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Josquin and Milan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

David Fallows
David Fallows
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Writing in 1882, Edmond Vander Straeten was the first to argue that the name ‘Juschino’ among the singers of Galeazzo Maria Sforza's household chapel referred to the composer Josquin des Prez. Assuming a birthdate in the early 1450s, Vander Straeten found it easy to understand why the young Josquin was at the bottom of the salary scale in 1475, the date of the documents. Soon afterwards, Eugenio Motta provided new evidence to support that identification and stretch Josquin's Milanese career to 1479. Since then the years in Milan have had a fixed and central place in all studies of Josquin's life.

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Articles
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 69 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Straeten, E. Vander, La musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXe siècle, vol. 6 (Brussels, 1882), 20–1.Google Scholar Confusingly, this epoch-making discussion is in his essay on Gaspar van Weerbeke (pp. 1–68) and not even mentioned in the ensuing essay on Josquin (pp. 69–124).

2 Motta, E., ‘Musici alia corte degli Sforza: ricerche e documenti milanesi’, Archivio storico lombardo, 2nd ser., 4 [anno 14] (1887), 29–64, 278–340 and 514–61: 527–8.Google Scholar

3 Sartori, C., ‘Josquin des Prés cantore del Duomo di Milano’ (1459–1472), Annales musicologiques, 4 (1956), 55–83.Google Scholar

4 As proposed by Clercx, Suzanne in Revue belge de musicologie, 11 (1957), 157–8Google Scholar, where she reports the new findings and proposes that Josquin's slow progress could suggest that in 1459 his voice had only just broken, therefore that he could have been born as late as 1444–5. But it is hard to see that his lowly position in 1477 is made any easier to understand by his being only thirty-two years old rather than thirty-seven. Moreover, Sartori, ‘Josquin des Prés’, 58, gives convincing enough peripheral reasons to eliminate that possibility.

5 Reinhard Strohm reminds me (personal communication) that ‘biscantor’ simply means ‘a singer of polyphony’, so it is just possible that Josquin was still a boy with an unbroken voice, thus conceivably born in about 1450 and fitting with the biographical model outlined by Vander Straeten (n. 1 above). But pending any clear evidence of the word ‘biscantor’ being used for a boy, I leave to others the pursuit of that fascinating idea.

6 Sartori, ‘Josquin des Prés’, 58, prudently adds the words ‘forse anche prima’ but then argues that his death in 1521 makes it hard to think he was born earlier than 1440, since somebody would surely have mentioned that he lived to an extraordinarily old age. I suggest that either eighty or eighty-five would equally have qualified as extremely old. In either case, as noted below, it is remarkable that the 1502 letter of Gian de Artiganova did not mention that Josquin was well over sixty at the time, if he really was.

7 I wish to record here my gratitude for extended discussions of this matter with many scholars, especially Bonnie J. Blackburn, Joshua Rifkin, Reinhard Strohm and Rob C. Wegman - though they cannot be held in any way responsible for the views and errors here. Moreover I am particularly grateful to Patrick Macey, who reacted generously to my initial suggestions; the original stimulus for this essay was in fact his kind gift of an offprint of his article ‘Some Thoughts on Josquin's lllibata Dei virgo nutrix and Galeazzo Maria Sforza’, in Clement, A. and Jas, E., eds., From Ciconia to Sweelinck: donum natalicium Willem Elders (Amsterdam, 1994), 111–24.Google Scholar

8 This is made particularly clear in Joshua Rifkin's unpublished paper ‘A Singer Named Josquin and Josquin D'Ascanio: Some Problems in the Biography of Josquin des Prez’, which demonstrates that several later references cannot concern the composer Josquin des Prez, that the composer ‘Josquin D'Ascanio’ - he of El grillo and In te Domine speravi - is almost certainly somebody else and that Josquin des Prez cannot have been employed by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. But the first hint of confusion was provided by Kellman, Herbert in his ‘Josquin and the Courts of the Netherlands and France: the Evidence of the Sources’, in Lowinsky, E. E. in collaboration with Blackburn, B. J., ed., Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Congress … 1971 (London, 1976), 181–216Google Scholar: see 186–9, drawing attention to a document that plainly refers to another singer named Josquin. Written at around the same time is Lewis Lockwood's article ‘ “Messer Gossino” and Josquin Desprez’, in Marshall, R. L., ed., Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel (Kassel, 1974), 15–24.Google Scholar

