Josquin's Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae
Josquin des Pez, a renaissance composer, most likely of French birth, was hailed throughout the sixteenth century as a role modal for polyphonic choral composers. His Missa Hercules dux Ferrarie is notable not only as a stunning example of polyphony, but because of the odd motive around which it is centered. This mass may have been composed during Josquin's stay in Ferrara from 1503 to 1504, but some features of its composition date is as being among his earlier works.
This piece was written for a patron of Josquin's, the duke of Ferrara. The motivic center which this mass makes use of is a musical phrase derived from the name Hercules dux Ferrarie. Each vowel of the name was matched with a solfege syllable, therefore
H E R C U L E S D U X F E R R A R I E
becomes
re ut re ut re fa mi re
Ut is the predecessor of the modern solfege syllable Do.
A deer. A female deer.
This practice of semantically generating solfege phrases is known as soggetto cavatto. The result is a phrase which can be played on the white keys of a piano. ***All solfege on this site is considered to be in a system of a fixed Do = C, because this was how the notes were thought of in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During this same time period, C was a relative, not an absolute pitch, and so one can argue that Do was indeed not fixed. This logic will be wholly ignored here. Do = C, deal with it.*** The solfege maps out to D C D C F E D. Click on the link to hear the motive played, for some inexplicable reason, on a piano.
This motive is also often transcribed up a fifth to the solfege La-So-La-So-Do-Ti-La. For the solfege challenged, that would be A-G-A-G-C-B-A. Notice from the midi files that the intervals between notes are the same. Josquin has taken advantage of the fact that the notes built in the perfect fourth between C and F are in exactly the same intervalic relationship as the notes between G and C.
Throughout the mass, Josquin makes use not only of these two forms of the motives, but also several melodic gestures which make reference to the original melody. There are a wealth of falling gestures in which a voice will leap to a note and then fall down a scale for three notes. Also present are upside-down forms of the motive and the original motive used with rhythmic variation. For some analysis of three movements of the mass, click the links below.
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Created for Vanderbilt University, MUSL 242: Music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
by Joseph Viviano
12-12-03