"One of the problems with my guy," said a Josquin scholar, "is that two-thirds of the music he is said to have written he didn't write." Indeed, at one time Josquin was so inextricably linked to the music of the middle Renaissance that scholars were attributing practically everything written between 1480 and 1520 to his name. However, it is a profound palliative to read, in the liner notes of Stradivarius'
Josquin: Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, which features the talents of vocal group
De Labyrintho under
Walter Testolin, the 1502 letter from a Ducal emissary to the Duke of Ferrara: "Josquin [...] only composes when he feels like it and not when he asked to. [..] Your Lordship must decide for himself." The Duke did decide for himself that Josquin should come to Ferrara, and he spent little more than a year there from 1503 to 1505. As predicted, he did not write much music, but the featured work here -- Josquin's Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae -- was good enough to earn publication almost immediately after it was written in one of Petrucci's early prints in June 1505. Some scholars have tried to place the piece earlier --
A Sei Voci attempted to associate the work with the Duke's wedding in 1473 and added an instrumental component -- but its style points to a later stylistic development in Josquin, not to mention the fact that the main musical theme is derived from letters in the Duke of Ferrara's name. This is not viewed, however, as incontrovertible evidence of its date, as the mass shows up in other manuscripts dedicated to yet other dignitaries. The added motets Virgo salutiferi and the five-voice Salve Regina nevertheless are directly connected to the Duke of Ferrara; the Salve was sent as a sort of a "demo" to the Duke at his request in 1503, and Virgo salutiferi is firmly connected to the Duke's Court in the year 1505.
Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae is by no means a rare work on recordings; in addition to the one done by
A Sei Voci (with an added instrumental component), there is one by the
Hilliard Ensemble and by
Pomerium in an unusual version that substitutes the Duke's name for part of the work's sacred text. This performance by
Testolin and
De Labyrintho will have none of such monkeying around; it is a very straightforward, no-nonsense performance of the work as it has come down to us. As in its recording of Lassus' Prophetiae Sibyllarum, the filler pieces are all terrific. The Agnus Dei and Miserere mei, Deus are stunning performances and make judicious and effective use of distance to differentiate various parts within the complex textures of these pieces.
De Labyrintho has recorded a fair amount of Josquin and seems to have a special affinity for him; Stradivarius'
Josquin: Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae makes clear that when it comes to Josquin, there's nothing like the real thing. Stradivarius' sound is close, yet spacious, and has at times an attractive, three-dimensional quality.