2004/01/01 by Paula Higgins · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Diverse Musicological Studies #Theater, Performance, and Music History #Genius #Apotheosis #Ideology #Scholarship #Musical #Mythology #Literature #Art #History #Aesthetics #Art history #Law #Political science
paper · doi:10.1525/jams.2004.57.3.443
openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Within the theoretical framework of Roland Barthes's writings on myth and ideology, this essay seeks to expose the historical legitimation project through which the mythmaking, universalizing rhetoric of musical genius that has long surrounded the figure of Ludwig van Beethoven came to infiltrate scholarship on Josquin des Prez, culminating in his late twentieth-century apotheosis. Contextualizing the composer's reception history with respect to the debates between Joseph Kerman and Edward Lowinsky in 1965 and especially the 1971 Josquin Festival-Conference, the author suggests that the ideological refashioning of Josquin in the image of Beethoven has simultaneously shaped and derailed the intellectual trajectory of early music scholarship in the past thirty years. By privileging a discourse of musical genius in the service of which, among other concerns, the canon of works attributed to the composer is being decimated beyond historical recognition, the richness and complexity of the musical culture of which he was a vital part risks being overshadowed and obfuscated by the disproportionate amount of attention invested in his singular accomplishments. The essay advocates a resolute historicization of sixteenth-century discourses of creative endowment, a critical reassessment of the role of authentication scholarship in Josquin studies, and a renewed sensitivity to the imbrication of mythologies of musical genius in music historiographies of both the past and the present.