III
Josquin des Prés is almost the last in the long list of Netherland composers, and overtops them all, with the exception of Lassus. The year of his birth is uncertain, but has been placed at about 1450, since he was a singer in the papal chapel under Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84). He has been claimed as a countryman by Italian writers, because his name was modified into del Prato; by German, because, ethnologically and geographically, the Low Countries are a part of Germany; by the French, because the Netherlands became a political dependency of France about two hundred years after Josquin’s death; and naturally the Belgians claim some share in the fame of the man who represents the glory of Belgian music. The towns of Condé, Tours, and Cambrai, the home of Dufay, and of others, have all been candidates for the honor of his birth; but scholars are now agreed that he was born at least in the province of Hainault, which belonged, during the middle and later fifteenth century, to the dominions of Philip the Good of Burgundy. Josquin had been chapel singer at Milan before entering the papal choir (1484), and afterward he is found in the service of Louis XII of France, with whom he was a great favorite. Like some of his predecessors, he received an appointment to a canonry, but seems not to have kept the office very long. In the year 1515 the Netherlands became German, and, according to Konrad Peutinger, Josquin left France for a position in the Netherland chapel of Maximilian I. It seems probable, therefore, that he spent the latter part of his life at Condé, in his native country, where he died in 1521.
Josquin des Prés.
Okeghem was still alive, and Dufay less than a score of years dead, when Josquin’s fame sprang to the sky. So great a stir did his gifts create in Rome that beside him the fame of all other composers paled. The Duke Hercules d’Este of Ferrara, for whom Josquin composed a mass entitled Hercules dux Ferrariæ, called him the Prince of Music; and the Abbate Baini, director of the pontifical chapel in the early nineteenth century, says of him: ‘In a short time, by his new productions, he becomes the idol of Europe. There is no longer tolerance for any one but Josquin. Josquin alone is sung in every chapel in Christendom. Nobody but Josquin in Italy, nobody but Josquin in France, nobody but Josquin in Germany, in Flanders, in Hungary, in Spain—Josquin and Josquin alone.’[96]
Fables grew up about his name, as about that of Homer or Wilhelm Tell. It is said that the French monarch, under whom Josquin served, had a bad voice and a still worse ear. Nevertheless, he was fond of music and desired his brilliant retainer to compose something in which he could take part. Josquin was equal to the occasion. He constructed a quartette somewhat different from the usual sort, there being two upper parts in a canon, and a free bass. To these he added a fourth part, the vox regis, as he flippantly called it, consisting of a single note which it was the king’s office to repeat, almost incessantly, throughout the piece!
The emoluments even of a royal musician were evidently not always prompt or large, and Josquin is reported more than once to have given the cue to the king by compositions whose opening Biblical words contained a punning comment on the royal dilatoriness in paying salaries, or whose sacred meaning could be amusingly applied to his own indigence. When finally the king good-naturedly took the hint, Josquin poured out his gratitude in a motet, ‘Lord, thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant.’ One biographer of Josquin cynically declares that the thank-offering was not at all up to the mark of the petitions.
Gaiety and humor were often in evidence in his music, as one would expect from so witty, lively a character. His work generally shows a careful finish and attention to details. Naumann points out that he takes greater care in declamation, groups his voices for better color effects, and achieves results, especially in the masses, which foreshadow the grandeur and simplicity of the great period of ecclesiastical music under Palestrina. The Passion motets and Stabat Mater for five voices are among the most famous of his works. Severe contrapuntal art is shown in the two L’omme armé masses, as well as in Pange lingua and Fortuna desperata. The contrapuntal ingenuity, however, is lost sight of in a genial, naïve quality combined with nobility and ceremonial dignity.
His fame as a writer of chansons equalled his reputation in sacred music. In these also he stands far ahead of his contemporaries, paying more attention to syllabic values, and entering into the mood of the text. His manner is unforced and gay, and here, too, his great contrapuntal ingenuity is veiled by poetical, nicely calculated effects.
