapelmaster: Opera omnia, Biography and Source Study’ (MA dissertation, University of Sydney, 1982). I have excluded a number of Toledo manuscripts that originated after 1550.Google Scholar
12 Fifth if we count Spanish composers: Anchieta has six motets in the manuscript (if the attribution for the disputed O bone Jesu is believed and if Domine ne memineris and Domine non secundum are counted as separate pieces, as the scribe treated them; see below, note 47).Google Scholar
13 José Romeu Figueras, La música en la corte de los reyes católicos, iv/1: Cancionero musical de Palacio (siglos XV–XVI), Monumentos de la música española, 14 (Barcelona, 1965), 19–20; see also Elena Ferrari-Barassi, ‘Frottole en el cancionero musical de Palacio’, Revista de musicología, 16 (1993), 1482–98.Google Scholar
14 This debate began with a paper by Joshua Rifkin entitled ‘A Singer Named Josquin and Josquin d'Ascanio: Some Problems in the Biography of Josquin des Prez’, presented at the Seventeenth Annual Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music (Reading, July 1989); I am grateful to Mr Rifkin for sending me a copy of this article, now greatly expanded and revised, before publication. This expanded draft brings up two matters relevant to the present argument: first, that at least one sixteenth-century witness, Aegidius Tschudi (possibly following the advice of his teacher, Glarean) believed that the author of In te domine speravi was Josquin des Prez, and second, that the piece's real composer could conceivably have been Josse Van Steelandt (see above, note 7). See also for example David Fallows, ‘Josquin and Milan’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 5 (1996), 69–80; Patrick Macey, ‘Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Musical Patronage in Milan: Compère, Weerbeke, and Josquin’, Early Music History, 15 (1996), 147–212; Lora Matthews and Paul Merkley, ‘Iudochus de Picardia and Jossequin Lebloitte dit Desprez: The Names of the Singer(s)’, Journal of Musicology, 16 (1988), 200–26; and Richard Sherr, ‘Three Settings of Italian Texts and Two Secular Motets’, The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr (Oxford, 2000), 421–30 (pp. 425–8).Google Scholar
15 On this discussion, see for example Martin Picker, The Chanson Albums of Marguerite of Austria (Berkeley, CA, 1965), 86–7, 158–61; Baker, ‘An Unnumbered Manuscript of Polyphony’, i, 52–3; A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS Banco Rari 229, ed. Howard Mayer Brown, Monuments of Renaissance Music, 7 (Chicago, 1983), 221–2; and Louise Litterick, ‘Chansons for Three and Four Voices’, The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr, 335–91 (pp. 336–8).Google Scholar
16 Werken van Josquin des Prez, ed. Albert Smijers, Miroslav Antonowycz and Willem Elders, 55 vols. (Amsterdam, 1922–69), lv, 41–4.Google Scholar
17 Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454’, i, 137–8; see also Stevenson, ‘Josquin in the Music of Spain and Portugal’, 219–20; Dionisio Preciado, ‘Francisco de Peñalosa versus Josquin Desprez’, Revista de musicología, 12 (1989), 423–30; Kreitner, ‘Franco-Flemish Elements’, 2570; and Tess Knighton, ‘Francisco de Peñalosa: New Works Lost and Found’, Encomium musicae: Essays in Memory of Robert J. Snow, ed. David Crawford and G. Grayson Wagstaff (Hillsdale, 2002), 231–57 (p. 256).Google Scholar
18 Helmuth Osthoff, Josquin Desprez (Tutzing, 1962–5), ii, 232–3.Google Scholar
19 Werken van Josquin des Prez, ed. Smijers, Antonowycz and Elders, liii, 27–9.Google Scholar
20 Helmuth Osthoff, ‘Das Magnificat bei Josquin Desprez’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 16 (1959), 220–31 (p. 230).Google Scholar
21 Werken van Josquin des Prez, ed. Smijers, Antonowycz and Elders, lv, 30–5.Google Scholar
22 Peter Urquhart, liner notes to Cappella Alamire, The Early Josquin (Dorian Discovery DIS-80131, 1995), 5; Richard Sherr, ‘Two Hymns and Three Magnificats’, The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr, 321–34 (pp. 331–4).Google Scholar
23 Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 206–23.Google Scholar
