Summary: Today we recognize the birth and the death of two musical masters from entirely different times and places who nevertheless, by the most extraordinary of coincidences, share the same nickname: the jazz tenor saxophonist Lester “Prez” Young and the Franco-Flemish composer Josquin “des Prez” Lebloitte. <br> <br> Lester “Prez” Young<br> <br> Lester “Prez” Young<br> <br> Lester Willis Young was born on August 27, 1909 – 109 years ago today – in Woodland, Mississippi. He was the consummate jazz hipster, who played “cool” long before “cool jazz” was recognized as a genre of jazz. Known in particular for his long association with Billie Holiday, Lester Young died on March 15, 1959, at the age of 49.<br> <br> Josquin des Prez<br> <br> Josquin des Prez (or “Desprez”; we will talk about the surname Lebloitte in a moment) was born circa 1450 and died on August 27, 1521: 497 years ago today. He was, simply, the greatest and most respected composer of his time. That he is not still a musical household name speaks to the fickleness of history and not to his music, which is superb.<br> <br> Josquin was the first composer to become a legend after his death, the first to have his music widely disseminated thanks to the newly invented printing press, and thus the first composer to have his works ranked as “classics” and his oeuvre as a “canon”. <br> <br> Let’s back that statement up. Martin Luther, no mean musician himself, wrote:<br> <br> “Josquin is master of the notes, which must express what he desires; on the other hand, other composers must do what the notes dictate.”<br> <br> Writing in 1567, 46 years after Josquin’s death, the Florentine diplomat, philologist, mathematician, and humanist Cosimo Bartoli wrote:<br> <br> “Josquin may be said to have been, in music, a prodigy of nature, as our Michelangelo has been in architecture, painting, and sculpture; for, as there has not thus far been anybody who in his compositions approaches Josquin, so Michelangelo, among all those who have been active in the arts, is still alone and without peer.”<br> <br> The few accounts of Josquin the “man” that have come down to us describe an arrogant and self-absorbed curmudgeon whose personality defects were forgiven because of his extraordinary talent. Like the popular image of Beethoven today, he was perceived – in his lifetime – as someone apart, a composer into whose ear whispered the divine. <br> <br> His fame notwithstanding, huge gaps in our knowledge of Josquin’s life and music remain.<br> <br> We’re still not sure in which decade he was born. Until the late 1990s, his date of birth was pegged as being around 1440, based on what was considered the earliest known documentary record of his existence, a roster of singers at the Cathedral of Milan dating from 1459. The roster lists one “Jodocho de frantia biscantori”, which translates “Josquin of France, young adult singer”. But recent scholarship has revealed that the singer so named was not our Josquin, but rather, someone named Josquin de Kassalia, who had been born circa 1440. As it turns out, Josquin des Prez did not arrive in Italy until the late 1480s, and today his birth date is usually given as being circa 1450, though it was probably sometime in the early to mid-1450s.<br> <br> Neither are we precisely sure where Josquin was born. It might have been in what today is Belgium, in the province of Hainaut, or just across the border in or around the town of Saint-Quentin [San quen-TEN], in northern France. Both of these areas were, at the time, part of Burgundy, qualifying Josquin as being, generically, “Franco-Flemish”. <br> <br> Based on various legal documents – including his will – Josquin identified himself as being a Frenchman, although there is some question regarding that as well. His name, Josquin des Prez (or Desprez; both spellings are used) is a French rendering of the Dutch “Josken van de Velde”.