Concerning his work as a whole in comparison with his predecessors, it is generally considered that he is more concise, easier to comprehend, less laden with artifice, and able at last to put soul into the elaborate framework of the polyphonic art. He is the first important musician whose work has come down to us in such quantities as to enable critics to judge adequately of his powers. He was in the prime of life when the art of printing music by means of movable types was invented, and for a century or more his compositions were included in almost every collection that was made. Among his extant works are thirty-two masses, fragments of masses, motets, some of them for five parts, and chansons. Portions of his work have been given to the public successively by Petrucci (early sixteenth century), in Junta’s edition, Rome, 1521, in the Missa XII of Graphæus, 1539; and no less than seven special editions of portions of his works were made during the sixteenth century. Masses in manuscript are to be found in the archives of the papal chapel, as well as in the libraries of Munich and Cambrai. Besides these, numerous examples have been preserved in the works of Glarean, Sebald Heyden, Forkel, Burney, Hawkins, Kiesewetter, Ambros, and others. The number and importance of his commentators and editors are glowing tributes to the importance of the man himself. With the exception of Lassus, no other Netherland master enjoyed such fame, either during life or after death. He is called ‘Jodocus’ in affection, and described as ‘at once learned and pleasing, everywhere graceful, the universal favorite of the age, welcomed everywhere, ruling without a rival.’ Luther mentions the ‘Jodocus’ as one of his favorite composers, saying that others were mastered by notes, while Josquin did what he pleased with them.
And with all this popularity, even glorification, what living singer has ever sung, or what living amateur has ever heard, a note of his music? Specimens of it are not current, it is true; but neither are they inaccessible. Three hundred and fifty years are as nothing in the lifetime of a book, a building, a statue—even of a picture, so much more perishable.... Dante had need of a commentator before Josquin could have learned to read: the frescoes of Giotto were beginning to decay ere he visited Italy, and the beautiful cathedral of St. Quentin had entered its third century ere he first raised his voice in it.’[97]
The eclipse of Josquin’s fame, however, appears not to be quite so complete and thorough to-day as when the above words were written (1862). A number of German societies now regularly include his compositions in their programs, and some of his works have been given in New York during the current year (1914). But no matter how neglected, he occupies a great and honored place in the history of music. Hitherto, as we have seen, musicians had been almost entirely absorbed in the study and application of technical details. Their art was, first and foremost, an intellectual exercise, and its appeal, naturally, almost entirely limited to the intellect. To the modern amateur, good music is that which touches him. He wishes to be conscious of that indefinable spirit which is at once both simpler and deeper than intellect. The greater part of the contrapuntal subtleties of Okeghem must have left the listener cold, remaining in history only as amazing tours de force, whose artificial perfection could only be a stage in the development toward something higher. It was this higher quality, achieved by Josquin, which placed him at the head of composers of his time, and gives him importance in history. He, too, possessed the technical skill and learning necessary to the construction of contrapuntal riddles; he, too, was sometimes artificial, and occasionally surpassed even Okeghem in his quaint and grotesque combinations. But such intellectual gymnastic feats were not an important matter with him. He used, and has the distinction of being the first to use, learning as a means of expression, as the vehicle of personal, subjective, and sympathetic utterance. His style became simpler and more transparent, his conception of the text more poetic, and, by reason of these qualities, truth and beauty of expression are his chief merits.
The labor of the Netherlanders, from Dufay to the death of Josquin, offers a spectacle of almost unparalleled activity and painstaking research. It was, for the art of polyphony, the period of youth and adolescence, with its enormous energy, its too great reliance upon intellect, and its comparative lack of mellowness and heart. Dufay was a singer in the papal chapel exactly one hundred years before Josquin held the same position. He, with other Gallo-Belgians and the English Dunstable, added to the body of technical knowledge, established the principles of design in composition, and brought sacred music into closer touch with folk-song. Okeghem and his immediate followers were intoxicated, not with the wine of poetry or passion, but with a desire for intellectual artifice and refinement. They expended their genius on technique as an end, and produced compositions beside which even the most intricate contrapuntal efforts of later days seem almost like child’s play. Such work carries within itself, however, the seeds of its own destruction, and, so far as it rested upon puzzling subtleties, it was doomed to die. Nevertheless, the schools of Dufay and Okeghem prepared the way and the materials for the third and greatest of the indigenous Netherland schools, that of Josquin. To him the resources of counterpoint were merely the means to obtain beauty of expression. It is for this reason that we regard him as the first great composer.
F. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] Strict or plain counterpoint is divided into several species: (1) note against note, there being one note in the accompanying melody or melodies to one note of the cantus firmus; (2) two notes against one; (3) three, four, or more notes against one; (4) syncopated; (5) florid or figured, in which the added parts are free. Counterpoint is single, or simple, when the added part is uniformly above or below the cantus; double when the added part is so constructed as to be usable either above or below the cantus by a uniform transposition of an octave, a tenth, or some other interval; and triple, or quadruple, when three or four melodies are so fitted as to be mutually interchangeable with one another by transposition.
