CHAPTER 14

Josquin and the Humanists

JOSQUIN DES PREZ IN FACT AND LEGEND; PARODY MASSES

WHAT LEGENDS DO

As with Machaut in chapter 9, we are going to take time out, so to speak, and devote a whole chapter to

a single composer. This time the close-up will be on Josquin des Prez (d. 1521), whose work has already
figured, alongside that of Busnoys, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Isaac, Martini, and others, in chapters 12 and 13.
It is appropriate to single him out at this point, not only because of the intrinsic quality of his music
(although that is axiomatic) but also—and mainly—because Josquin became a legend in his own time,
remained a legend throughout the sixteenth century, and became one again when he was discovered by
modern historians. Burney, in the late eighteenth century, called him “the type of all Musical excellence at
the time in which he lived,” and so he has remained in the eye of history.^1 His supreme legendary status
has caused Josquin to be studied more intensively, and in greater detail, than any contemporary. Yet in
seeming (but only seeming) paradox, that same legendary status has also worked to hide him from view.

To the student of history, the Josquin legend is if anything even more important than the composer
himself, because in describing it and accounting for its formation we may gain some critical insight into
certain momentous changes that took place in the sixteenth century affecting attitudes toward music and its
creators. These changes, in their relationship to the body of contemporary thought known as humanism,
provide whatever justification there is for the use of the word “Renaissance” as applied to music.

In his unprecedented stature and his undisputed preeminence in the eyes of his contemporaries and
posterity, Josquin has never failed to remind recent historians of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827),
who was similarly regarded three centuries later, and who retains a similar quasi-legendary aura.
Drawing parallels between them is easy; doing so has become traditional in music historiography. Unease
with this tradition has occasionally been expressed by those who see in it a danger to an unprejudiced
view of Josquin and his time. Certainly we learn little if we merely assimilate what is less familiar to
what is more familiar. To think of Josquin merely as a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Beethoven would be
like placing him behind the nearer figure and thereby obscuring him from view.

Worse, drawing parallels between historically remote figures simply on the basis of their perceived
greatness may lead to the perpetuation of what many regard as an insidious art-idolatry that discourages
critical thinking about artists and their work. Unease is certainly justified if unwarranted parallels are
drawn between the two composers as persons, or if such parallels lead to (or even result from) an
ahistorical, contingent but mistakenly universalized concept of “essential” musical greatness. Yet at the
same time drawing parallels between Josquin and Beethoven as cultural figures can also shed light on the
ways in which “cultural figures” are constructed.