josquin des prez: a guide to researchby sydney robinson charles

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Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Research by Sydney Robinson Charles Review by: Richard Taruskin Notes, Second Series, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Sep., 1985), pp. 39-41 Published by: Music Library Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/898237 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 06:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:21:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Researchby Sydney Robinson Charles

Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Research by Sydney Robinson CharlesReview by: Richard TaruskinNotes, Second Series, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Sep., 1985), pp. 39-41Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/898237 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 06:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.253 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:21:16 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Researchby Sydney Robinson Charles

BOOK REVIEWS Compiled and edited by PAULA M. MORGAN

Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Research. By Sydney Robinson Charles. (Garland Composer Resource Manuals, 2.) New York: Garland Pub- lishing Co., 1983. [xviii, 235 p.; $36.00]

"Josquin research is presently in a stage of change and growth," writes Sydney Robinson Charles in the preface to this vol- ume, the second in a series designed by the publisher to meet "the growing need for bibliographic guidance to the vast litera- ture on significant composers." The au- thor's statement at once justifies the book and dooms it. All of us who teach music history will be grateful for a book that seeks to provide, both for our students and our- selves, so complete and painless an orien- tation into any field of research; and the accomplishment in this case could hardly be faulted as to comprehensiveness of cov- erage or usefulness of design. But, given the speed with which Josquin research has been evolving over the last two decades, it is possible to wonder whether the time was ripe for a summary with a cut-off date of mid-1981.

Not counting a preliminary group of plates, the book is divided into five major sections. The first, on biography, is very in- genious; for bright students it will be an eye- opener. Instead of a narrative account, there is a list of "Documents and hypotheses," in which the known facts of Josquin's life (in mid-1981 they numbered precisely twenty- three) are listed, together with the source of our knowledge of them, the various interpretations made by scholars, and the controversies to which these interpreta- tions have given rise. Study of these seven closely-packed pages, with references to the secondary literature very systematically cited by author, constitutes an invaluable lesson in historical reasoning that far transcends its immediate purpose. An imaginative teacher of an introduction-to-musicology type of course could get tremendous mile- age out of it. An additional list of "Supple- mentary details" guides the reader to con- temporary references and encomia to

Josquin, descriptions (all more or less spu- rious) of his teaching and of his personal appearance and mannerisms. This first section, conceived and executed with wit and wisdom, deserves both praise and emula- tion.

But, of course, it is already out of date, less than four years after completion. Post- 1981 contributions by Yves Esquieu, Her- bert Kellman, Lewis Lockwood, and Rich- ard Sherr have added several new docu- mentary facts to our knowledge of Josquin's life, and interpretations are being altered apace; so that the place to go for the latest information on the subject is Kellman's up- dating of The New Grove in The New Grove High Renaissance Masters (London & New York, 1984). By the time these words see print, no doubt, even that source will very likely have been superseded. (There are a couple of minor errors in Charles's bio- graphical section that might be corrected: the common Latinized form of the com- poser's name is Jodocus a Prato, not de Prato; the last document pertaining to his life describes a visit to his deathbed by a group of notaries on 23 August 1521, not 3 August.)

Once past the biographical section, the book is strictly an admirably ordered bib- liography. In Section II, "Compositions," a complete list of Josquin's known works is prefaced with a listing of the secondary lit- erature dealing with them. "Historical and stylistic studies" is broken down further into general studies (here Osthoff stands alone), contextual studies (osquin in light of the social and cultural background, in light of Renaissance symbolism, religion, "manner- ism," and so forth), and "studies of specific categories [that is, genres] and stylistic traits," which last is further broken down into no fewer than eleven subcategories. All of this preliminary sorting will be very use-

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Page 3: Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Researchby Sydney Robinson Charles

40 MLA Notes, September 1985

ful to the student, to be sure, but some- thing is missing. Where the great strength of the biographical section had been the way in which the facts were related to the schol- arly issues, here there is no signal whatever that furious controversies often rage be- hind the placid subject headings. Section II.A.3.f., "Harmony, mode," lists studies by Bergquist, Dahlhaus, Lowinsky, Novack, Osthoff, Perkins, and others, without any indication that some of these works are de- scriptive, others interpretive (that is, "an- alytical"-and, come to think of it, should not this mode of inquiry have been ele- vated to topic status along with "historical" and "stylistic"?), or that the interpretive studies are, many of them, mutually antag- onistic, or-and this would seem particu- larly pertinent to a student guide-that these antagonisms circumscribe one of the liveliest issues in musicology today!

Following a listing of studies devoted to chronology and authenticity and a guide to the labyrinthine complexities of the Smi- jers edition, we get several lists of works: first the master list, alphabetized by title, then fifteen "summary categorical lists" by genre (for instance, "4-voice works with Latin text," "6-voice works with French text or title," "Works intabulated for lute/vi- huela/guitar"), the latter evidently in- tended as a collegium director's happy hunting ground. The alphabetical master list has a number of attractive features. There are cross-references to contrafacta, to textual incipits for the individual sub- sections of multi-partite motets, and to the incipits of all "separately texted vocal parts" (chiefly tenors). These features alone will be worth the price of the book to those whose work with original sources will fre- quently bring them face to face with pieces bearing inscrutable "titles" not in Smijers or Osthoff ("Da siceram mentibus," "Nardi Maria pistici") and who may be tempted, for one golden moment, to think that they have made a discovery. The claim is made that all works of challenged authenticity are signaled by the use of parentheses, though in the case of at least one motet (Ave maris stella in Bologna Q20, challenged by Noble in The New Grove) this has not been done (and just as well, say I, since I think it is by Josquin!). On the other hand, works pro- posed as authentic in the secondary liter- ature but not in the sources are omitted (also just as well; were they included, the list

would be twice as long, and hopelessly clut- tered). Original sources and intabulations, and modern editions are listed for each work (I looked in vain for my own Ogni Sorte Editions, though), as are extended discussions of individual entries in the sec- ondary literature. The list, in short, is quite the best we have: excellent in concept, competent in execution.

