Talk:Josquin des Prez

Short description

I don't understand the rational for reverting the short description to the redundant "Composer of the Renaissance (c. 1450–1521)". "Franco-flemish" is not a nationality but a specific musical tradition, and Slominsky (1988) opens with "the greatest of the Franco-Flemish composers", which ought to be good enough for WP. Sparafucil (talk) 23:43, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Franco-Flemish often doubles as a sort of national identifier. Look at the lead "Josquin [...] is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish", described and sourced (at length) in note #2.

The point is, some scholars would say "French composer", some would say "Franco-Flemish" composer—if there's a division over that sort of thing, the short description should completely avoid taking a side. Aza24 (talk) 03:06, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

'Josquin was born in the French-speaking area of Flanders, in modern-day northeastern France or Belgium' is absolute nonsense, just like 'the Swahili-speaking part of the USA' is not in Ontario. I don't know what is meant with the French speaking part of Flanders, as Flanders is by definition NOT French speaking, or it would not be Flanders. It is definitely not in Northeastern France, or, perhaps, Australia. From the info I gather that the French speaking part of today's BELGIUM was meant, or Northern France? (Northeastern France is Alsace Lorraine, what used to be the German speaking part). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maesena (talk • contribs) 03:39, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The County of Flanders is different than modern-day Flanders. The county is what this article refers to. Regardless, I understand your confusion, and I have simplified this to "somewhere in what is now northeastern France or Belgium" Aza24 (talk) 02:00, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

"High Renaissance"

I was struck by "composer of High Renaissance music" at Desprez (disambiguation), and see it was probably take from the lede here. To me, 'High Renaissance' music is the Counter-Reformation generation of Lasso, Palestrina, Byrd & Victoria, not the contemporaries of the High Renaissance painters. But there's a lot else in need of attention in Renaissance music. Sparafucil (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

The term is sourced in the article to Taruskin who says "No wonder, then, that Aaron is looked upon as the literary harbinger of “high Renaissance” music, and Josquin as its master architect". In my mind, those figures you mention are the late Renaissance, if we say early-high-late. Aza24 (talk) 03:19, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Recent changes

Hi @Jesserodin: and welcome to Wikipedia. I much enjoyed your Josquin-Sistine-Chapel survey and you are exactly the person we need to help improve this article. I apologize for what probably seems like a brash revert of your recent edits. Please bear with me, for a small primer to help your efforts:

I much appreciate your recent edits, but you are improperly editing the WP:LEAD and would benefit from familiarizing yourself with Wikipedia practices. The lead is a reflection of the article content, and can only include information which is cited below (hence why the lead itself has no citations). Much of your edits include changes which are not reflected below. Everything in Wikipedia must be cited; your insistence against the attributions of El grillo and Mille regretz, for instance, need citations. Please also note our neutrality and encyclopedic tone practices here. Things like "one of the greatest composers of Western music" and "Josquin has been recognized as a central figure in the history of music, on par with Leonardo da Vinci" are not only uncited, but excessively laudatory (see WP:PUFFERY). The reader will understand just fine with "Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance".

For the record the article, I would not characterize this article as one in "badly in need of overhauling". I rewrote it almost entirely a few years back, and it received approval from Fallows, among many other Wikipedia editors. If you'd like to see what it looked like before, see here. That is a version drastically in need of overhaul.

It would be much easier if you proposed systemic changes on the talk page—that way, you give other editors time to comment and review the changes. This is a featured article, so it is subject to much more rigorous review than others. I apologize if any of this is off-putting, but I would rather you start fully equipped, then have more hard-worked edits suddenly removed. Aza24 (talk) 20:30, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your message and for the explanations. Understood re: the function of the lead—I had begun editing further down, citations included, but it was way too much to finish in one sitting. The two laudatory comments are easily removed. (I included these only in an effort to restore some balance, as there has been an unfortunate tendency for a couple of loud and hostile voices to drown out more reasoned views, to the point of losing sight of some pretty basic stuff.)

