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PETRUCCI G-01 ATLAS 6-04-2005 12:37 Pagina 645 ALLAN W. ATLAS PETRUCCI’S SONGBOOKS AND JAPART’S BIOGRAPHY My argument is entirely speculative. I will not insist that my proposed identification of Jean Japart with the Frater Joannes de Francia, a singer active in Venice in 1499, smacks of certainty; nor will I insist that the possibility that Japart enjoyed a collegial relationship with Petrus Castellanus, music editor of Odhecaton A, is the only explanation for his (Japart’s) seemingly extraordinary representation in Petrucci’s trilogy of songbooks. Rather, I simply ask “what if”? We know the following about the career of Jean Japart:1 1) he was a singer at the Milanese court of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza from no later than mid-April 1476 to February 6th, 1477, when he was one of twelve singers released from service in the wake of Galeazzo’s assassination some weeks earlier;2 2) upon leaving Milan, he must have gone directly to the Ferrarese court of Duke Ercole I d’Este, where he is accounted for from March 1477 to early February 1481;3 3) a Milanese document of July 1476 shows that he was promised a benefice at that time, so we may be sure that 1 The most comprehensive discussion of Japart’s life appears in the Introduction to my forthcoming edition, Jean Japart: The Collected Works, which will appear in the series Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance (New York: Broude Brothers Trust); see also, ALLAN W. ATLAS / rev. Jane Alden, “Japart, Johannes” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, rev. ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), XII, 890-91; ATLAS, “Japart, Jean,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, rev. ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2003, Personenteil) IX, cols. 935-36; RALPH W. BUXTON, “Johannes Japart: Fifteenth-Century Composer,” Current Musicology 31 (1981), 7-38. 2 On Japart at Milan, see PAUL MERKLEY and LORA L. M. MERKLEY (= Mattheus), Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 236, 242-43; “Josquin Desprez and his Milanese Patrons,” Journal of Musicology 12 (1994), 451-52; EVELYN S. WELCH, “Sight Sound and Ceremony in the Chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza,” Early Music History 12 (1993), 182; EDWARD E. LOWINSKY, “Ascanio Sforza’s Life: A Key to Josquin’s Biography and an Aid to the Chronology of his Works,” in Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky and Bonnie Blackburn (London: Macmillan, 1976), 41; CLAUDIO SARTORI, “Josquin des Prés, cantore del Duomo di Milano,” Annales musicologiques 4 (1957), 65; EMILIO MOTTA, “Musici alla corte degli Sforza: Ricerche e documenti milanesi,” Archivio storico lombardo, Ser. II, vol. 4 (1887), 323-24. 3 Japart’s Ferrarese period is documented in LEWIS LOCKWOOD, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), passim and 320-23; “Music at Ferrara in the Period of Ercole I d’Este,” Studi musicali 1 (1972), 119. - 645 - PETRUCCI G-01 ATLAS 6-04-2005 12:37 Pagina 646 ALLAN W. ATLAS he was a churchman;4 and 4) a 1480 Ferrarese payroll notice states that he hailed from Picardy.5 In all, the paper trail of biographical data is only four years and ten months long, from April 1476 to February 1481. Beyond this, all is speculation, of which there has been no shortage. Here I shall review just three instances, leaving aside those that conflate Japart with musicians named “Jaspar(e),” since that name must be read as a variant of Gaspar, as in, most often, Weerbecke.6 In terms of Japart’s post-Ferrarese activities, both Frank D’Accone and Howard Mayer Brown have suggested that Japart might be identified with the singer Jannes Piccardus who is recorded at the Santissima Annunziata at Florence in 1482.7 D’Accone further suggests, and reasonably so, that this Jannes Piccardus is the similarly-named singer active both at the Cathedral of Siena that same year and at St. Peter’s in Rome in 1478.8 4 See LOWINSKY, “Ascanio Sforza’s Life,” 41, n. 30. 5 The notice is printed in my Jean Japart: The Collected Works (see note 1); my thanks to Lewis Lockwood for sharing the previously unpublished document with me. 6 On Jaspar(e) as a variant of Gaspar, see ALBERT DAUZAT, Dictionaire étymologique des noms de famille et prénoms de France, 3rd ed., ed. Marie-Thérèse Morlet (Paris: Larousse, 1951), 280, 341; ALBERT CARNOY, Origines des noms de familles en Belgique (Louvain: Editions universitas, 1953), 22. Conflations of Jaspar(e) and Japart are numerous: ROBERT EITNER, Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900-1904), V, 278, from where it was surely taken over by both Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., ed. Eric Blom (London: Macmillan, 1954), IV, 593, and Riemann Musik Lexikon,12th ed., ed. Wilibald Gurlitt (Mainz: