单选题
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Until Josquin des Prez,
1440-1521, Western music was liturgical, designed as an accompaniment to
worship. Like the intricately carved gargoyles perched atop medieval cathedrals
beyond sight of any human, music was composed to please God before anybody else;
its dominant theme was reverence. Emotion was there, but it was the grief of
Mary standing at the foot of the Cross, the joy of the faithful hailing Christ's
resurrection. Even the secular music of the Middle Ages was tied to
predetermined patterns that sometimes seemed to stand in the way of individual
expression.
While keeping one foot firmly planted in the divine
world, Josquin stepped with the other into the human. He scored magnificent
masses, but also newly expressive motets such as the lament of David over his
son Absalom or the "Deploration d'Ockeghem," a dirge on the death of Ockeghem,
the greatest master before Josquin, a motet written all in black notes, and one
of the most profoundly moving scores of the Renaissance. Josquin was the first
composer to set psalms to music. But alongside Benedicite omnia opera Domini
Domino ("Bless the Lord, all ye works of the Lord") he put El Grillo ("The
cricket is a good singer who manages long poems") and Allegez moy ("Solace me,
sweet pleasant brunette"). Josquin was praised by Martin Luther, for his music
blends respect for tradition with a rebel’s willingness to risk the horizon.
What Galileo was to science, Josquin was to music. While preserving their
allegiance to God, both asserted a new importance for man.
Why
then should Josquin languish in relative obscurity? The answer has to do with
the separation of concept from performance in music. In fine art, concept and
performance are one both the art lover and the art historian have thousands of
years of paintings, drawings and sculptures to study and enjoy. Similarly with
literature: Poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism survive on the printed page or
in manuscript for judgment and admiration by succeeding generations. But musical
notation on a page is not art, no matter how lofty or excellent the composer%
conception it is, crudely put, a set of directions for producing art. Being
highly symbolic, musical notation requires training before it can even be read,
let alone performed. Moreover, because the musical conventions of other days are
not ours, translation of a Renaissance score into modem notation brings
difficulties of its own. For example, the Renaissance notation of Josquin's day
did not designate the tempo at which the music should be played or sung. It did
not indicate all flats or sharps; these were sounded ill accordance with
musicianly rules, which were capable of transforming major to minor, minor to
major, diatonic to chromatic sound, and thus affect melody, harmony, and musical
expression, a Renaissance composition might include several parts--but it did
not indicate which were to be sung, which to be played, nor even whether
instruments were to be used at all.
Thus, Renaissance notation
permits of several interpretations and an imaginative musician may give an
interpretation that is a revelation. But no matter how imaginative, few modern
musicians can offer any interpretation of Renaissance music. The public for it
is small, limiting the number of musicians who can afford to learn, rehearse,
and perform it. Most of those who attempt it at all are students organized in
colegia musica whose memberships have a distressing habit of changing every
semester, thus preventing directors from maintaining the year-in, year-out
continuity required to achieve excellence of performance. Finally, the
instruments used in Renaissance times--drummhorns, recorders, rauschpfeifen,
shawms, sackbuts, organetto-must be specially procured.