The next major section is devoted to a complete list of manuscript and printed sources through the end of the sixteenth century, affording a detailed survey of the distribution, both temporal and geograph- cal, of Josquin's music. Endless research projects could be based on this chapter; seminar directors will find a gold mine here. Culled presumably from the Smijers criti- cal reports, RISM, and so forth, it is ad- mirably thorough and cross-referenced with the work-list. It is so good that one feels compelled to make one insignificant ad- dition: besides the five pieces listed on page 88, Modena, Archivio Capitolare del Duomo, MS IV contains, on f. 49v-50, the Agnus III from the MLssa l'Homme arme super voces musicales, entered anonymously and textlessly under the title "Clama ne cesses" (=On a fait partout crier). There. Now, as far as I am concerned, the list of sources is really complete-until tomorrow, anyway.

Last, and least, the discography. This is surely the most problematic of all types of bibliography. Control is chimerical, obso- lescence is rampant, and most of all, the value of individual items is so variable and redundancy so prevalent that the inclusive- ness that is the highest goal of most bibli- ographies here becomes a veritable plague. In the present instance I could easily fill a page with addenda and corrigenda (and delenda!)-but to what purpose? Let me cite a few situations in which I myself was in- volved, as a way of illustrating the prob- lems of discography without embroiling discussion in personalities or matters of taste (or even of "performance practice"). Through personal contact with an enthu- siastic member of my collegium musicum at Columbia University in the early 1970s, Coover and Colvig learned of the existence of some private recordings we used to issue as souvenirs for members and friends, and listed them in the supplement to their Me- dieval and Renaissance Music on Long-Playing Records (Detroit, 1973). These discs were never commercially available (though when

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Page 4: Josquin des Prez: A Guide to Researchby Sydney Robinson Charles

Book Reviews 41

a few libraries and individuals wrote di- rectly to me, I put them in touch with the fellow-also a member-who pressed them), and what they enshrined was far from professional, either from the point of view of performance or from that of re- corded sound. I listen to them now and giggle (I used to cry). Yet, thanks to Coover and Colvig, these records have made the rounds of discographies now for a dozen years, and have surfaced again in this one. Why? Hardly any of the compilers could possibly have listened to them, or even seen them, and they make no material contri- bution to the recorded Josquin legacy, since by now their contents have been duplicated by professional-caliber recordings, includ- ing those I have made myself with Cap- pella Nova (but unlisted here since they are post-1981). Nor did the compiler of the present discography actually listen to the Waverly Consort's "Renaissance Christ- mas," or she would have known that the Ave Maria . .. Virgo Serena recorded there is the six-voice version, not the familiar four- part one (my liner notes would not have helped, since nobody told me, either, and I jumped to the same conclusion!). Nor, without actually examining the record, rather than a listing of its contents, could a discographer know that the setting of De tous biens plaine on Nonesuch 71261 is not the familiar one with the minim canon in the contras, but the three-voice version listed in the work-list on page 28 but unrepre- sented in the discography.

In short, the discography, presented un- critically, without selectivity or annotation, is a useless mess. There is no guarantee that any listing therein will be either accurate, available, or useful to a given purpose- even if that purpose is the documentation of modern performance styles for Jos- quin-since so much ephemeral dross has been included along with the standard-set- ting gold. Since the explosion of real in- terest in early music in the concert hall, and

of real quality performances of it, is an ar- tifact of the last twelve to twenty years, moreover, it can be assumed as a rule that the more recent a performance of Josquin, these days, the better. Therefore a list that stops short as much as five years ago will, virtually by definition, be lacking the best available items. So let discographies stop aspiring to completeness, except where individual performers are their subject. Let comprehensiveness-critical, selective comprehensiveness-be the goal. Let noth- ing be included that the compiler cannot personally evaluate or describe, and let the caveats be writ larger than they have been here (the statement of policy on page 127 is quite naively optimistic).

That off my chest, let me try to recap- ture a judicious tone for a final assessment of this well-conceived but uneven hand- book (which ends with a general bibliog- raphy and index). It will certainly prove its worth in terms of time saved in the library and of the research exercises it will stim- ulate in the seminar room. Its pitfalls are unavoidable, however, and serious. In- deed, they are dangerous: the existence of such a handy guide to pre-1981 Josquin re- search could easily lead the inexperienced and the lazy to neglect more recent work. One can hardly avoid a sense of irony about the whole business. Precisely the compos- ers who attract the most scholarly atten- tion-and about whom other books in this series are likely to be compiled-are the ones concerning whom the state of re- search and knowledge will always be the most fluid. It's a bind from which there is no escape. So perhaps Garland ought to put the rest of the series out on computer discs, and contractually oblige the authors to supply periodic supplements. On the other hand, that might be an ideal job for the seminars the books are designed to aid.

RICHARD TARUSKIN Columbia University

Opera & Vivaldi. Edited by Michael Collins and Elise K. Kirk. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. [vi, 398 p.; $35.00]

The genteel custom of dismissing Italian opera of the eighteenth century has so long been at work on the minds of audiences, performers, directors of opera houses, and

yes, music historians, that until recently any sort of balanced appreciation in our own time has seemed a remote possibility. Need we be reminded that when during its hey-

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