Josquin des Prez was the greatest composer of the Renaissance. He bestrode the 16th century in a manner comparable to the way Beethoven did the 19th century. It was he who transformed the fascinating complexities of the music of the late medieval period into the limpid style we know from the music of Palestrina, Byrd, Tallis, Victoria Lassus, and other familiar masters of the later Renaissance. Indeed, one could say that he was the first modern composer in Western music.

Josquin des Prez

I was brought up in England, and although I attended King’s College Chapel frequently, by the time I arrived in Australia in 1975 I had still never heard of Josquin. The king who completed the building of King’s College was Henry VIII, and the Anglican choral tradition more or less dates from Henry’s divorce from the Roman Catholic Church and founding of the Anglican Church, which took place a few years after Josquin’s death in 1521. In England in the 1960s you had to be pretty eccentric to delve into music earlier than the 16th century. So imagine my amazement at finding, on the shelves of Fisher...