Motivic Organization in Motets of Josquin Des Prez and his ... · Motivic Organization in Motets of...
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Motivic Organization in Motets of Josquin Des Prez
and his Contemporaries
Jennifer Thomas University of Florida
American Musicological Society Annual Meeting San Francisco, November 13, 2011
Overheard in a bar near La St Chapelle in Paris:
“If you don’t have any new musical ideas, steal from Josquin;
that’s what he would do.”
Lewis Lockwood, 1964:
“a sense of motivic organization . . . would eventually grow,
under very different means of harmonic extension and control,
into one of the permanently significant modes of
Western musical thinking.”
Agricola: Si dedero Section I motives
• Declamatory Long-Short-Short opening; elided with a
• a—anacrusis, dotted quarter note, descending melismatic 16th notes
• b—dotted rhythm, stepwise upward; an inverted relative of a
• c—upper neighbor; first embedded in a, then independent
Agricola Si dedero, first phrase
• Motives a, b, and c densely populate the opening measures
• Mode: G
Agricola: Si dedero Section II motives
• d—ascending half notes, span 4th
• e—falling 3rd; whole notes • Function: foil to more active dotted
rhythms; braking device; later acts as contrapuntal accompaniment to dotted-rhythm motives
Agricola: Si dedero Structural articulation
Mm. 13-15: Motives a and b alternate in S and B. Motive e and opening motive provide harmonic foundation and stability
Agricola: Si dedero Structural articulation
• Mm. 20-26 • All five motives present in various
permutations, overlaps, elisions, juxtapositions
Josquin: Gaude virgo opening
• Mode: D • Ideas derived from O,3,5,7,8,7 cell appear
throughout 0 3 5 7 8 7
Josquin: Gaude virgo
• Opening idea transposed up a 5th to A
Extension; obssesive repetition
Retrograde of cells in opening motive
Josquin: Gaude virgo
• Lower voices create a new phrase using many elements of the original
Displacement of dotted rhythm; New: octave leap
Josquin: Gaude virgo • Gradual transformation of cells
I-original
II- phrase 2
III-end of phrase 2
IV-middle section of motet; new rhythmic identity
Josquin: Gaude virgo
• Static Contrapuntal Module: holding pattern before a cadence
• Use of “obsessive repetition”
Reordering of motive cells; voice exchange
Josquin: Gaude virgo
• Static Contrapuntal Module: holding pattern before a cadence
• Similarity to “obsessive repetition”
Reordering of motive cells; voice exchange
Recording: A Sei Voci, Missa Ave Maris Stella
Josquin: Huc me sydereo • Static Contrapuntal Module: mm. 57-64
Recording: Orlando Consort, Josquin Desprez: Motets
Josquin: Illibata dei
• Static Contrapuntal Module: mm. 16-18 – Shifting between D and G orientation
Josquin: Illibata dei
• Static Contrapuntal Module: mm. 16-18 – Shifting between D and G orientation
Recording: De Labyrintho & Walter Testolin, Josquin Desprez: Musica Symbolica
Josquin: Stabat mater • Multiple unrelated motives; all return significantly • Cantus firmus and motivic identity
Johannes Frosch “one might very profitably make a copy of
those things which are heard, not without pleasure, in the best Authors, and which should be studied. From these one might choose the best motives, at various times, and bring them together in a series, so that when one wants to use them, one has them readily at hand . . . These ‘imitations’ will give you practice and use as a student, and will also give you a basis for discovering other, more distant elements, which will be a small aid in this craft . . . [of composition] (translation, Lockwood, personal papers)
I Corinthians 14:7-10 “And even if things without life (i.e., musical
instruments) giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how
shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who
shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words
easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? For ye shall speak into the air.
There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.