Tonal Space Organization in Josquin’s Late Motets

The article aims to test if the problematic nature of tonal types recently developped about late Renaissance polyphony (i.e. the different grade of resistence a tonal type shows as far as modal representation is concerned) is applicable also to early Renaissance music. To grasp this, the article analyses some of Josquin’s late motets triyng to evaluate (1) to what extent the presence of a pre-existing chant affects the modal contour of a polyphonic composition, and (2) if also in Josquin’s music there are tonal types that behave more problematicly than others. At the end, the analysis led to the consideration that the question whether Josquin thought in modal terms is really a misleading one. Other, more relevant questions concerning the relationships between modality and Josquin’s polyphony should in fact be posed. The first and foremost of these questions is if a modally oriented analytical approach to this music may be considered as legitimate. The authors’ opinion is that a modal approach can indeed account for several important features of Josquin’s motets, both from an analytical as well as from a hermeneutical point of view. Nor are the numerous audacities displayed by his motets a good reason to dismiss such an approach: on the contrary, only a strong sense of ‘tonal’ coherence like that intrinsic to the modal concept can favour a full perception of all deviations from the norms, and their communicative power. At the same time, a full historic legitimacy for the modal approach can be invoked, since prime theorists as Aron, Glarean and Zarlino seem to have forged their theories precisely in order to explain at their best Josquin’s music and that of his contemporaries – or to say the same thing other way round, it was Josquin’s tonal-organising usage that gave birth to Renaissance modal theory, and not that theory that preposterously ‘re-read’ Josquin’s music in terms of modality. Renaissance modal theory, in sum, far from being a normative constraint for composers and/or being foreign to their musical invention, should still be taken as a serious attempt to interpret and appreciate that music.