The Classical Music Book

43

See also: Messe de Notre Dame 36–37 ■ Missa l’homme armé 42 ■

Canticum Canticorum 46–51 ■ St. Matthew Passion 98–105

RENAISSANCE 1400–1600

TONGUE, PROCLAIM

THE MYSTERY OF THE

GLORIOUS BODY

MISSA PANGE LINGUA (c.1515), JOSQUIN DESPREZ

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Dissemination of music

BEFORE

c.1415–1420 The largest

collection of 14th-century

Italian music, the Squarcialupi

Codex illuminated manuscript,

is compiled in Florence.

1457 The Codex Psalmorum,

produced in the German

city of Mainz, is the first

printed book to contain

music, although the notation

is handwritten.

AFTER

c.1520 English printer John

Rastell produces the first

music where the staves,

notes, and text are printed

in a single impression.

1710 The Statute of Anne,

enacted in Britain, gives

authors copyright over their

printed work for the first time,

a right finally extended to

music composition in 1777.

J

osquin Desprez, born in

France around 1450, was

an early beneficiary of the

printing press. Until the invention

of the technology in the mid-15th

century, music was copied out by

hand, by professional copyists.

According to the 16th-century

Swiss music theorist Heinrich

Glarean, Desprez “published his

works after much deliberation

and with manifold corrections.”

This care and attention made

his compositions a favorite in the

emerging music publishing market.

Desprez’s contemporary, the

Italian printer Ottaviano Petrucci,

perfected a method for printing

music in three passes: the staves,

followed by notes, and then the

words. Petrucci’s first publication,

Odhecaton, a selection of nearly

100 secular pieces, mostly by

Franco-Flemish composers,

including Desprez, Alexander

Agricola, Antoine Busnois, and

Jacob Obrecht, appeared in 1501.

To meet the challenge of a first

collection of polyphonic music for

the Mass with underlayed text,

Petrucci chose to devote his Misse

(1502) to works solely by Desprez.

A late Mass

Missa Pange lingua was one

of Desprez’s final compositions,

taking its central melody from

a hymn for the Feast of Corpus

Christi written by the 13th-century

Italian friar and theologian Thomas

Aquinas. The work was not ready

in time for Petrucci’s final book

of masses in 1514, but it survived

in manuscript form and was

finally published in 1532. ■

Now that Josquin is dead,

he is putting out more works

than when he was alive!

Georg Forster

German composer (1510–1568)

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