Saturday 26th July 2025

The Josquin Collective is honoured to present to you this programme about Josquin des Prez (born c. 1450, Condé-sur-l’Escaut?, Burgundian Hainaut [France] - died Aug 27, 1521, Condé-sur-l’Escaut). He was one of the greatest composers of Renaissance Europe.

Josquin’s early life has been the subject of much scholarly debate, and the first solid evidence of his work comes from a roll of musicians associated with the cathedral in Cambrai in the early 1470s. During the late 1470s and early ’80s, he sang for the courts of René I of Anjou and Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, and from 1486 to about 1494 he performed for the papal chapel. Sometime between then and 1499, when he became choirmaster to Duke Hercules I of Ferrara, he apparently had connections with the Chapel Royal of Louis XII of France and with the Cathedral of Cambrai. In Ferrara he wrote, in honour of his employer, the mass Hercules Dux Ferrariae, and his motet Miserere was composed at the duke’s request. He seems to have left Ferrara on the death of the duke in 1505 and later became provost of the collegiate church of Notre Dame in Condé. Josquin’s compositions fall into the three principal categories of motets, masses, and chansons. Of the 20 masses that survive complete, 17 were printed in his lifetime in three sets (1502, 1505, 1514) by Ottaviano dei Petrucci. His motets and chansons were included in other Petrucci publications, from the Odhecaton (an anthology of popular chansons) of 1501 onward, and in collections of other printers. In his musical techniques he stands at the summit of the Renaissance, blending traditional forms with innovations that later became standard practices. The expressiveness of his music marks a break with the medieval tradition of more abstract music. In his motets, particularly, Josquin gave free reign to his talent, expressing sorrow in poignant harmonies, employing suspension for emphasis, and taking the voices gradually into their lowest registers when the text speaks of death. Josquin used the old cantus firmus style, but he also developed the motet style that characterized the 16th century after him. His motets, as do his masses, show an approach to the modern sense of tonality. In his later works he gradually abandoned cantus firmus technique for parody and paraphrase. He also frequently used the techniques of canon and of melodic imitation. In his chansons Josquin was the principal exponent of a style new in the mid-15th century, in which the learned techniques of canon and counterpoint were applied to secular song. He abandoned the fixed forms of the rondeau and the ballade, employing freer forms of his own device. Though a few chansons are set chordally rather than polyphonically, a number of others are skilled examples of counterpoint in five or six voices, maintaining sharp rhythms, straightforwardness, and clarity of texture.

Programme

Tonight’s programme includes some of Josquin’s most beautiful pieces: three motets and the Missa Mater Patris.

Salve Regina is a setting of what is perhaps the most famous Marian hymn, set down in largely its current form at the Abbey of Cluny in France in the 12th century. During the following centuries it gained widespread popularity and many musicians set it to music.
Josquin’s version is a tour de force of skilful imitative counterpoint, while also incorporating the famous ‘Salve regina’ chant in two distinct ways: the whole chant melody is presented in decorated form in the topmost voice, and its opening four-note motive (setting the first word, ‘Salve’) appears as an ostinato in the second voice from the top, alternating between two pitch-levels.

Ave verum corpus is an Eucharistic chant that has also been set to music by many composers. It dates to the 13th century, first recorded in a central Italian Franciscan manuscript. A Reichenau manuscript of the 14th century attributes it to Pope Innocent (variously identified as Innocent III, Innocent IV, Innocent V, or Innocent VI).
The motet exemplifies the Renaissance style, characterized by its polyphonic texture, where multiple melodic lines intertwine simultaneously. As always, Josquin’s masterful control of counterpoint and his ability to create expressive and beautiful vocal music show in this piece, with its lyrical melodies, smooth voice leading, and its ability to convey the text's meaning through musical settings.

Miserere is a setting of Psalm 51 he composed while in the employ of Duke Ercole I d'Este in Ferrara. It was one of the most famous settings of that psalm of the entire Renaissance, was hugely influential in subsequent settings of the Penitential Psalms, and was itself probably inspired by the recent suffering and execution of the reformer Girolamo Savonarola, who was from Ferrara, and whom the Duke had supported and sought advice from during the 1490s. After Savonarola's execution, Ercole probably commissioned his newly hired composer, Josquin, to write him a musical testament, very likely for performance during Holy Week of 1504.
In keeping with Savonarola's dislike of polyphony and musical display, the Miserere is written in a spare, austere style, much different from the contrapuntal complexity, virtuosity, and ornamentation of other works. The tenor part, which contains the repeating phrase "Miserere mei, Deus", was likely written to be sung by the Duke himself, who was a trained musician and often sang with the musicians in his chapel.
The Miserere is one of Josquin's two motets in which repetitions of a phrase are the predominant structural feature (the other is the above Salve Regina).
The opening words of the first verse "Miserere mei, Deus" recurs after each of the 19 verses of the psalm. The theme begins each time on a different pitch.
As the tenor sings these words, the other voices join in one at a time to reinforce the first.

The Mass is one of Josquin’s late works, and its style, rather different when compared to many of his other compositions, exemplifies the refinement of a lifetime's work. It is also a homage to an older colleague of his, Antoine Brumel, whose motet Mater Patris (hence the Mass' title) is quoted and embellished in the work.
This is the only Mass in which Josquin quotes another composer’s material. His decision to adapt large chunks of a contemporary’s music broke new ground.
Borrowing was rather normal at the time, but of chunks, big or small, rather than the whole piece note-for-note. Parodying a motet or madrigal by another composer was standard practice, but parodying involved quoting chunks, broken up. In Mater Patris Josquin took the entire motet by Brumel, and used it whole, with not a note changed except that he added two parts of his own, which is quite unique. This happens in the third Agnus Dei, where the Brumel motet is adopted almost wholesale, embellished with two original parts written by Josquin one above and one below which expand the texture and in places put a different spin on the harmony. It is also the only section written for five voices rather than four.
Some of the most striking moments in the whole piece are the Hosanna, with an unmistakable motif of parallel chordal melismas repeated at several different pitches.