24 My count of sources is taken from the most convenient summary, Sydney Robinson Charles, Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Research (New York, 1983), 17–66. As for the Petrucci prints, all three Masses appear in Josquin's first book (1502); Bergerette savoyenne is in the Odhecaton (1501); Ave Maria … virgo serena is in Motetti A (1502); Domine non secundum is in Motetti B (1503); and Vultum tuum is in Motetti libro quarto (1505).Google Scholar
25 Census-Catalogue, iv, 207–8.Google Scholar
26 The Smijers edition (Werken van Josquin des Prez, ed. Smijers, Antonowycz and Elders, xiv, 125–30), based on Petrucci, has an Agnus I in four voices, an Agnus II in three, and an Agnus III in six with a canon; Segovia (which may predate Petrucci) has only the Agnus I and then the rubric, ‘[el] iii agnus supra xpe’; see Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘Masses Based on Popular Songs and on Syllables’, The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr, 51–87 (p. 68).Google Scholar
27 Ros-Fábregas has made this suggestion (among others) in ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 223; I shall develop my reasons for supporting it elsewhere.Google Scholar
28 The Missa ‘Fortuna desperata’ is the first item in the manuscript; the altus and bassus for the Kyrie are on f. 1, so that the missing superius and tenor, plus the attribution if any, would have been on f. [0]v. Next is Obrecht's Missa ‘Salve diva parens’, unattributed but beginning very close to the top of the page, so that an attribution may have been trimmed; and third is Isaac's Missa ‘Comme femme’, with an attribution trimmed half off.Google Scholar
29 The manuscript has text incipits for the tenor voice in the Gloria and the superius in the Credo; some text is missing, probably by mistake, in the bassus to the Et in terra section.Google Scholar
30 Folio 10v has the superius and tenor to the Agnus II; f. 11 is blank. I do not know the gathering structure of Barcelona 5.Google Scholar
31 The best effort to date is Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454’, i, 179–85, which concludes only ‘early sixteenth century’ for both layers (of which this Mass is in the first).Google Scholar
32 One other oddity: the staves marked ‘tenor’ on ff. 52v–53, for the Kyrie, are actually the Christe altus and the Kyrie II bassus. None of the real tenor lines is there at all, and apparently they were to be derived from the two marked voices, which do show the two sections of the L'homme armé tune but which do not suffice as tenors to the Kyrie.Google Scholar
33 See for example Blackburn, ‘Masses Based on Popular Songs’, 53.Google Scholar
34 One section was intabulated by Valderrábano (1547) and one is in Toledo 21 (1549); the whole Mass is in Toledo 9, from somewhere in the middle of the century, and much of it was intabulated by Pisador (1552). For details, see Charles, Josquin des Prez, esp. p. 49.Google Scholar
35 Kreitner, ‘Franco-Flemish Elements’, 2573–5.Google Scholar
36 There is one other potential bit of Mass music: the opening (bars 1–39 of the Smijers edition; Werken van Josquin des Prez, ed. Smijers, Antonowycz and Elders, xxx–xxxi) of the Gloria to the Missa de beata virgine, superius only, appears unattributed on f. 59v of Barcelona 454/B. It is hard to know of what this was supposed to be a part or, perhaps more important, when it was copied: its hand is one that Ros-Fábregas ('The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454’, i, 35–8; ii, 139–40) does not identify elsewhere in the manuscript, so it is probably a later addition and thus not directly relevant to my argument here. It was David Fallows who first identified this little fragment; its identity was published by Tess Knighton in ‘Transmisión, difusión y recepción de la polifonía franco-neerlandesa en el reino de Aragón a principios del siglo XVI’, Artigrama, 12 (1996–7), 19–38 (p. 26, n. 26).Google Scholar
37 See for example Fallows, ‘Josquin and Milan’, 72.Google Scholar
38 George Warren James Drake, ‘The First Printed Books of Motets, Petrucci's Motetti A numero trentare A (Venice, 1502) and Motetti de passione, de cruce, de sacramento, de beata virgine et huiusmodi B (Venice, 1503): A Critical Study and Complete Edition’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1972), esp. vol. i, 40–1, 291–304. Strictly speaking, the Ave Maria is second, after a textless canon; but it is the first motet of Motetti A.Google Scholar
