Stile Antico - Josquin Des Prez

 Stile Antico, The Golden Renaissance, Josquin Des Prez (Decca)

Last year it was hard to miss that it was 250 years since Beethoven was born. This year one might need to frequent slightly more niche places to be made quite so aware that it is 500 years since Josquin Des Prez died but there's plenty of it to be had for looking.

Whereas Beethoven is readily identifiable sounding halfway between Mozart and Schubert, it is less easy to be sure it's Josquin one is hearing because being halfway between Ockeghem and Palestrina doesn't make him sound much different to any but the most finely educated ears. Even then, those that are supposed to know aren't always sure and it is said that he wtote more music after he died then when he was alive as the questionable attributions flowed towards him in the hope, presumably, of selling copies of them. 

Quite why I need yet more of this repertoire is hard to say but one feels one ought to take part. Josquin was the biggest name in Europe and deserved to be if only on account of his Lament on the Death of Johannes Ockeghem which, for 4' 43, stops traffic. I didn't immediately order this recording despite the very convincing selling point of the Ave Maria because I thought the Missa Pange Lingua sounded familiar and I already had it. But checking the shelves I found that Pange Lingua is the name of the ensemble that recorded Presque Josquin, a collection of pieces attributed to him which contains two further versions of the Ave Maria which must be why that did sound familiar. It can become a complicated business but that is possibly the most sublime piece here when one takes such rapture as a given thing,

Josquin - Ave Maria, Virgo Serena  

For better or worse, the Mass is 'interpolated' with motets and chansons. It doesn't matter much to me except that perhaps if a mass was written in five sections, they should be heard together in that order. It doesn't matter to me because I often prefer not to know what the words mean, such as,

Tell, tongue, the mystery

of the glorious Body

and of the precious Blood,

which, for the price of the world,

the fruit of a noble Womb,

the King of Nations poured forth. 

 

It is not my recent reading about Shelley that has re-inforced my devout atheism. A year into the plague now I would be interested to know what the glorious redeemer is doing about it and what the power of prayer amounts to when presumably many have been said only to see the statistics get worse. Maybe we are the virus or maybe religion is.

It is nonetheless possibly to enjoy the human achievement of music like this and the cathedrals and other religious buildings that these Renaissance composers, above those of other periods, built the musical equivalents of. One of their big advantages is the non-use of the organ which to many of us brings with it all kinds of associations of futile, morbid bombast. Religion is made up and is, thus, literature and some of it is pretty good as such.

I'm not prepared to take sides and say which of the several groups currently offering a continuing stream of music like this. I've seen the Tallis Scholars a few times, and The Sixteen, and some bits stand out in the memory. Once, if and when, we get to move about a bit a concerts are on again, I will make any reasonable effort to see Stile Antico.

I think gradually we are getting beyond use of the term 'Early Music'. It had begun to look as if 'authentic performance' was encroaching so much closer to the present day that we might have to reconsider principles of, say, Shostakovich. Maybe somebody did. But 'Early' is a relative term and things can only be 'early' compared to something else that was later so it was never obvious why something, which might have been Beethoven, was considered 'not early' and thus made music written before his an entirely different, strange category.

The word for it must be 'Renaissance' and it's good to see Stile Antico's first of 'a trilogy' of records call it such.

Josquin's music is architecture, as I'm reminded in the last of the motets here, with its elegant spires in the top part reaching above the harmonies of the lower parts.

And one is always glad to welcome new composers to the shelves and so, not being entirely Josquin, the disc having 3'23 of Hieronymous Vinders and 9'19 of Jacquet of Mantua at the end is a bit like  bonus tracks and I'm not sure that, at over 82 minutes, it's possible to fit much more on a disc. One can't complain about being short-changed on any part of the deal, especially when Amazon make a point of e-mailing to say it was £3 cheaper when they sent it out than when I ordered it.

But Hieronymous Vinders almost steals the whole show with his tribute to Josquin, O mors inevitabilis, 

O, ineluctable death, bitter death, cruel death, 

when you killed Josquin Desprez,

you took from us a man who,

through his music, adorned the church.

 

It contiunes a rich tradition of acknowledging that we all, at most, stand on the shoulders of previous giants, if we can even claim to do anything like that. That Old Hieronymous can communicate the same thought from 500 years ago quite so gently and only religiously in a second-hand way, is a thought that is worth thinking.