‘Symbol and Ritual in Josquin’s “Missa Di Dadi" Michael Long Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 42, No. 1. (Spring, 1989), pp. 1-22. Stable URL: Itt flinksjstor.orgsici?sici=008-0139% 28198921 2042909 | %ACI%BASARIGE22G3E2OCOWIBLL, Teurnal of the American Musicological Saciery is currently published by University of California Press. Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at flip: feworwjtor org/aboutterms.htmal. ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in par, that unless you fave obtained pcior permission, you may not dowaload an cnt isus of @ journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe ISTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial uss. Please contact the publisher cegarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at bhupsferw.jsto.org/joumals‘ucal hel. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transtnission. ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding ISTOR, please contact support @jstor.org- up:thrwwjstor.orgy Sun Ape 16 15:40:46 2006Symbol and Ritual in Josquin’s Missa Di Dadi* By MICHAEL LONG IE DAILY WORLD OF THE fifteenth-century artist furnished a ready “T'"sea sbundane supply of devorional imagery. Lice medieval culture was so thoroughly permeated by Christian symbolism that there could be neither “an object nor an action, however trivial, that {was] not constandy correlated with Christ or salvation” (Huizinga 1924, 136). In the realm of polyphonic music this tendeney is best represented by sacred or even liturgical compositions based on secular cantus firmi, While art historians have investigated ac great length the referential function of images drawn from the mundane world in sacred art, music historians have tended to adopt a narrower, even “Tridentine attieude, dismissing the secular elements in sacred sausic, particularly in the polyphonic Mass, as intrusions or at best as a clever sningling of two essentially disparate realms. Yet, ia a world com- prised of, in Aquinas's words, “corporeal metaphors of things spici- tual” (ppiritualia sub metapboris corporalium; see Panofsky 1953, 13642) the courtly chanson is no less valid an object of exegetical scrutiny than the quotidian details ofa sacred painting. Particularly in the case of a sacred musical work based on 2 widely-transmitted and deman- strably popular chanson tenor, the choice of cantus firmus may be shown to have been predicated upon the suitability of its original texe asa vernacular gloss upon the sacred Latin text of the new work. Such compositions may be considered to have been conceptually, if not Evidence for this view is furnished by Josquin’s motet setting of the sequence Stahat mater, for which the composer chose as a cantus firmus the tenor melody of the papular, widely-transmitted chanson Comine femme desconfortée. The song provides a perceptible and recog- A version of this paper was read at the national meeting af the American Musicotogial Society, Baltimore, 1988. Lam graceful co Paula Higgins for numerous hhelpfal and provocative discussions concerning the issues with which this article deals. Lam also indebted to Professors Higgins, Ehine Sisman, snd Richard Taruskin for reading and commencing on an eatliee Vetsion ofthis study.2 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY nizable gloss upon the equally familiar Marian, sequence. Although the text of the chanson, written from the point of view of a disconsolate woman, would probably not have been sung,’ it was suificiently well-known to have served as a poignant but tacit textual counterpoint to the portrait of the sorrowful Virgin drawn in the sequence. That the femme desconfortée is a symbol of the woeful Virgin isa notion that has been advanced on more than one occasion (Osthoff 1962, 1:32; Finscher 1976, 659; Noble 1980). Buc the symbolic process in late medieval devotional art did not involve merely the replacement of a sacred concept, person, or abject by a secular stand-in, For the symbolic entity itself was simultaneously trans- formed into something more than it once was, and that metamorpho- sis justified its presence in a new, non-secular context. In Josquin’s motet, at the same time that the character of Mary is amplified and extended into a more human and immediate realm, the melancholy persona of Comme femme, who, according to the song text, has had her “oy” snatched away by death, is clevated and reinterpreted. The despair of an unhappy woman on earth is noc merely a symbol which “stands for” the grief of the Virgin, but is a fragment of the mundane which reveals or reflects something greater than itself. In so doing, not only the femme desconfortée, but the chanson itself undergoes a process of “sanctifcation.”* Th the case of a cantus firmus Mass, such close correlation between once-secular material and sacred intention can be more difficult to accomplish or to discera than in a motet, because the musical setting embellishes several liturgical texts as well as several stages of a ritual process. The Mass consists not only of the recitation of familiar and meaningful words, it involves the public perfarmance of a set of dramatic actions, the intensity of which might be enhanced by the appropriate musical environment. In Josquin’s Missa Di dadi stich an intensification is achieved through aural and visual elements drawn from the profane world, constituting a set of images related co the message of the liturgy. At the aural level, the cantus firmus, the tenot of Robert Morton's three-voice rondeau N'aray je jamais mieulz gue Pay, can be shown to provide another instance ‘of Josquin's transformation of a conventional French love song ita a spiritually "The question of whether in performance the tenor vaice of Saat mater t be fired withthe words af the French chanson tex wa ccd ip Fach ea 1976, 69 1X bocrow the term from Papotsy 9534 1142, who zles to the “ol stnctfcadon ofthe winble world” fiteentt-centhry paling.