FIG. 14-1 Jean Perréal, The Liberal Arts: Music, a fresco from the cathedral of Le Puy in Auvergne, France. The shorter figure,
possibly because of his characteristic hat, has been speculatively identified as Josquin des Prez. The one extant representation
of Josquin that was possibly rendered from life—a woodcut published in 1611 copied from a panel portrait in oil that once
adorned the walls of the church of Sainte Gudule in Brussels—is often reproduced; it shows a somewhat similar headdress and
features that are not imcompatible with those in the Le Puy painting.
The kind of legendary or symbolic status that both Josquin and Beethoven achieved in their times can
tell us a lot about those times. Both composers broke through to plateaus of prestige and cultural influence
beyond the reach of their predecessors. It can seem that by the sheer force of their example they caused
the world to look not only upon their music but upon music itself, with new eyes, and to listen with new
ears. A more accurate way of putting it, perhaps, would be to say that they each provided an apt focal
point for the crystallization of new attitudes about music and about artistic creation.
Josquin was the first composer to interest his contemporaries and (especially) his posterity as a
personality. He was the subject of gossip and anecdote, and the picture that emerges again resembles the
popular conception of Beethoven: a cantankerous, arrogant, distracted sort of man, difficult in social
intercourse but excused by grace of his transcendent gift. Josquin, like Beethoven, was looked upon with
awe as one marked off from others by divine inspiration—a status formerly reserved for prophets and
saints. Among “musicians,” it had formerly been reserved for Pope Gregory alone (at least when his dove
was present).
This, indeed, is the kernel of our popular conception of artistic genius to this day. But saying “to this
day” implies a false continuity. Josquin was so regarded, and Beethoven was so regarded, but between
Josquin’s time and Beethoven’s there were other times (and, of course, places) in which artists were not
so regarded or valued. The “humanistic” sensibility that elevated Josquin and the “romantic” one that
elevated Beethoven had an important component in common, though: namely a high awareness and
appreciation of individualism. In both cases, moreover, that high awareness and appreciation stemmed on
the one hand from cultural and social conditions, and on the other from economic and commercial ones.
Here the parallels must end, because the applicable conditions were not the same in Josquin’s and
Beethoven’s times. For now the task will be to understand Josquin against the background of his time—a
time that formed him, to be sure, but one that he helped form as well. Powerful individuals and historical
conditions are never in a fixed or static relationship. Their formation is inevitably reciprocal, and for that
reason all the more inexhaustibly fascinating.