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CJ Replay: Josquin’s “Illibata Dei virgo nutrix”

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(From the Choral Journal article “Dating Josquin’s Enigmatic Motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix” by Leslie Clutterham [scroll to p.9])
 
       Most modern analyses of Josquin’s miniature masterpiece Illibata Dei virgo nutrix have focused on the text and music of only the first part of the motet. The secunda pars, difficult toclassifY stylistically, has been largely ignored. This article reconciles various analyses in the context of the entire motet and offers some new theories regarding the date and circumstancesof its composition, as well as biographical information about its composer.
       Illibata Dei virgo nutrix is included in the complete works of Josquin begun by Albert Smijers in the early part of this century. Smijers and other early analysts dated Illibata amongJosquin’s earliest works, a group largely composed of motets composed before 1500.1 It is a five-voice Marian motet with a tenor cantus firmus. It sets two rhymed verses, which Josquinalso authored.2 Howard M. Brown notes that Josquin’s nonliturgical, non-Biblical verse may indicate that it was “intended for performance in ritual or votive services in royal chapels or collegiate churches.”
 

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  1. With all respect to Smijers, who did the best he could with the information that was available (as did Malipiero in his edition of Monteverdi), Josquin is one of the composers whose life is LEAST understood and whose chronology is least known and most full of holes and questions.  That certainly came out in discussions at the International Josquin Festival back in about 1971, where Howard Meyer Brown and Arthur Mendel gave us some very entertaining debates!!  We simply do not KNOW where Josquin was at every point in his life, and part of the confusion is the apparent existence of a different “Josquin” whose life may have been conflated with OUR Josquin.
     
    And with all respect to Howard Meyer Brown, my late wife was very interested in archaeology in general and Biblical archaeology in particular, and pointed out that whenever archaeologists found an object whose use they could not explain they almost always assigned to it “ritual significance”!!  (In other words, it’s a copout!)
     
    And the fact that the Seconda Pars of the motet (assuming that it’s actually by Josquin at all, or that the two parts are indeed linked in original sources, or were perhaps combined by Petrucci) is stylistically different from the Prima Pars is actually quite typical of Josquin, who was a master of styles and moved from one to another smoothly in the course of many of his works.  And of course he was very fond of playing musical tricks that would have been understood only by other musicians (like the funeral motet written in a mensuration that ensured that it was notated entirely in black notes!), so finding acrostics and other language tricks is certainly no surprise.
     
    On the other hand, Clutterham’s review of the past literature on the motet is most valuable and very worthwhile, whether the conclusions of various scholars is trustworthy or not.  But it’s a shame that the Choral Journal editors saw fit to omit the majority of her end notes, printing only the first three, because that makes it difficult to evaluate her other sources.
    All the best,
    John

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