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78
Kisch
⦁
Casting the Bigger Shadow
Since Josquin rose to fame through his motets, especially those published
in Petrucci’s
Motetti A
of 1502, it is questionable which entrepreneur
promoted the other. Did well-known music publisher Petrucci, through
his
Odhecaton A
, champion the music of a budding composer and thus
give it prominence in the public eye? Or did Josquin, the rising composer
of polyphony, provide the material necessary for a novice music printer
to gain an international reputation? After my research, I have concluded
that these two businessmen rose at roughly the same rate, promoting each
other equally with their respective skill set. Petrucci exhibited the
characteristics of a knowledgeable businessman; as the works of Josquin
became more and more in vogue, he published what the public
demanded.
Comparing Petrucci’s business model to Attaingnant’s is a stark contrast
indeed. Attaingnant probably did not have an editor selecting the works
to be published, and he likely completed this process himself. While
Petrucci had the advantage of delegating this task to someone apparently
more specialized (Petrucci may not have been a musician at all),
Attaingnant was loaded with the responsibilities of both compiler and
publisher.
In his early works Attaingnant shows a definite “preference for lament-
type poems rather than light, ‘popular’ ones,” as drinking songs,
pastorals, and narratives account for less than twenty percent of the
pieces. As his career developed, Attaingnant demonstrated a shift
towards these types of more popular pieces, such as dance music.
38
This
is not to say that Petrucci only published lighter, more frivolous kinds of
music, or that Josquin’s music was unsophisticated. However, never in
his lifetime did Attaingnant establish any sort of “partnership” with a
composer or foster the popularization of new music as did Petrucci and
Josquin.
In many ways, Attaingnant’s historical longevity has been cut short by
his lack of marketability. His notes were printed with perfect accuracy,
his single-impression method was much cheaper, and his work flow
would have been three times as efficient, but he lacked the “right time,
right place” opportunities that Petrucci, somehow, always seemed to
obtain. Marilee J. Mouser writes about Petrucci:
38
Courtney S. Adams, “The Early Chanson Anthologies Published by Pierre
Attaingnant (1528–1530),”
The Journal of Musicology
5, no. 4 (1987): 528.