9 Sartori's last payment at the cathedral was dated 23 December 1472 and his first payment at the ducal chapel was 15 July 1474. Matthews, L. and Merkley, P. A., ‘Josquin Desprez and his Milanese Patrons’, The Journal of Musicology, 12 (1994), 434–63, quote (p. 440) a document of 18 January 1473 in which Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza describes Josquin as one of his singers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Esquieu, Y. and Coulet, N., ‘La musique a la cour provencale du roi Rene1’, Provence historique, 31 (1981), 299–312: see 301, ‘Josquinus Pratensis, Camercensis diocesis, clericus et cantor capelle serenissimi’, recording his presence there on 19 April 1477;Google ScholarRobin, F., ‘Josquin des Preès au service de Renè d'Anjou’, Revue de musicologie, 71 (1985), 180–1,CrossRefGoogle Scholar noting an expectative for ‘Jossequin des prez chantre’ to a prebend granted by Renè, dated 26 March 1478 at Aix-en-Provence. For the Cond6 document, discovered by Herbert Kellman, see Noble, J. et al. , The New Grove High Renaissance Masters (London, 1984), 6.Google Scholar

11 The fullest discussion of this is in the first chapter of Wegman, R. C., Born for the Muses: the Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar

12 Fallows, D., ‘The Life of Johannes Regis, ca. 1425 to 1496’, Revue beige de musicologie, 43 (1989), 143–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar: see 169–70. That view is, however, modified in Wegman, Born for the Muses, 73 n. 10.

13 Noblitt, T. L., ‘Die Datierung der Handschrift Mus. ms. 3154 der Staatsbibliothek Munchen’, Die Musikforschung, 27 (1974), 36–56.Google Scholar

14 See van Benthem, J. and Brown, H. M., Secular Works for Three Voices [New Josquin Edition, vol. 27]: Critical Commentary (Utrecht, 1991), 188–99, with the remark (p. 197) ‘It is unlikely to have been written by Josquin’.Google Scholar

15 See the summary in Wegman, Born for the Muses, 100 n. 12. Another possibly early source for the Mass L'ami Baudichon is PL-Pu 7022, described in Perz, M., ‘The Lvov Fragments: a Source for Works by Dufay, Josquin, Petrus de Domarto and Petrus de Grudencz in 15th-century Poland’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 36 (1986), 26–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Perz does note (pp. 27–8) that Piccard's date for the watermark is 1454–62, but he is understandably reluctant to accept this date for a source containing Dufay's Mass Ave regina celorum, surely not composed before 1470. Since the fragments also contain Josquin's Mass L'homme armi sexti toni, on different paper but apparently in the same hand, it would be hard to suggest a date much before 1490.

16 Lockwood, L., Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400–1505 (Oxford, 1984), 224–6.Google Scholar

17 See the remarks in Van Benthem and Brown, Secular Works for Three Voices, 97–8.

18 The motet Domine non secundum appears with an ascription to Josquin in Rome, Vat. Lib., I-Rvat San Pietro B 80, for which the basic copying has been established as around 1475; but the Josquin piece is patently a very late addition, perhaps as late as 1500, see the summary inCensus-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400–1550, IV (Neuhausen, 1988), 66–7.Google Scholar This is also the only Josquin piece in Cappella Sistina 35, of around 1490, with which it has closely synoptic readings.

19 In fact it must date from after 1502, at least in part. Joshua Rifkin privately pointed out to me that the Mass L'homme armi sexti toni in Librone 3 is copied directly from Petrucci's first book of Misse Josquin, published in that year. Rifkin particularly mentioned identity of ligatures, in which Petrucci's practice is to be unusually sparing, and near identity of text underlay; but even a glance at the commentary of the Smijers edition will show that there are no variants between the two sources - especially if one adds that Smijers omitted to mention under Milan the variants listed for Petrucci under Altus in Gloria, bar 90, and the strange discrepancy of mensuration signs in Credo bar 237 for Altus and Bassus. The other two Josquin Masses in Librone 3 were copied by the same hand but show no direct relationship to Petrucci's versions in his Missarum Josquin liber secundus (1505). This copyist (who did not copy the two Josquin motets into Librone 3) also wrote the whole of the frottola collection Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio, Basevi 2441, see Rifkin, J., ‘Scribal Concordances in some Renaissance Manuscripts in Florentine Libraries’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 305–26: see 306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 It is discussed in Brown, H. M., ‘On Veronica and Josquin’, in New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern, ed. Wright, J. with Floyd, S. A., (Warren, Mich., 1992), 49–61. Brown argues very cautiously in favour of its being by Josquin, but he firmly resists the temptation to suggest that it is early or composed for Milan.Google Scholar

21 Details of this manuscript and its contents appear in Ward, L. H., ‘The Motetti Missales Repertory Reconsidered’, Journal of the American Musciological Society, 39 (1986), 491–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I can see no clear evidence for the general belief that this is the latest of the Gaffurius codices, though it is hue, as Ward notes, p. 496, that the main hand there is found otherwise only in Librone 3.