With respect, the article is indeed badly in need of overhauling. New documents have come to light concerning Josquin's birth date, early biography, and ancestry, including one I can report on (and even cite—it is publicly available) that is otherwise unknown. We now have a date for Pater noster. We now have a better sense of the chronology of the music. Most importantly, new work on the canon has drastically changed the state of play. Even Fallows no longer accepts Mille regretz, which nonetheless manages to make it to the top of every paragraph about Josquin one can find on the internet, Wikipedia included. The same goes for El grillo, which most serious Josquin scholars have not accepted for a long time (though the attribution remains troubling). The revised work list I contributed, which I am pleased to see you have let stand, tells the broader story, as will a large book on Josquin that I am in co-editing at the moment. This more realistic canon also has important implications the story of Josquin's reception. It adds up to many, many changes. Jesserodin (talk) 04:51, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

I thought it might be helpful to list the problems in the current lead:

Moved to new section

– see #Revision notes

Hi @Aza24: Chiming in here. I'll work with @Jesserodin: to overhaul the page and make sure that we follow the proper Wikipedia standards. I think we can start below and then later edit the lead. Benjamin S Ory (talk) 06:34, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

@Jesserodin, many thanks for the informative response, and glad to have you here as well @Benjamin S Ory. Of course, I have no issue with either of you editing the article directly, as indeed that is a core feature of Wikipedia itself. My request for caution is for any systemic changes, on major article structuring, for instance. I would only ask that you both 1) preview your edits (with the “preview” button) so as to ensure accidental formatting errors do not occur—since Wikipedia is, after all, a live site; and 2) leave brief edit summaries for individual edits (thank you for already doing this).

I am surprised to see the lengthy list of lead quibbles (I'll leave some more specific responses and adjust what I can), but most of your concerns are related to information sourced within the article body. So in this case, I'm seeing two possibilities

1. There is disagreement (not currently represented) with sources on certain facts
2. There is new scholarship that revises older information

If this new scholarship is unpublished, it cannot be used, unfortunately. Wikipedia is the most tertiary of tertiary sources, and essentially everything about its coverage is determined by what reliable published sources say on the subject (see WP:Verifiability, not truth). I suspect that the new volume you mention more include more overt citations to these facts.

The point is, we need sources that are explicit; to say something like "The attribution of Mille regretz to Josquin is now considered dubious", for instance, we would need a source that literally says "The vast majority of musicologists now regard the attribution of Mille regretz to Josquin as dubious". If it is just one scholar proposing an opinion, then we would have to say something more general, like the current text describing it as "an uncertain attribution to Josquin". Does that make sense? Aza24 (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

@Benjamin S Ory: @Jesserodin:: hi there. So, I'm not sure what was unclear about the above, but Wikipedia only uses high-quality, modern secondary sources. You have removed a great deal of high quality sources and replaced them with a 150+ year source... not only is this not permissable, it is being interpreted without secondary sources (this is called WP:Original Research). The third paragraph, sourced to Matthews & Merkely (with no page numbers?) seems to include assertions and information not in the cited source. I don't see this source say "Josquin was probably born in 1450", it instead says: "We would have to suppose watermark date is too early, or posit an earlier year ca. 1450"—the cited source uses considerably more hesitency. The date December 1466 is not even mentioned in the cited source... every sentence needs to be cited. Also Matthews/Merekly was published nearly 20 years before Fallow 2020, so I'm not sure how it can be priotized above Fallows. You also removed a very important note about Josquin's nationality issues... now the "who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish." is uncited in the lead. I'm afraid there are too many major issues here for this edit to improve the article. – Aza24 (talk) 00:23, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Taking the comment point by point:

1. "Wi kipedia only uses high-quality, modern secondary sources. You have removed a great deal of high quality sources and replaced them with a 150+ year source... not only is this not permissable, it is being interpreted without secondary sources (this is called WP:Original Research)."

