Canons as orations: the case of Josquin's multi-voice chansons

Josquin des Pres has long been accepted as the first composer to cultivate the multi-voice chanson. The majority of his songs in this genre are built around a pair of voices singing in canon. This study explores Josquin's canonic melodies within the context of contemporaneous canonic multi-voice chansons, both attributed and anonymous. Josquin's approach towards textual repetition, especially in the canonic melodies of chansons in the courtly register, differs markedly from that of his contemporaries, thus contributing fruitfully to questions of authenticity. Comparison with his canonic multi-voice motets further illuminates Josquin's handling of textual repetition and reveals his quite different approach when dealing respectively with newly devised and pre-existing melodies. The study takes into account contemporaneous notions of text repetition in the writings of music theorists such as Lanfranco, Zarlino and Stoquerus, and interprets later theoretical views on fugal deployment as oratorical discourse through the prism of Josquin's demonstrated manipulation of canonic technique for rhetorical effect.