39 Thomas, Jennifer S., in ‘Modern Myopia and the Renaissance Motet’, read at the Sixtieth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Minneapolis, October 1994), put it in fourteenth place in her ‘core repertory’ of motets as printed in sixteenth-century sources. It is the sixth Josquin motet on the list, after Benedicta es (no. 1), Stabat mater (2), Preter rerum (3), Pater noster (5) and Inviolata integra (10).Google Scholar
40 See Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 18–28 (also p. 150 for a false attribution in the secondary literature).Google Scholar
41 Ibid., i, 49–51.Google Scholar
42 My figures for all these Josquin pieces are taken from the edition by Smijers et al.; for consistency I shall count all final longs as one bar.Google Scholar
43 On the sources and the debate over the nature of this work – what should be included and whether it should be called a motet cycle or a set of motetti missales – see Macey, Patrick, ‘Josquin's “Little” Ave Maria: A Misplaced Motet from the Vultum tuum Cycle?’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 39 (1989), 38–53; David Kidger, ‘Motet-Cycle or Motetti Missales: A Reappraisal of Josquin Desprez's Vultum tuum deprecabuntur’, read at the Sixty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Boston, October–November 1998); and Willem Elders, ‘Symbolism in the Sacred Music of Josquin’, The Josquin Companion, ed. Sherr, 531–68 (pp. 542–3).Google Scholar
44 Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 51, 130.Google Scholar
45 Folio 66v is the superius and tenor of Richafort's Quem dicunt, anonymous, in the late hand; the missing folio must have had the altus and bassus on the recto and the superius and tenor to partes 1, 2 and 3 of Domine non secundum on the verso; f. 67 is the altus and bassus of those partes, in the early hand; and ff. 67v–68 are the quarta pars of Domine non secundum. The missing folio must have disappeared before the manuscript was foliated; whether it had an attribution to Josquin is impossible to say (see above, note 28, for the problem of attributions in this layer of Barcelona 5).Google Scholar
46 The chant is in the Liber usualis, 527. Madrid's setting, probably from the 1480s or early 1490s, is in Paris 4379; I hope to publish my edition in due course. Anchieta's setting is in Segovia, its two sections divided and placed among three- and four-voice works; it is edited by Samuel Rubio in Juan de Anchieta, Opera omnia (Guipuzcoa, 1980), 83–92. For a broader perspective, see Sherr, Richard, ‘Illibata dei virgo nutrix and Josquin's Roman Style’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 41 (1988), 434–64, esp. the Appendix (pp. 455–62).Google Scholar
47 Anchieta's settings of Conditor alme siderum and Domine non secundum (concerning which see above, note 12) are unica in Segovia s.s. Peñalosa's worklist is more problematic, but it includes one generally accepted motet, Tribularer si nescerem, found in Toledo 21 and Barcelona 454 but not Tarazona 2/3, and three works, Gloria laus (Tarazona 5), Versa est in luctum (Toledo 21) and a Kyrie (Barcelona 5), on which some doubt has been cast; see for example Hardie, ‘The Motets of Francisco de Peñalosa’, Knighton, ‘Peñalosa: New Works’, and James Griffin Lamar, ‘Peñalosa Dubia and Spuria’ (M.M. thesis, University of Memphis, 2000).Google Scholar
48 The tabla to Tarazona 2/3 was published by Higini Anglès in La música en la corte de los reyes católicos, i: Polifonía religiosa, Monumentos de la música española, 1 (Barcelona, 1941), 122–3; a better transcription is in Autores hispanos de los siglos XV–XVI de los MS. 2 y 5 de la Catedral de Tarazona, ed. Pedro Calahorra, Polifonía aragonesa, 9 (Zaragoza, 1995), 17–21.Google Scholar
49 On the date of Colombina, see Kreitner, Kenneth, ‘The Date(s) of the Cancionero de la Colombina’, Fuentes musicales en la península ibérica, ed. Gómez and Bernardó; on that of Segovia, see Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 206–23.Google Scholar