This statement evinces confusion about the difference between a primary source and a secondary source. The cited "150+ year"-old source is a secondary source. It is from a book of "high-quality" modern scholarship. The book comprises transcriptions and summaries of now lost fifteenth-century documents. The document transcribed here ties in with the evidence provided in Herbert Kellman's 2009 essay on Josquin's ancestry (to which Fallows, 2009 adds very little).

2. "The third paragraph, sourced to Matthews & Merkely (with no page numbers?) seems to include assertions and information not in the cited source. I don't see this source say 'Josquin was probably born in 1450', it instead says: 'We would have to suppose watermark date is too early, or posit an earlier year ca. 1450'—the cited source uses considerably more hesitency."

The citation is appropriately to the article that first reported the document cited in the relevant sentence. Kellman, who proposes ca. 1450, is also cited in the appropriate place.

3. "[E]very sentence needs to be cited."

It is.

4. "Also Matthews/Merekly was published nearly 20 years before Fallow 2020, so I'm not sure how it can be priotized above Fallows."

Fallows summarizes the finding. But the finding was made by Matthews and Merkley. That Fallows is the more recent source doesn't make it the better one. This is Scholarship 101.

5. "You also removed a very important note about Josquin's nationality issues... now the "who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish." is uncited in the lead."

What we removed is not "very important"; it is material no longer germane to the study of Josquin's biography. Thanks above all to research by Kellman we now have all the documentary evidence needed to make an extremely strong case for the composer having been born where the new version of the article says he was born. The St-Quentin and Flanders stuff is wrong and needs to go. If this were a section on the reception of the Josquin biography it would be fine and good to retain this material. But this is not a section on the reception of Josquin's biography. This is a section on Josquin's biography. Jesserodin (talk) 01:43, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm seeing too many discrepancies between your analysis above and the actual version inserted by BSO to understand where you're coming from. Can we please, as A24 suggested above, "propose systemic changes on the talk page"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:03, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

No, we cannot. The article needs to be overhauled. Much of what is there is wrong or not germane. Jesserodin (talk) 23:02, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

@Jesserodin and Benjamin S Ory: as there is still some need for improved knowledge of Wikipedia policies and guidelines (including the need for collegiality in interaction with other editors), I echo the request from Aza24, Firefangledfeathers, and others that you for now use the draft page offered, so that others can assist in guiding content and sourcing towards the improvements you/we seek. A fresh start here, without the personal attacks and focusing on sources, would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:02, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

@Aza24, I want to echo @Jesserodin that a lot of what's in the section that we started editing was either 1) not accurate, on the basis of current published secondary literature; or 2) points that are largely orthogonal to the issues at hand (that is, for this section, a) where was Josquin born and b) what is his likely birthdate).

For instance, the sentence: The musicologist William Elders noted that "it could be called a twist of fate that neither the year, nor the place of birth of the greatest composer of the Renaissance is known" does not add anything to our understanding of either the composer's birthdate or birth location. We don't know birthdates or locations for many Renaissance composers; it's not unusual.

And given we know where Josquin was born, on the basis of research published by Herbert Kellman, a lot of what's currently in the section feels like unnecessary and outdated speculation that can confuse the reader.

@Firefangledfeathers I don't see the discrepancies that you do.

I imagine that we are all aiming for the same thing: to provide the reader with the best information that we can provide on the basis of the published material out there. The article as it is written does not meet that standard. @Jesserodin and I are among the experts on Josquin in the world at the moment. If it would make you feel better, I'm sure that we can get other Josquin experts (Joshua Rifkin, Richard Sherr, David Fallows, Emily Zazulia, etc.) to sign off on the changes that need to be made.

