That sort of confusion is the usual situation with Josquin, alas. Determined research has produced an
intermittently detailed but stubbornly gapped picture of his career. The details, moreover, have fluctuated
greatly over the years, as more recent findings have not only supplemented earlier ones but at times
invalidated them. The facts, then, have always, and necessarily, been complemented by an ever-changing
web of speculation and inference.
According to the most recent scholarly consensus (summarized by Richard Sherr, the editor of The
Josquin Companion, published by the Oxford University Press in 2000), Josquin was born in or near the
town of St-Quentin in Picardy, a northeasterly region of France, about 20 miles south of the cathedral city
of Cambrai where Du Fay had worked. The first document to mention him is a bequest of land from his
uncle and aunt, dated December 1466 and executed in the town where they lived, Condé-sur-l’Escaut, a