motets” identified in chapter 13 with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the brother of Ascanio Sforza, Josquin’s
sometime patron. Far from the revolutionary work that Lowinsky sought and found in it, it now appears to
be fully representative of its fifteenth-century parent repertory, even if, as we are all likely to agree, its
artistic quality far outstrips that of its companions. Though exceptionally realized and full of idiosyncratic
detail, its style nevertheless reflects its time and place. Both in its avoidance of a cantus-firmus-bearing
tenor and in its close-fitting text-music relationship it resonates less with lofty humanism than with its
near-opposite, the stylistic “lowering” associated in chapter 13 with the influence of local, nonliterate
popular genres.
When Noblitt’s article was published, Josquin des Prez was still erroneously identified with the
Iudochus de Picardia who had sung in the Milanese cathedral choir as early as 1459. For a while, it was
argued that the famous Ave Maria was actually intended for use in a “loco Mass” as described in the
previous chapter. Now that Josquin’s early presence in Milan has been disproved, the relationship
between his motet and the Milanese tradition is no longer quite so obvious. But Josquin certainly was in
Milan during his time of service to Ascanio Sforza, most securely documented for the period 1484–85.
Some scholars have tried to reconcile Noblitt’s source evidence with this later date, reasonably arguing
that music copied on paper with a 1476 watermark need not have been entered immediately after the
paper was procured, and that the year 1476 should not be regarded as anything more than a “terminus post
quem”—the earliest possible date rather than necessarily the actual one.^25
Even 1485, however, is too early a date to support the claims that Lowinsky made for the motet, or for
its composer’s intentions. To acknowledge this, however, is by no means to deny the status of Ave Maria
... Virgo serena as an exemplary (or even “prophetic”) sixteenth-century composition. It survived in print,
in memory, and in use, and achieved renewed currency thanks to the work of the humanists who
appropriated it. It did indeed play an important part in establishing a genuine tradition of musical
humanism. Works of art certainly can and often do transcend their time and place of origin (as anyone
attending concerts today can attest), and works that have so survived can exert influence at the farthest,
most improbable temporal and geographic remove.
In the nineteenth century, for example, the first century to have a “modern” historical sense, the
century-old vocal works of J. S. Bach were revived and had a far more direct impact on contemporary
composition than they ever had during the composer’s lifetime. In the twentieth century, an even more
history-obsessed age, much older repertories exhumed by musicology (including “medieval” and
“Renaissance” ones) have often influenced the newest music.
The survival and posthumous influence of Josquin des Prez, and certain of his works, was an early
example of this process of “remote reception”—perhaps the earliest. But if Ave Maria ... Virgo serena
was an exemplary sixteenth-century composition, it was not Josquin who made it so, but the sixteenth
century.