I am not sure if folks have a personal attachment to the way the article is written, but this feels like a lot of pushback for relatively small changes. Benjamin S Ory (talk) 16:20, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Starting with "The cited "150+ year"-old source is a secondary source. It is from a book of "high-quality" modern scholarship. The book comprises transcriptions and summaries of now lost fifteenth-century documents." The first proposed paragraph did not cite any high-quality modern scholarship, and it did not cite any books comprising transcriptions/summaries. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:35, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Evidently it needs repeating that the scholarship that underpins the new version (by Nedonchel, Kellman, and Matthews/Merkley) is cited appropriately in the new version. Jesserodin (talk) 23:00, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Where?

In recent decades many gaps in Josquin's notoriously patchy biography have been filled. He was born in the French-speaking County of Hainaut in modern-day Belgium. On 24 January 1452 his policeman father Gossard Lebloitte dit des Prez was executed for crimes including murder. As Josquin's father was a native of Saint-Sauveur (also in Hainaut), Josquin was most likely born in that town or somewhere nearby.

References

We have a 444-page book from 1867 cited without page numbers, and are confronted with the unlikelihood of it supporting "In recent decades ..." Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:37, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I feel that at this point we are talking past each other, because FFF and I have both made Wikipedia sourcing requirements (particularly for featured articles) quite clear, so I am not sure how else to communicate this. Just to reiterate:

1. Every sentence/statement/observation/any-piece-of-content needs to be directly cited
2. Citations should only be to contemporary literature (a common standard is post 1980s). No primary sources (unless they are purely ancillary for the reader's benefit, that is, in addition to a proper secondary source that covers the content independently). More recent scholarship is preferable
3. Specific page number or small page-ranges are a requirement
4. High quality sources (since this is a featured article) are necessary. I.e. modern sources, no tabloids

An honest evaluation of this criteria makes the proposed edit entirely untenable:

• In recent decades many gaps in Josquin's notoriously patchy biography have been filled – This is uncited (fails #1)
• The rest of paragraph one: cited to a 150+ year old source (fails #2 and #4) with no page number(s) (fails #3)
• From early on Josquin lived with his probably well-to-do aunt and uncle Jaque Banestonne and Gilles Lebloitte dit Desprez in Condé-sur-l'Escaut.: cited to an entire book chapter range (fails #3; admittedly, the original is as well, but includes the more specific Fallows reference).
• "He is almost certainly the "Gossequin de Condé..." (possibly fails #1, redundant regardless) I do not have my copy of Fallows with me at the moment, but does he actually say he is "almost certainly"? Plus this is already below: "Fallows associates him with Goseequin de Condent"
• The third birthdate paragraph – no specific page number (fails #3) and does not cover the content (fails #1): where does the article say "Josquin was probably born in 1450, for three reasons", where does it even mention "24 January 1452" or "December 1466"? How is any of this an improvement over the original "He is now thought to have been born around 1450, and at the latest 1455, making him "a close contemporary" of composers Loyset Compère and Heinrich Isaac, and slightly older than Jacob Obrecht." — which is directly cited to Grove, gives useful contextual information and is essentially the same content?

There are also the silent, unexplained removals of substantial information. You say that "The St-Quentin and Flanders stuff is wrong and needs to go". Richard Sherr (2017) says directly that he "was born in the French-language area of Flanders". You haven't given any source that disagree with this directly, and even if you did, we would have to balance the disagreement and not pick sides (unless there is overwhelming scholarly support, which I'm not seeing). All the birthplace information is sourced to Grove (2011) and Fallows (2020)—why is it removed? You can't just remove information you disagree with... think about the consequences that would have for say, a political bio on Wikipedia. Why remove mention of his mother? Why remove the older clearly described outdated theories (important for readers to know they are outdated, otherwise they'll read an older source and think the info is missing, if you think there's too much empahasis we can put it in a footnote etc.)

Wikipedia is not an academic journal, and frankly sourcing requirements here probably appear much stricter than most journals. The explanation is simple: since this is an encyclopedia "anyone can edit", article here cannot rely on the authority of the editors such as all of us (so the "approval" of other scholars, while certainly helpful for fact checking, can certainly not be a substitute for actual citations).

