CHAPTER 21CHAPTER 21

JOSQUIN DES JOSQUIN DES PREZ AND PREZ AND MUSIC INMUSIC INFERRARAFERRARA

FERRARAFERRARA

• Ferrara was a Renaissance city-state in northern Italy ruled by the despotic d’Este family– the leaders of which were professional soldiers,

yet also active patrons of learned music.

• Important musicians who at one time or another associated with the d’Este family included major composers such as – Josquin des Prez, – Jacob Obrecht,– Adrian Willaert– Cipriano de Rore– Carlo Gesualdo.

• By the end of the sixteenth century the court of Ferrara employed as many as forty full-time musicians.

JOSQUIN DES PREZJOSQUIN DES PREZ

• Josquin des Prez (c1450-1521) was one of the finest composers of the Renaissance, or indeed of any age.

• Born in the Burgundian lands near the border of modern-day France and Belgium.

• First he worked as a singer at courts in France and then, from the mid 1480s on, in Italy– appearing in Milan, Mantua, Rome, and Ferrara.

• While he served only a short time (1503-1504) as master of the chapel in Ferrara, he left a legacy of two extraordinary compositions.

Duke HerculesDuke Hercules

At the end of the fifteenth century, Ferrara was ruled by Duke Hercules d’Este (r. 1471-1505), a professional soldier with a passionate interest in music.

In 1503 Hercules engaged Josquin des Prez to serve as leader of his chapel.

This portrait shows Duke Hercules in full military armor.

JOSQUIN’S JOSQUIN’S MISSA HERCULES DUX MISSA HERCULES DUX FERRARIEFERRARIE

• At some point during his time in Ferrara Josquin composed a Mass in Duke Hercules’ honor by using a soggetto cavato dalle vocali (“subject cut out from the vowels”)– the vowels in Hercules’ name and title were

equated with syllables in the Guidonian hexachords.

• Thus Hercules dux Ferrarie produced “re,” “ut,” “re,” “ut,” “re,” “fa,” “mi,” “re.”

• Other composers in the history of music who also make use of the technique of soggetto cavato include – Bach, Schumann, Berg, and Shostakovich.

Josquin’s Josquin’s soggetto cavatosoggetto cavato as it as it appears in all three of the appears in all three of the

Guidonian hexachordsGuidonian hexachords

• Josquin set his soggetto cavato within only the natural and hard hexachords, and then strung them together.

• This is the sequence of notes that Josquin chose to employ to unify the five parts of the Ordinary of his Mass and honor his patron, Duke Hercules.

The end of the Sanctus of Josquin’s Missa Herucles dux Ferrarie with the soggetto cavato placed in the tenor voice and driving purposefully toward the final cadence.

JOSQUIN’S MOTET JOSQUIN’S MOTET MISERERE MEI, MISERERE MEI, DEUSDEUS

• Josquin des Prez was renowned above all else as a composer of motets.

• He was among the first composers to assess the meaning of the sacred text and then express it vividly through music– just as the madrigalists were beginning to do with

the profane text of the madrigal.

• One of Josquin’s most powerful motets is his Miserere mei, Deus (Have mercy upon me, O Lord; 1503) a setting of Psalm 50 - one of the seven so-called Pentitential Psalms– seven psalms among the one hundred fifty of the Psalter that are

especially remorseful in tone.

• The psalm Miserere mei, Deus was traditionally sung to a psalm tone at the heart of which was a recitation (reciting) tone.

• Josquin refashioned this slightly and made this succession of pitches serve as the structural backbone of the motet.

• At the end of each verse the tenor voice enters with the mournful wail “Have mercy upon me, O Lord.”

• Josquin took this procedure of ending a section of text with the refrain “Miserere me, Deus”

– directly from a sermon that Savonarola penned while awaiting his own execution in Florence.

• The use of a mournful refrain, the somber Phrygian mode, and much word painting results in a composition of extraordinary power and beauty.