Josquin Essay

Missa Pange Lingua is Josquin's greatest achievement in the art of paraphrase in polyphonic music. Set in the ridged structure of a Catholic Mass, Josquin uses the numerous short passages to highlight his variation on a folk theme. This piece took polyphonic music to its limits, and harmony soon evolved among his countrymen as the only option to continue western music's evolution.

Josquin was born in the Netherlands. He received early musical training in the Church, and as soon as it was possible headed for Italy. There he was singer, teacher and composer until his death. Though his music must have been influenced by the culture of Italy, "Josquin, the greatest of the singer-composers of the Milanese register of 1474aCulturally and in every other sense that really matters, he was a Frenchman."

The early 16th century marked the end of the Early Renaissance and the transition into the late Renaissance. Josquin was considered the master of the polyphonic form in which a melody is sung against that same melody four scale steps above or below the original. Polyphonic music was also transitioning into the melody and harmony which we are most familiar with today. The "Netherlands School", which was comprised of Josquin and his cultural countrymen who worked in Italy, were a critical
But this is not a really helpful finding, since the rhythmic motion in Josquin's music is based upon a semibreve tactus, so that ligatures are too rare to be taken as a guide. And when a detailed comparison of the actual text placement in half a dozen sources for passages in the Masses Fortuna Desperata and Pange Lingua was presented, it proved only what most of us suspected anyway -- that historical precedent is really of no assistance in the underlay of