I'm not sure how any of this is "relatively small changes"; you removed 15+ high-quality modern sources and replaced it with two page-number-less articles and one 150+ year old book. I'm sorry, but this is just getting ridiculous. It is unbelievable to me that you could describe this article as "badly in need of overhauling" and then attempts edits like these. I apologize if my tone is inflammatory, but it is frustrating to see how this is playing out... Aza24 (talk) 02:39, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Ben and I would be happy to add a citation after every single sentence. It seemed pedantic to cite Matthews/Merkley, Kellman, and Fallows after sentence 1 in the paragraph you reference—"In recent decades many gaps in Josquin's notoriously patchy biography have been filled"—when those same citations appear shortly thereafter. But if Wikipedia craves redundancy and unscholarly citational practices, then redundancy and unscholarly citational practices Wikipedia shall have.

Given Wikipedia's shall-we-say special citation format, it is possible that the page numbers in the 1867 study by did not come through properly. That is easily remedied. So too for the statements about Josquin's aunt and uncle.

Fallows did not discover the document that refers to Gossequin de Condé. Does Wikipedia care? Certainly not. For the consensus claimed here one could cite Fallows 2009 (p. 354). One could cite Kellman 2009 (p. 197). One could cite Joshua Rifkin's 2009 article in Acta Musicologica (p. 59). One could cite my 2012 essay in the Lexikon der Musik der Renaissance (p. 621). One could cite Alejandro Enrique Planchart's 2018 Guillaume Du Fay (p. 738). Where does it end? This information wasn't known when the Josquin Companion was published in 2000. Does that make this a scholarly disagreement? Obviously not. It only means that on this subject the Josquin Companion is no longer the source to cite.

The "third birthdate paragraph": these comments are incomprehensible. The date "24 January 1452" is indeed mentioned earlier in our new version; the date of December 1466 is cited in the appropriate spot.

To the question about how this is an improvement over "He is now thought to have been born around 1450, and at the latest 1455, making him 'a close contemporary' of composers Loyset Compère and Heinrich Isaac, and slightly older than Jacob Obrecht": well, if his father was dead in 1452, then maybe "at the latest 1455" no longer makes sense?

As for the reference to Compere, Isaac, and Obrecht: why mention these figures at all, particularly when we don't have precise information about the birthdates of two out of three? And why these figures? What about Alexander Agricola, for instance, who in the period was extremely famous?

As for "the silent, unexplained removals of substantial information":

There is no reason to mention the mother because nothing is known. There is no reason to mention outdated ideas about the birthplace because scholars are now confident that they are wrong. A footnote—or better, a section on the reception of the biography—would be fine; in the main text they are at best clutter.

Hainaut, where Josquin was probably born, was a county in the duchy of Burgundy. So was Flanders. This is not a question of disagreement; it is a question of accuracy. (The source you cite is by one of the great Josquin experts of our time, but it is an Oxford Bibliography—not the place scholars tend to put their most precise work.) The information in Grove is outdated and wrong. Your repeated references to Fallows, 2020, moreover, are misleading: the reprint of Fallows's Josquin monograph does not represent a substantial rewrite of the 2009 text.

If only there were a Josquin scholar or two attending to the article who could sort these things out. Jesserodin (talk) 04:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

But if Wikipedia craves redundancy and unscholarly citational practices, then redundancy and unscholarly citational practices Wikipedia shall have. — but Wikipedia is not a scholarly source. It is a general encyclopedia written for a highly general audience. Surely you can understand that an encyclopedia that "any one can edit" will take no chances with citations?

As for the "third birthdate paragraph": I was speaking of the cited source Matthews & Merkley 1998; I do not see those dates anywhere in that citation, thus that information is uncited.

As for "why mention these figures at all"—because Grove mentions them in this exact context. I really think you are under the wrong impression here; neither I nor any other editors is writing new information, we are directly citing from scholarly sources, which is the purpose of Wikipedia. Do you have a source that says Grove or Fallows is outdated? We can't just take your word on this; what's stoping a random person online from coming by and saying something completely different?

