Richard Sherr – författare

The Josquin Companion presents both the scholarly and general reader with the most complete and concentrated discussion ever published in English on the music of Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521) - the greatest composer of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Not a standard, single-author life and works, the volume provides a basic survey of Josquin's music and of the many problems which attend it. Through a collaborative effort of distinguished scholars, it takes into account the most recent research on Josquin. Beginning with a summary of the latest developments in the composer's constantly-changing biography and a discussion of his stature as a great man then and now, the Companion continues with chapters considering all the compositional genres employed by Josquin and offers wide-ranging surveys as well as close studies of individual pieces. Further chapters explore both traditional and untraditional analytical perspectives on Josquin's music, and suggest new avenues of research. A Worklist, Bibliography, and Annotated Discography (the first since the advent of the compact disc and the concurrent explosion of early music recording) end the book.

This book collects twelve of the papers given at a conference held at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., on 1-3 April 1993, in conjunction with the exhibition `Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture'. A group of distinguished scholars considered music in medieval and Renaissance Rome. The volume presents a series of wide-ranging and original treatments of music written for and performed in the papal court from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. New discoveries are offered which force a radical reevaluation of the Italian papal court as a musical centre during the Great Schism. A series of motets for various popes are subject to close analysis. New interpretations and information are offered concerning the repertory of the papal chapel in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the institutional life of the papal singers, and the individual biographies of singers and composers. Thought-provoking, even controversial, evaluations of the music of composers connected with, or thought to be connected with, Rome and the papal court, such as Ninot le Petit, Josquin, and Palestrina round out the volume.

First published in 1999, the essays that follow have been selected from the author’s writings to explore musical institutions in 15th and 16th century Italy with a detailed focus on the papal choir, but with additional comments on Mantua (Mantova), Florence and France. Much of the material which formed the basis of those essays was largely drawn from archives. Richard Sherr explores diverse areas including the Medici coat of arms in a motet for Leo X, performance practice in the papal chapel during the 16th century, the publications of Guglielmo Gonzaga, Lorenzo de’ Medici as a patron of music and homosexuality in late sixteenth-century Italy.