FIG. 14-2 Heinrich Loris, who wrote as Henricus Glareanus, in a sketch by Hans Holbein found in the margin of a copy of
Desiderius Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1515) at the Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland.
Glareanus illustrated all twelve modes by citing the works of Josquin, and he was among the first
theorists to use mode theory (as adapted by himself) to analyze polyphonic music. As Glareanus
conceived of modal polyphony, the various strands of a polyphonic texture were (usually) cast alternately
in the authentic and plagal variants of the modal scale represented by the composition’s final. Typically,
the structural pair of superius and tenor represented the authentic and the contratenors (altus and bassus)
the plagal.
Again, it is questionable whether Glareanus’s novel terms and methods contributed materially to the
understanding of contemporary music. But he certainly did succeed in grounding contemporary music in a
discourse of classical authority, turning Josquin into the musical equivalent of a classical master like
Horace or Cicero. That being the essential humanist task, Glareanus, musically insignificant though he
may appear, was culturally very significant indeed. It was he, if anyone, who brought “the Renaissance”
to music, and made Josquin des Prez the first “Renaissance” composer.
Glareanus’s anecdotes are mainly of the “aristocracy of genius” variety, centering on Josquin’s
reputed service at the court of King Louis XII of France, and on the audacity, tempered with wit, with
which the composer supposedly comported himself in the presence of his royal patron. To remind the king
of a forgotten promise, for example, Josquin is said to have composed a motet on the words Memor esto
verbi tui servo tuo (“Remember these thy words unto thy servant”) from the very lengthy Psalm 118. And
when the king, thus reminded, made his promise good, “then Josquin, having experienced the liberality of
a ruler, immediately began, as an act of gratitude, another Psalm”^9 —a motet on the words Bonitatem
fecisti servo tuo, Domine (“Thou hast dealt well with Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word”),
which actually come from the same Psalm.
By now, this second motet is definitely known not to be a work of Josquin’s. Bonitatem fecisti is
securely attributed to a younger, minor contemporary of Josquin named Elzéar Genet, alias Carpentras,
under whose name it was published in 1514 by the very authoritative Petrucci, in a volume called Motetti
della corona (“Crown motets”) that supposedly contained the repertory of the French court chapel,
including Memor esto. There is, however, a manuscript that attributes both motets to Josquin: a songbook
compiled in the 1540s by another Swiss humanist named Aegidius Tschudi, where the two motets