Contents

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

CLEMENS

Chapter:
CHAPTER 15 A Perfected Art
Source:
MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Author(s):
Richard Taruskin

Willaert’s other important contemporary was the fantastically prolific Jacobus Clemens (or Jacob Clement, ca. 1510–56), jestingly dubbed “Clemens non papa” by his Antwerp publisher, Tylman Susato, as if anyone would confuse a Dutch composer with the Roman pope. The silly nickname, however, has stuck. His sacred music falls into two very different groups. The larger portion consists of the traditional Latin Masses, of which he wrote 15, and motets, of which he wrote a staggering 233—a proportion that gives an extreme but not inaccurate idea of the relative weight of the two genres in the output of most “post-Josquin” church composers: the opposite of what it had been pre-Josquin. It is a fair measure of their “rhetorical,” which is to say humanist, orientation. In these works Clemens uses the same integrative techniques that we have observed in Gombert, if with a somewhat less determined rigor and a bit more caprice.

Citation (MLA):
Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 15 A Perfected Art." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-015006.xml>.
Citation (APA):
Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 15 A Perfected Art. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 7 Feb. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-015006.xml
Citation (Chicago):
Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 15 A Perfected Art." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 7 Feb. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-015006.xml
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