50 Exact figures are not possible because of some textual grey areas and our incomplete understanding of Iberian liturgical traditions; my informal count is made with the help of Hardie, ‘The Motets of Francisco de Peñalosa’, 150–64, and an unpublished paper by Tess Knighton, ‘The Motet Repertory of Tarazona Cathedral, MS 2/3‘, read at the University of Memphis in November 1993.Google Scholar
51 For two typical specimens, see Alexander, Peter Marquis, ‘The Motets of Pedro Escobar’ (M.M. thesis, Indiana University, 1976), 234–41. I am grateful to my student David McNair for his transcriptions of and essay on the group as a whole.Google Scholar
52 I have written about these Masses in ‘Franco-Flemish Elements’ and in Kenneth Kreitner, ‘Peñalosa on Record’, Early Music, 22 (1994), 309–18; see also Robert Stevenson, Spanish Music in the Age of Columbus (The Hague, 1960), 153–62.Google Scholar
53 The text is adapted from Joel 2. 17.Google Scholar
54 Peñalosa's motet style is discussed at more length in a number of places, notably Stevenson, Spanish Music, 157–8; Hardie, ‘The Motets of Francisco de Peñalosa’, 229–35; Kreitner, ‘Peñalosa on Record’; and Knighton, ‘Peñalosa: New Works’. For a stylistic discussion of this repertory that goes much beyond Peñalosa, see also Wolfgang Freis, ‘Cristóbal de Morales and the Spanish Motet in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century: An Analytical Study of Selected Motets by Morales and Competitive Settings in SEV-BC 1 and TARAZ-C 2–3‘ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1992), esp. pp. 176–216.Google Scholar
55 Translation from Francisco de Peñalosa: Motets for 4 and 5 Voices, ed. Martyn Imrie (London, 1990), 55; I write more extensively on the piece in ‘Peñalosa on Record’, 311–13.Google Scholar
56 These are Ave verum corpus, attributed to Peñalosa in the tabla (where the name was later crossed out) but not on the page, and not in Peñalosa's usual style (see Kreitner, ‘Peñalosa on Record’, 312); and O decus virgineum, on which see Knighton, ‘Peñalosa: New Works’.Google Scholar
57 See, for example, the facsimiles reproduced in Francisco de Peñalosa, Opera omnia, i: Motetes, ed. Dionisio Preciado (Madrid, 1986), 74–5.Google Scholar
58 These figures are taken, under the rules as outlined in note 42 above, from the monumental editions: for Peñalosa (including the two anonymous pieces) the Preciado edition cited in the previous note; for Anchieta, the Opera omnia, ed. Rubio; and for Escobar, Alba, Ribera (including O bone Jesu), Diaz, Illario and Sanabria, Autores hispanos, ed. Calahorra. Different manuscripts may give different results: for instance, Precor te, mentioned above as one of the two motets longer than Ave festiva, has 126 bars n Tarazona and two other sources, but only 101 in Coimbra 12 (see the Preciado edition, 41–2 and 159–79, and Hardie, ‘The Motets of Francisco de Peñalosa’, 134–7).Google Scholar
59 Loyset Compère, Opera omnia, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 15 (n.p., 1961), iv, 8–10. My figures, still under the rules of note 42 above, divide Finscher's double-length bars in two.Google Scholar
60 Tess Knighton, ‘Una confluencia de capillas: El caso de Toledo, 1502‘, La Capilla Real de los Austrias: Música y ritual de corte en la Europa moderna, ed. Juan José Carreras and Bernardo García (Madrid, 2001), 127–49.Google Scholar
61 On the L'homme armé tune and the Order of the Golden Fleece, see for example William Prizer, ‘Music and Ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the Fair and the Order of the Golden Fleece’, Early Music History, 5 (1985), 113–54, esp. pp. 128–9; Richard Taruskin, ‘Antoine Busnoys and the L'homme armé Tradition’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39 (1986), 253–93; and Barbara Haggh, ‘The Archives of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Music’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 120 (1995), 1–43, esp. pp. 28–37.Google Scholar
62 On conflicting attributions in this repertory, see for example Hardie, ‘The Motets of Francisco de Peñalosa’, passim; Knighton, ‘Music and Musicians’, i, 132–46; eadem, ‘Peñalosa: New Works’; Ros-Fábregas, ‘The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454‘, i, 175–346; and Owen Rees, Polyphony in Portugal, c.1530–c.1620: Sources from the Monastery of Santa Cruz, Coimbra (New York, 1995), 413–29.Google Scholar