Cappella Pratensis

so influential. After a vigorous homophonic
opening, the music consists predominantly of
the expansive echoing duos – usually in imitation,
sometimes overlapping or augmented
with an accompanying voice – that formed
the bedrock of his four-voice style; once again,
a repeated phrase brings the music to its conclusion.
Balance, poise, and melodic elegance
characterize the writing throughout – no wonder
Leo, a great admirer of Raphael, thought
so highly of Mouton.
By the time of Leo’s reign, Josquin Desprez,
universally regarded then and now as the
greatest master of his day, had withdrawn from
active musical duty and returned to northern
France to live out his final years as provost of
the collegiate church of Condé sur l’Escaut.
But his music remained well known at the
papal court, where he had sung for a period of
time in the late fifteenth century – the Mantuan
poet Teofilo Folengo apostrophized the
‘happy … band of the singers of the Leonine
chapel’, who ‘will sing elegantly those songs
of Josquin’. The Medici Codex includes some
of Josquin’s most celebrated pieces, includ-
ing the Deploration de Johannes Okeghem
and Miserere mei, Deus. The first, combining
a French text by the Burgundian poet Jean
Molinet with a segment of the Gregorian
Requiem, laments the death of Josquin’s great
predecessor, who died in February 1497 –
although Molinet would appear to have written
his poem some four or five years after that and
Josquin to have set it still later, adding a rather
down-to-earth description of Ockeghem’s
physical appearance to Molinet’s text. Notated
symbolically in black, the music remains sombre
throughout, with full textures dominated
by the top voice in the first part; in the second
part, the chant voice falls silent until the closing
‘Requiescant in pace’, allowing Josquin to
set the poet’s address to him and his fellow
composers Antoine Brumel, Pierre de la Rue,
and Loyset Compere in an imitative sequence
that belongs among the most justly celebrated
passages in all Renaissance music.
According to Folengo, Josquin composed
the Miserere for Duke Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara,
whom he served for twelve months in the years
1503-4. The piece sets the penitential Psalm 50
in its entirety, achieving a length matched by
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