22 In any case, those figures are slightly misleading, taken as they are from a simple totting up of the numbers presented in the Census-Catalogue, IV, 438–9. Individual items in motetti missales cycles are individually counted, but not those of Mass Ordinary cycles; and there are also several duplicates between the four choirbooks. If we count individual movements and eliminate duplications the figures would seem to be: Compère forty-one, Weerbeke twenty-nine, Josquin eighteen. That includes as being by Compare the three movements of the Mass De tous biens plaine in Librone 3, fols. 73v-78r, ascribed to Compere in the Berlin manuscript 40634 but to a certain Johannes Notens in Vienna, Nationalbibl. 11883. Steib, M., ‘Loyset Compère and his Recently Rediscovered Missa De tous biens plainè’, The Journal of Musicology, 11 (1993), 437–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that the cycle is indeed by Compere; but too much hangs on his assertion of stylistic similarity (which eludes me) between the cycle and Compere's motet Omnium bonorum plena on the same tenor.

23 Reprinted in Lowinsky, E. E. ed. B. J. Blackburn, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and other Essays (Chicago, 1989), 531–4Google Scholar; it was originally published as ‘Scholarship in Renaissance Music’, Renaissance News, 16 (1963), 255–62.Google Scholar

24 Strangely, Lowinsky does not actually mention Compere's Missa Galeazesca by name; but the title need not necessarily mean that it was composed in Galeazzo Maria Sforza's lifetime.

25 So far as I can see, this happens only once in the Gaffurius codices: the isolated Sanctus in Librone 2, fols. 35v-36r, and Librone 4, fols. 66v-67r. But Ward, ‘The Mottetti Missales Repertory Reconsidered’, 508–15, shows that this may well be part of a motetti missales cycle by Compere, a matter that would even further qualify the implications of the Benedictus substitute in Josquin's Mass D'ung aultre amer.

26 ‘Josquin in Context: Toward a Chronology of the Motets’, paper delivered at the 1978 Annual Congress of the American Musicological Society at Minneapolis and kindly made available to me by the author. Rifkin also discusses the apparently Milanese stylistic affiliations of Ave Maria… virgo serena and the motet cycle Qui velatus facie fuisti. My remarks below obviously apply equally to these.

27 Lowinsky, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance, 534, adds the following footnote: ‘Even were we to presume for one moment that the tradition of substitute Masses originated in Milan around 1470, would this rule out the possibility that Josquin, who in regard to freedom of his working methods has no equal, substituted a motet for the Benedictus of the Mass long after having left Milan?’ On which, see my remarks in note 25 above.

28 After 1471 Rene1 definitively left his northern home at Anjou to live in the south, mainly at Aix-en-Provence, where he died in 1480; see the ‘Itinèraire du roi Renè’ printed in Lecoy de la Marche, A., Le roi René: sa vie, son administration, ses travaux artistiques et littéraires, 2 vols. (Paris, 1875), II, 437–97.Google Scholar Among his many Italian interests were his patronage of the sculptors Pietro da Milano and Francesco Laurana as well as commissioning a massive three-metre medallion from Luca della Robbia to go on the facade of his palace in Aix; and he continued to style himself King of Sicily to the end of his life. See also Robin, F., La cour d'Anjou-Provence: la vie artistique sous le règne de Renè (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar, but note also the modifications to her views expressed in de Me'rindol, C., Le roi Renè el la seconde maison d'Anjou: embUmatique, art, histoire (Paris, 1987), 388.Google Scholar For his visit to the Milanese ducal library at Pavia in 1453 to see the manuscripts and other artistic treasures, see de Merindol, Le roi Renè, 172. His employment in 1449 of the former Milan Cathedral maestro di cappella Beltrame Feragut as evidence of Italian interests is treated with a certain caution in Allinson, L., ‘Two Accounts for the Chapel of Rene1 of Anjou (1449–45)’, RMA Research Chronicle, 26 (1993), 59–93Google Scholar: see 60.

29 See Macey, P., ‘Josquin's “Little” Ave Maria’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 39 (1989), 38–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Lowinsky in collaboration with Blackburn, , ed., Josquin des Prez (see n. 8), 360–6.Google Scholar

31 That they may also be lacking in the music of Weerbeke, Compere and Martini is beside the point; they sang only in the court chapel, which seems not to have used the Ambrosian liturgy; they were there for far fewer years; and they were all mature, experienced composers when they arrived.

32 Reprinted in Music in the Culture, 543.

33 Matthews, and Merkley, , ‘Josquin Desprez and his Milanese Patrons’, 446.Google Scholar

34 Welch, E. S., ‘Sight, Sound and Ceremony in the Chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza’, Early Music History, 12 (1993), 151–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Matthews and Merkley, ‘Josquin Desprez and his Milanese Patrons’.

36 For the document, first printed by Vander Straeten, see Osthoff, H., Josquin Desprez, I (Tutzing, 1962), 203.Google Scholar

37 I am grateful to Rob C. Wegman for this observation.

38 This letter has been printed many times, but for an edition with discussion and related documents, see Staehelin, M., Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs (Bern and Stuttgart, 1977), II, 56–9.Google Scholar

39 Lockwood, , ‘Josquin at Ferrara’, in Lowinsky in collaboration with Blackburn, , ed., Josquin des Prez, 103–37Google Scholar: see 113–14. The arguments are also available in Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 203–5.

40 The translation is that of Clement L. Miller (1965).