To the Most Illustrious Lord for his singular virtue

Abstract

The conference whose proceedings are here published arose from a project funded by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and entitled, somewhat dissertationistically, ‘The Latin dedications of the motet editions of the Franco-Flemish polyphonists from the second half of the 16th century as musical and literary sources’; at some point the scope broadened to include other genres of music, the 15th and 16th centuries at large, other European composers, literature of various kinds, and the ancient world that provided the precedent for such addresses. (Not all were in Latin; vernacular paratexts too would merit attention.) The Latinate reader will immediately recognize the first line of Catullus’ poetry-book, a dedication (what of, is disputed) to the chronographer and historical biographer Cornelius Nepos; the mixture of modesty and pride expressed in the epigram sits well with humanistic dedications, in which obsequious and not always merited praise of patrons occasionally gives place to scarcely veiled assertion that it is the patron's duty to recognize the author's genius. Less happy is the implication, in the English part of the title, that motets (unlike the other musical compositions discussed) are not works; in the university library of the very city in which this collection is published, the bass partbook surviving as manuscript M. 4 records the motet Hic est vere martir as ‘Ultimum opus Clementis non Papae’.