[85] Imitation is strict when the succession of intervals is identical in both antecedent and consequent; free when some modification of the one appears in the other. Imitation is called augmented when the rhythmic value of the several tones is systematically increased, as, for example, when quarter-notes are represented by half-notes; diminished when the rhythmic value of the several notes is lessened; inverted (or imitation in contrary motion) when every upward interval in the antecedent is represented in the answer by an equivalent downward interval, or vice versa; retrograde (or reversed imitation) when the intervals of the antecedent are taken in the reverse order in the consequent. A canon is a composition in which imitation is carried out at some length. Imitation is also the basis of the fugue.
[86] It is in Walter Odington’s treatise that the first mention of duple metre is made.
[87] Similar intervals occurring between two voices that pass from one chord to another in parallel motion.
[88] A sequence of chords at the end of a phrase or period, involving, in modern music, a clear enunciation of the tonality or key in which the piece is written. Full, perfect, complete or authentic cadence is the dominant harmony in root position followed by that of the tonic in root position. This kind of cadence is comparable to a period. A half cadence is a less definite closing, used for phrases not final.
[89] W. S. Rockstro, in Grove’s Dictionary, III, 259.
[90] Quoted from an extant letter of Philip of Luxembourg to the Chapter at Cambrai.
[91] ‘Dufay and His Contemporaries.’
[92] Grove: ‘Dict. of Music and Musicians.’
[93] ‘Early English Harmony’; Vol. I edited by H. E. Wooldridge, 1897; Vol. II edited by Rev. H. V. Hughes, 1913.
[94] See Chapter X.
[95] The form Ockenheim was introduced by Glarean, apparently without sufficient reason. It is supposed that Okeghem was born about 1430.
[96] ‘Life of Palestrina,’ Rome, 1828.
[97] Hullah: ‘Lectures on the History of Modern Music,’ p. 53.
CHAPTER IX
THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
Spirit of the Renaissance—Trovatori and cantori a liuto; The Florentine Ars nova; Landino; caccia, ballata, madrigal—The fifteenth century; the Medici; Netherland influence; popular song forms—Adrian Willaert and the new madrigal—Orazio Vecchi and the dramatic madrigal.
We have learned in the previous chapters how music, an incipient art fastened in the bondage of religious mysticism, groped through the blackness of the mediæval night; how, bound by dogmatic rule, it became the object of intellectual lucubration, the scholastic medium of pedants, who reared their stupendous structure of Gothic intricacy beyond the reach of ordinary man, ‘that tower of Babel, in the building of which tongues were confounded, till no one understood what he sang nor what he heard.’ And we have seen how this edifice, in adapting itself to the use of the denizens, softened its lines and its angles, broadened its spaces and became a thing of beauty—a process in which we see reflected the dawn of a new era, when humanity breathes a freer air; that glorious spiritual awakening which found its religious expression in the Reformation, its æsthetic revelation in the Renaissance. We shall presently consider the influence of the former upon the course of music in Germany; our immediate purpose is to follow the path of the parallel process accomplished through the Renaissance in Italy.
In the words of J. Addington Symonds, the history of the Renaissance is ‘the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races.’ In politics it meant the breaking down of the reactionary forces vested in the church and the empire, in science it meant the substitution of knowledge for superstition, the fearless exploring of new continents and the demonstration of the infinity of the universe; in art it meant the firing of man’s imagination, the stimulation of his creative faculties by the Revival of Learning, ‘that rediscovery of the classic past which restored the confidence in their own faculties to men striving after a spiritual freedom, ... which held up for emulation master works of literature, philosophy and art, provoked inquiry, shattered the narrow mental barrier imposed by mediæval orthodoxy.’
Just as the artist ‘humanized the altar pieces and the cloister frescoes upon which he worked’ and so ‘silently substituted the love of beauty and the interest of actual life for the principles of the church,’ so the musician ‘humanized’ the service of the church, brought beauty, expression and emotion into his masses and motets, imbuing them with the dramatic spirit, the spirit of passion, which had never been absent from the secular music of the people, the music that is always indigenous to the soil. It is in this music that we must first seek the embodiment of the Renaissance spirit, which means the direct expression of human emotions in terms of oral beauty. That spirit has been associated in the history of music with two things: the ‘invention’ of monody[98] and the rise of opera, both of which are placed about the end of the sixteenth century. But recent research has shown these apparently sudden events to be the outcome of a development extending back nearly three hundred years, so that they become the objective rather than the starting point of our account, which will aim to trace the steps by which this momentous reform was accomplished.