Who Was Josquin?

Abstract For all his legendary fame, Josquin desPrez remains a surprisingly elusive historical figure. Administrative records that refer to him with certainty are few, and give us no more than the sketchiest outline of a career, with little or no unusual detail to suggest a musician of unusual talent. Were it not for the quality of his music (whose distribution began in earnest in the 1490s), and for written evidence of the adoration of his contemporaries (surviving piecemeal for the 1510s, but proliferating rapidly thereafter), Josquin’s documented career would hardly have seemed of special historical interest. As a result, we are left to see the composer largely through the admiring eyes of his later contemporaries. It is through their hands that his music has reached our time. It is their image of Josquin the creative artist, the human being, that complements the skeletal image that emerges from the documents. Yet modern scholarship has learnt not to trust Josquin’s contemporaries-at least not unconditionally. They appropriated his music enthusiastically, made it their own, and perpetuated his memory, yet it is unclear whether their image of the composer may not be more revealing of contemporary pressures and concerns than of the man himself They reinterpreted his compositions, omitting or adding voice-parts, changing rhythmic and melodic details, retexting, re arranging, and revising them.