Running Low on Cash as a Musician and Want to Sing-Complain About It? Guess What, Josquin Des Prez Came 500 Years Earlier!

Lukas Kamenski

Introduction - Who was Josquin Des Prez?

Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450-1521) was probably the most renown and influential composer of the Renaissance between the era of Guillaume du Fay (ca. 1397-1474) and G.P. da Palestrina (ca. 1525-1594). He was a master of both sacred and secular music and his contemporaries such as Martin Luther called him “master of notes”. His lifetime coincided with the beginning of widespread use of the printing press for replicating music (ca. 1470), a fact that defintitely aided his fame and Josquin’s compositions were more often printed than those of any other composer before 1550.

The piece Faulte d'argent is a secular chanson for five voices and was first published in Antwerp 1545 in “Septiesme livre contenant vingt-quatre chansons a cinq et six parties” (no. 16).

Lyrics that might set up feminists...

As the title suggests, the song thematizes a topic that is still often sung about today: money (and the lack thereof). Modern songs that immediately come to mind that have similar lyrics and either lament the lack of money or satirize the use of money are e.g., Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Money, Money, Money by ABBA. Interestingly, a song by The Beatles, Can’t Buy Me Love states that love cannot be bought, whereas Faulte d’argent apparently claims the opposite with the line “sleeping women will only wake for cash” (see lyrics below). I guess that 19th century Romanticism, social revolutions and widespread feminism have fortunately left traces in the perception of women by songwriters. What a striking contrast!

Compositional techniques

Now to the musicological facts of Faulte d’argent: Although first published much later, Faulte d’argent was probably composed ca. 1500 and is based on an existing popular monophonic song. In the beginning, the original melody is placed in the tenor and is later canonically repeated at different intervals in the superius and pars quinta (fifth voice). The structural backbone of the song is highly contrapuntal and all voices participate in imitation of the original melody or newly invented contrapuntal lines. The overall perceived key is a mixture of (modern-day nomenclature) G harmonic minor, G Dorian and G Aeolian. This is because in some cadences F# occurs, and both E and Eb are used. In some parts of the songs, one could even argue that center of tonality shifts to parallel F and C major (e.g., “Si je le dis” 0:48-1:05). I think this Josquin uses this kind of modulation on purpose to provide interest and relieve from the darker passages of the song, a technique that is often used until today. It is also something that I haven’t heard in this clarity in pieces by composers before Josquin’s era!

The overall perception of the chanson is that of a complex, almost canon-like, highly imitative piece. It’s quite impressive to hear such an early composition that already sounds so familiar to modern-day ears.

Lyrics (Original text):

Faulte d'argent c'est douleur non pareille

se ie le dis las ie scay bien pourquoy

sans de quibus il se fault tenir quoy

femme qui dort pour argent se reveille.

English translation:

Being poor is a great pain.

And alas, I know it but all too well.

The penniless have to lay low,

since sleeping women will only wake for cash.

References:

Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music (International Student Edition). Tenth edition. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019, Print.

Faulte d’argent. Retrieved on 15th of August 2021, 12:12 p.m. from https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Faulte_d%27argent_(Josquin_des_Prez)