Facsimiles from sources of compositions attributed to Josquin

In 1969, half a century after commissioning Albert Smijers to edit the music of Josquin, the 'Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis' published the last volume of the Werken van Josquin des Prez. Smijers's achievement was a monumental one, but in the decades after his death great strides were made in the field of musical source studies, and it was generally felt that Josquin's works deserved a new edition - one that would profit from the recent refinements and new methodologies in the study of musical sources. Soon after, an international team of musicologists started the preparation for this edition, collecting all known source material and laying down the editorial principles that would assure the musical and scientific value of the new edition.

In the second and present volume, the NJE offers an anthology of facsimiles of the sources in which compositions by Josquin are transmitted and which are preserved in libraries and archives not only in the countries where the composer was professionally active (France, the Netherlands and Italy), but also in the whole of Europe: from Uppsala to Toledo, from Edinburgh to Warsaw. Listed and described in the first volume of this edition, these sources are so numerous that not more than some one hundred of them can be represented with a facsimile. The selection reflects both the distribution of Josquin's music in Europe at the time and the various types of manuscripts and printed editions in which it is found. The general order of this facsimiles will be the same as for the works in this edition: Masses, Motets and Secular Works. (Willem Elders & Marnix van Berchum)