1501 was an incredibly important year in the history of European musical culture due to one remarkable event. Ottaviano Petrucci designed and printed the first book of music using Gutenberg's system of moveable type. The book, an anthology that included works by Busnois, Ockeghem, Regis, Agricola, Brumel, La Rue, Compère, and Josquin, was called the Odhecaton. Josquin gave Petrucci a number of pieces for the anthology, intuiting perhaps the important role printed music would play in making his name so eminent on the continent. Thanks to Petrucci, music henceforth became much less costly, and thus more available, granting access of non-professionals to scores and allowing churches and courts to expand their libraries enormously. By increasing the ease and breadth of circulation, the rate of musical development was greatly accelerated. Josquin rode that wave to the position in the canon that he holds now, as Europe's first "great composer."

In tone, method, and meaning, La plus des plus is probably Josquin's most refined contribution to Petrucci's landmark book. The editors of the New Josquin edition had suggested that the rondeau text "La plus des plus" could appropriately, and successfully be fitted to Josquin's music, and recent performances bear this out. The amorous sentiments expressed in the text are highly poetic and artificial. It is essentially a "how shall I compare thee?" mini-catalog of the beloved's multiple virtues. It ends however, with a line that, if this was indeed the text Josquin had in mind, can be taken as the self-flattery of a composer, whom, on the eve of Petrucci's important publishing venture, saw his fortune clearly: "...such is and will be your fame, your name should be pronounced everywhere." The somewhat grave music strikes a wonderful balance between antipodes of a controlling tight-knit imitative scheme and the expansive, inspirational outpouring of melisma. There are somber shadowy tones creeping in at the edges that the brilliant top voice, that makes many brief soaring flights, seems to be trying to escape.

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