Schott, 1959), I, 870; GERHARD CROLL, “Gaspar van Weerbeke,” Musica disciplina 6 (1952), 74-76; HELMUTH OSTHOFF, Josquin Desprez (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1962/1965), II, 154; my own article on Japart in New Grove/1, IX, 553; HANS JOACHIM MARX, “Neues zur Tabulatur-Handschrift St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 530,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 37 (1980), 273; THOMAS WARBURTON, “Sicher’s ‘Johannes Zela zons plus’,” Acta musicologica 55 (1983), 75-78, 84; HANS JOACHIM MARX AND THOMAS WARBURTON, St. Galler Orgelbuch: Die Orgeltabulature des Fridolin Sicher (St. Gallen, Codex 530). Schweizerische Musikdenkmäler 8 (Winterthur: Amadeus, 1992), Nos. 114 and 356; RAINER BIRKENDORF, Der Codex Pernner: Quellenkundliche Studien zu einer Musikhandschrift des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, Bischöflichen Zentralbibliothek, Sammlung Proske, MS C 120). Collectanea musicologica 6/1 (Augsburg: Bernd Wissner, 1994), I, 76. The conflations in Osthoff, New Grove/1, and Birkendorf confuse Japart with “Meestere Jaspare den sangmeester” of the chapel of the Guild of Our Lady in Bergen op Zoom in 1504-1508; it was Jeffrey Dean who first called my attention to this error, noting that the chapel rosters of the guild always refer to the singers by their Christian name; the other conflations involve Japart and Gaspar van Weerbeke. On “Meestere Jaspare,” see ROB WEGMAN, “Music and Musicians at the Guild of Our Lady in Bergen op Zoom, c. 1470-1510,” Early Music History 9 (1990), 234-35, 245. 7 FRANK A. D’ACCONE, A Documentary History of Music at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistry During the Fifteenth Century (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1960), I, 194, II, 166; HOWARD MAYER BROWN, A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 229, Monuments of Renaissance Music 7 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), I, 50; see also, WENDY POWERS, The Music Manuscript Fondo Magliabechi XIX.178 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence: A Study in the Changing Role of the Chanson in Late 15th-Century Florence (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1994), II, 81-82, who cites the identifications. 8 FRANK A. D’ACCONE, The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 232; on Jannes Piccardus at St. Peter’s, see CHRISTOPHER A. REYNOLDS, Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter’s, 1380-1513 (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 334. - 646 - PETRUCCI G-01 ATLAS 6-04-2005 12:37 Pagina 647 PETRUCCI’S SONGBOOKS AND JAPART’S BIOGRAPHY Unfortunately, Japart cannot be drawn into this network of “Jannes” identifications: 1) Jannes Piccardus was known at both Siena and Florence as “Johannes Comitis,” a name for which there are no known ties with Japart; and 2) the singer at St. Peter’s in 1478 certainly cannot be Japart, since the latter is securely documented at Ferrara at that time. If, then, the Jannes Piccardus/Comitis documented at both Siena and Florence in 1482 is also the Piccardus active at Rome in 1478 – and this is likely given that all three places refer to their Jannes as a “soprano” – he cannot be identified as Japart. Finally, some might raise still another objection to the identification: Jannes Piccardus/Comitis was apparently a monk, but what impact such monastic status might have on an identification with Japart is a matter with which we shall wrestle presently. For the period prior to Milan, I have speculated – on the grounds of numerous musical “intersections,” both internal and external – that a youthful Japart might have enjoyed a student-teacher relationship with Antoine Busnoys prior to the latter’s having entered the service of Charles the Bold in 1466-67.9 And finally, to change chronological direction once again, there is that shadowy chanson, Revenu d’oultremonts, Japart, which Fétis claimed was addressed to Japart by Josquin.10 Though Osthoff doubted its very existence11 (Fétis, we should recall, was apparently the last person to see the song, at least with its poetic text in tact), Lowinsky accepted it (though for reasons that are no longer tenable),12 as has David Fallows, who has tentatively identified it with the recently-discovered Schanson de Josquin in the manuscript Herd 9820.13 And since Fallows dates the song from no earlier than 1510 on stylistic grounds, it would, if it is in fact Revenu, show that Japart was still alive about one full decade into the sixteenth century and once again living north of the Alps. To these three rounds of speculation I shall now add a fourth, though I must first establish its context, which centers around the transmission of the twenty-three works – all secular and with six having conflicting attributions – that sources of the period ascribe to Japart.