Ars Perfecta: Motets by Josquin desPres and Antoine Brumel - Harvard Glee Club

ARS PERFECTA liner notes

Several music theorists of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries believed that one particular composer had set standards which posterity would do well to acknowledge and imitate. For Tinctoris the composer was Ockeghem; for Finck, Gombert; and for Zarlino, Willaert. Josquin des Prez, however, probably received the most tribute. In the Dodecachordon of 1547, Glareanus declared that musical composition in the hands of Josquin had become an ars perfecta and that in the future music was in danger of decay if Josquin's principles were not followed. In the Compendium musices of 1552, Petit Coclico referred to des Prez as the "Prince of Musicians" and expressed the fear that music would only decline after him. Even non-theorists were quick to laud Josquin: Martin Luther's praise is well-known, and in 1567 Cosimo Bartoli considered des Prez without peer and compared him to Michelangelo. A further tribute appeared in 1502 when Petrucci, the great Venetian printer, published his first collection of music by a single composer: Misse Josquin.