Towards a reticular analysis of Josquin's five-voice "Chansons"

Abstract

The examination of Josquin's five-voice chanson repertoire provides an overview of historical information about composer, the chanson as a musical genre, and the manuscript sources containing them. Furthermore, it advances the knowledge of the musical structure and text expression of the works. Analysis of this repertoire by means of Joshua Rifkin's concept of motivicity attempts to advance the understanding of the compositional process in the early Renaissance. Motivicity proved useful as a tool not only in this regard, but also by making apparent needed changes to the text underlay. A discussion of the concept of modal affect or ethos and its relevance to secular polyphony of the early Renaissance opened up the question of text expression in Josquin's five-voice chanson repertoire, a subject still requiring further investigation.