Josquin’s Missa Pange Lingua Reconsidered: Further Thematic Links with Music in the Alamire Manuscripts

Despite its omission from Petrucci’s printed trilogy of his masses, scholars have rarely doubted the authenticity of Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua. Reckonings of its date of composition to the later years of Josquin’s maturity have been replaced by in particular David Fallows’ suggestion (2009) of one nearer to c.1510 when Josquin was based (from 1504 onwards) in Condé sur l’Escaut. It was widely circulated in northern Europe and Italy (Rome), with the earliest surviving sources dating from c.1515 onwards. Besides questions concerning its historical origins and possible routes of transmission, including to the Alamire scriptorium at an early stage, there are intriguing structural/thematic aspects of the Pange lingua mass that so far appear to have escaped notice. Beginning with the start of the Credo, which is otherwise seemingly based on the hymn melody’s opening contour, close connections can be seen between parts of this mass and parts of a mass by a Flemish composer that survives only in two Alamire choirbooks (copied c.1508/12 onwards). The closeness of these links would seem to indicate that this was no chance connection. However, the chronology of composition of the two masses is not so clear, and it seems possible that the Flemish composer’s mass may even predate Josquin’s. In considering these links and thematic connections this paper aims to contextualise Josquin’s mass and possibly throw further light on its origins and/or early history.