John Howell wrote:
At 10:53 AM +0000 1/29/06, Owain Sutton wrote:
Some good points, perhaps, although I think you need a bit more
evidence before making such claims about Dufay or Josquin with such
certainty!
In DuFay's lifetime the popularity of one's music can be measured by the
number of manuscripts containing that music, and his is in lots of
them. And Ottaviano Petrucci in Venice was one of the first printers of
polyphonic music, a successful businessman, and therefore a shrewd judge
of his own marketplace, and he chose to print and publish much of
Josquin's sacred music.
The survival in manuscripts can be used as an *indicator* of such
popularity, but it most certainly does not tell us about the reasons
composers wrote the music they did. And survival in, for example, the
Trent Codices tells us nothing at all about how frequently or widely the
music was heard or performed.
Petrucci was a shrewd (or very lucky) businessman. But, we do not know
who he sold books to, or even how many he sold. And it's most likely
that he chose pre-existing music which he knew would sell well, and
therefore is irrelevant in the context of how composers work.
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