Jablonski, Marek (Michael)

11. Motets.

(i) Early and middle-period works.

Earlier than any of these at first sight are two motets that both begin in the old-fashioned perfect or triple time and with long melismatic duets of a kind that could almost have been written by Du Fay. Alma Redemptoris mater/Ave regina celorum combines paraphrases of both plainsong antiphons, Ave regina in the two equal middle voices, Alma Redemptoris in the outer ones; there is fairly consistent imitation between the pairs of voices based on the same material, but a rather heavy reliance on scalic note-spinning. Formally very similar, but musically more accomplished, is the five-part ‘signed’ motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, whose text presents Josquin’s name as an acrostic. Although the style and texture of its prima pars, in particular, seem to look back to that of Johannes Regis, it has been plausibly suggested that this may relate to a vogue for such works in the papal chapel even as late as the time (1489 onwards) when Josquin was a member (see Sherr, 1988). Whether early or relatively late, it shows remarkable mastery of a style that would at first sight seem rather old-fashioned for him. The structure is articulated, not only texturally, by the contrast between duets and full sections, whose alternation is gradually telescoped, but also by the presence of a transposing three-note pes or ostinato cantus firmus, sung in the tenor to a solmization of the word ‘Maria’. Jejune as this phrase is in itself (it appears alternately as D–A–D and G–D–G), Josquin’s use of it looks ahead to preoccupations and procedures that recur in later large-scale works: the gradual speeding-up of the statements, for instance, which can be seen as a last vestige of the old isorhythmic tradition but is here used to achieve a climactic integration, not only musical but also textual, with the other voices (cf Ave nobilissima creatura and O virgo prudentissima, both among Josquin’s maturest masterpieces); the clearly articulated solo and full sections; the concern for metrical variety; and not least the readiness to use straightforward musical repetition (here of a whole 12-bar clause) to build up the intensity of the final invocation to the Virgin. Though the range and abruptness of its stylistic contrasts make it probable that Illibata is a relatively early work, it already shows a mastery of at least one of the features in which Josquin is pre-eminent among his contemporaries: a control of large-scale musical architecture.

As a five-part work on a cantus firmus, however, Illibata stands slightly to one side of the main line of development leading to the homogeneous imitative texture displayed in Ave Maria … virgo serena. More relevant stages are marked by Virgo prudentissima, Missus est Gabriel angelus and the cycle of antiphons for the Circumcision, O admirabile commercium, which may betray a lack of complete maturity in its exclusive reliance on imitative texture. Gaude virgo, mater Christi, on the other hand, with its climactic move into near-homophony and its relatively close matching of words and notes, closely resembles Ave Maria … virgo serena.

Perhaps even more impressive are three motets (all published in Motetti C, 1504) that show Josquin’s ability to set a long text in prose without recourse either to a cantus-firmus scaffolding or to more than a bare minimum of plainsong reference; here the music derives its shape and its self-renewing impetus only from the free flow of original musical ideas. Liber generationis and Factum est autem may well be companion-pieces. They are settings of the genealogies of Christ taken from St Matthew’s and St Luke’s gospels and sung, before the Tridentine reforms, at Matins of Christmas and Epiphany respectively. In each, Josquin’s only musical datum was a repetitive reciting-tone, and the variety with which he contrived to invest a singularly uninspiring text is astonishing. It seems likely that these two motets were composed for a chapel north of the Alps, even though the Matthew setting was eventually copied into a papal choirbook; the Luke setting makes use of a chant that is known to have been used at the royal abbey of St Martin at Tours, and rarely elsewhere. The inescapable element of tour de force in these two huge pieces, as well as their reliance on melodic means of structural control, points to a relatively early date.

Equally striking but more difficult to date (because more untypical and perhaps even inauthentic) are two pieces that must surely have been composed as funeral commemorations of some kind. In the setting of David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan, Planxit autem David, the predominantly homophonic texture of the Passiontide motets is combined and varied with freely imitative passages, out of which the Holy Week lamentation tone emerges in long notes like a ritual keening. Josquin’s authorship has been challenged (Finscher in Sherr, forthcoming) on the grounds of its untypicality, but since it is at least as untypical of the other composer, Ninot le Petit, to whom it is ascribed, it may perhaps be allowed to stand as another experimental venture by the younger Josquin. Shorter, but even more expressive, is another lament of David, Absalon, fili mi, which may commemorate the death of Pope Alexander VI’s son in 1497 or of the Emperor Maximilian I’s in 1506. Freely composed, it achieves its effect through a typically flexible combination of textures; set at an unusually low pitch (in the original notation the bass descends at the end to B') and in an unusually flat transposition, the concluding sequence moves the music still further flatwards – a passage that may have been the starting-point for more far-reaching tonal experiments by Willaert and the later 16th-century exponents of musica reservata. Once again, however, the work’s authenticity has been questioned, and this time, it must be admitted, with more plausibility: the only ascription to Josquin dates from 20 years after his death, and the music’s style, though exceptional by any standard, has perhaps more to do with that of La Rue (the proposed author) than Josquin’s.

Josquin des Prez, §11: Motets