Josquin des Prez (c. 1450/1455 – 1521), often
referred to simply as Josquin, was a Renaissance French
composer. His original name is sometimes given as
Josquin Lebloitte and his later name is given under a
wide variety of spellings in French, Italian, and
Latin, including Iosquinus Pratensis and Iodocus a
Prato. His motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix includes an
acrostic of his name, where he spelled it "Josquin des
Prez". He was the most famous European composer between
Guillaume Dufay and...(+)
Josquin des Prez (c. 1450/1455 – 1521), often
referred to simply as Josquin, was a Renaissance French
composer. His original name is sometimes given as
Josquin Lebloitte and his later name is given under a
wide variety of spellings in French, Italian, and
Latin, including Iosquinus Pratensis and Iodocus a
Prato. His motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix includes an
acrostic of his name, where he spelled it "Josquin des
Prez". He was the most famous European composer between
Guillaume Dufay and Giovanni Pierluigi da 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. More than
370 works are attributed to him; it was only after the
advent of modern analytical scholarship that some of
these attributions were challenged, and revealed as
mistaken, 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 virtually nothing is known
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 less revered
Renaissance composers are better documented than that
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, as
Josquin liked to solve compositional problems in
different ways in successive compositions—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.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josquin_des_Prez).
Although originally created for early wind instruments,
I created this Arrangement of the Fanfare for a King
for Trumpet Quartet (Bb Piccolo Trumpet & 3 Bb
Trumpets).
