CHAPTER 21
JOSQUIN DES PREZ AND
MUSIC IN FERRARA
FERRARA
• Ferrara was a Renaissance city-state in northern
Italy ruled by the despotic d’Este family, the leaders
of which were professional soldiers, yet also active
patrons of learned music. Important musicians
who at one time or another associated with the
d’Este family included major composers such as
Josquin des Prez, Jacob Obrecht, Adrian Willaert,
Cipriano de Rore, and Carlo Gesualdo. By the end
of the sixteenth century the court of Ferrara
employed as many as forty full-time musicians.
JOSQUIN DES PREZ
• Josquin des Prez (c1450-1521) was one finest
composers of the Renaissance, or indeed of any
age. Like many of the great composers of his
generation, he was born in the Burgundian lands
near the border of modern-day France and
Belgium. First he worked as a singer at courts in
France and then, from the mid 1480s on, in Italy,
appearing in Milan, Mantua, Rome, and Ferrara.
While he served only a short time (1503-1504) as
master of the chapel in Ferrara, he left a legacy of
two extraordinary compositions.
Duke Hercules
At the end of the fifteenth
century, Ferrara was ruled
by Duke Hercules d’Este (r.
1471-1505), a professional
soldier with a passionate
interest in music. In 1503
Hercules engaged Josquin
des Prez to serve as leader
of his chapel. This portrait
shows Duke Hercules in full
military armor.
JOSQUIN’S MISSA HERCULES DUX FERRARIE
• At some point during his time in Ferrara Josquin
composed a Mass in Duke Hercules’ honor by using
a soggetto cavato dalle vocali (“subject cut out
from the vowels”)—the vowels in Hercules’ name
and title were equated with syllables in the
Guidonian hexachords. Thus Hercules dux Ferrarie
produced “re,” “ut,” “re,” “ut,” “re,” “fa,” “mi,” “re.”
Other composers in the history of music who also
make use of the technique of soggetto cavato
include Bach, Schumann, Berg, and Shostakovich.
Josquin’s soggetto cavato as it appears in all
three of the Guidonian hexachords
Josquin set his soggetto cavato within only the natural and hard
hexachords (and the natural an octave above), and then strung them
together. This is the sequence of notes that Josquin chose to employ
to unify the five parts of the Ordinary of his Mass and honor his
patron, Duke Hercules.
The end of the Sanctus of Josquin’s Missa Herucles dux Ferrarie with
the soggetto cavato placed in the tenor voice and driving purposefully
toward the final cadence.
JOSQUIN’S MOTET MISERERE MEI, DEUS
• Josquin des Prez was renowned above all else as a
composer of motets. He was among the first
composers to assess the meaning of the sacred
text and then express it vividly through music, just
as the madrigalists were beginning to do with the
profane text of the madrigal.
• One of Josquin’s most powerful motets is his
Miserere mei, Deus (Have mercy upon me, O Lord;
1503), a setting of Psalm 50, one of the seven socalled Penitential Psalms, seven psalms among
the one hundred fifty of the Psalter that are
especially remorseful in tone.
The psalm Miserere mei, Deus was traditionally sung to a psalm tone
at the heart of which was a recitation (reciting) tone. Josquin
refashioned this slightly and made this succession of pitches serve as
the structural backbone of the motet. At the end of each verse the
tenor voice enters with the mournful wail “Have mercy upon me, O
Lord.” Josquin took this procedure--ending a section of text with the
refrain “Miserere me, Deus” --directly from a sermon that Savonarola
penned while awaiting his own execution in Florence. The use of a
mournful refrain, the somber Phrygian mode, and much word
painting results in a composition of extraordinary power and beauty.