Josquin des Prez (c. 1450 to 1455 – August 27, 1521), often referred to
simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He is also
known as Josquin Desprez, a French rendering of Dutch "Josken Van De Velde",
diminutive of "Joseph Van De Velde", and Latinized as Josquinus Pratensis,
alternatively Jodocus Pratensis. He was the most famous European composer
between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the
central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by
music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of
polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime.
During the 16th century, Josquin gradually acquired the reputation as the
greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression
universally imitated and admired. Writers as diverse as Baldassare Castiglione
and Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame; theorists such as
Heinrich Glarean and Gioseffo Zarlino held his style as that best representing
perfection. He was so admired that many anonymous compositions were
attributed to him by copyists, probably to increase their sales. At least 374
works are attributed to him; it was only after the advent of modern
analytical scholarship that some of these mistaken attributions have been
challenged, on the basis of stylistic features and manuscript evidence. Yet in
spite of Josquin's colossal reputation, which endured until the beginning of the
Baroque era, and was revived in the 20th century, his biography is shadowy, and
we know next to nothing about his personality. The only surviving work which may
be in his own hand is a graffito on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, and only one
contemporary mention of his character is known, in a letter to Duke Ercole I of
Ferrara. The lives of dozens of minor composers of the Renaissance are better
documented than the life of Josquin.
Josquin wrote both sacred and secular music, and in all of the significant vocal
forms of the age, including masses, motets, chansons, and frottole. During the
16th century, he was praised for both his supreme melodic gift and his use of
ingenious technical devices. In modern times, scholars have attempted to
ascertain the basic details of his biography, and have tried to define the key
characteristics of his style to correct misattributions, a task that has proved
difficult. Josquin liked to solve compositional problems in different ways in
successive compositions, as did Stravinsky more than 400 years later. Sometimes,
he wrote in an austere style devoid of ornamentation, and at other times he
wrote music requiring considerable virtuosity. Heinrich Glarean wrote in 1547
that Josquin was not only a "magnificent virtuoso" (the Latin can be translated
also as "show-off") but capable of being a "mocker", using satire
effectively. While the focus of scholarship in recent years has been to
remove music from the "Josquin canon", including some of his most famous pieces,
and to reattribute it to his contemporaries, the remaining music represents some
of the most famous and enduring of the Renaissance
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