I do not appreciate the tone of "we are Josquin scholars, you must listen to us above all us"—it is not becoming of either of you nor inline with how Wikipedia works (as I have explained). This is a community encyclopedia where editors collaborate and the idea that you can appear out of no where with systemic edits completely out of line with numerous Wikipedia guidelines is not going to work. I highly suggest you continue drafting outside of the mainspace, and place systemic edits here: Talk:Josquin des Prez/Drafting Aza24 (talk) 04:27, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

So much for the idea that Wikipedia is a community enterprise!

Ben and I are aware that this is a general encyclopedia. Our edits are in that spirit. We are certainly happy to take feedback about citation style. That having been said, we do not consent to making suggestions in the talk. For the sake of the community of general readers you claim to care about, the Josquin article needs to be overhauled. (If we are not qualified to make such a determination, who is?)

On Compere et al.: your comment suggests that you have plagiarized Grove. Why else preserve so capricious a list of comparands?

"Do you have a source that says Grove or Fallows is outdated?" Let me get this straight: in order for a more recent source to supersede an older one, we need to find a published text that explicitly points to the Wikipedia-cited source and says that it is outdated? This is not how scholarship works. Why, moreover, are a dictionary article and a biography a priori more trustworthy than other sources, even more recent ones?

In this regard I can't help but notice that you fail to respond to my paragraph about "Gossequin de Condé."

All Ben and I want is to get stuff right. Everything we are saying is there in the published literature and so far as we know undisputed. Speaking of David Fallows, one of many ironies here is that I have chatted and traded emails with David on these very subjects. But no one need take my or Ben's word for that or anything else because we have cited the literature that backs up our text's claims.

"What's stoping a random person online from coming by and saying something completely different?" Well, nothing. Just as nothing has stopped you from insisting mechanically on preserving the text of the article you wrote. Jesserodin (talk) 05:41, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey, the mocking needs to stop "So much for the idea that Wikipedia is a community enterprise!". I am not your enemy; if you start removing dozens of references without explanation you will be reverted by many passerbyers. You say Grove and Fallows are outdated, but your edit didn't cite any sources more recent than them (except one, which was already cited). You are still highly advised to draft in the draft space and the publish on the article. Regardless of if you seek approval or not in the meantime, it will prevent you from needing supplementary clean up edits. Aza24 (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

It must be the oldest trick in the book: accuse folks with good intentions of proceeding in bad faith for the sake of an authoritarian agenda.

It's really too bad. Jesserodin (talk) 16:24, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Chiming in here as an observer: As far as I can tell from this and the edit history, Rodin and Ory are providing citations of published and verifiable material to support their edits. It is not the job of legacy editors to referee among citations and make judgments about their respective quality. The ~20-year-old Grove and Fallows (2020 is just a paperback reprint of 2009) have been superseded by journal articles and archival discoveries, which appear to be cited appropriately, and toward many of which Fallows himself would be the first to nod. As far as I can tell from the Wikipedia guidelines, the only minimum requirement is that citations to published literature are provided to support claims. If someone wishes to preserve an out-of-date opinion from Grove, Fallows, or whatever, then it should be entered alongside the new edits by Rodin/Ory, at the very least as an alternative opinion, and more appropriately as a former belief no longer supported by recent researches. In sum, this entire conversation reads like a classic case of (anonymous) legacy editors gatekeeping their content in the face of (signed) knowledgeable newcomers. Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that legacy editors are obligated to assist newcomers integrate their contributions into Wikipedia's style and citation guidelines, and not make value judgments or pleading defenses of their out-of-date and inexpert content masquerading as procedural expertise. -Brett Kostrzewski — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bkostrzewski (talk • contribs) 09:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Bkostrzewski, please sign your talk page posts by entering four tildes ( ~~~~ ) after them. To address a few misunderstandings in your post:

1. ...providing citations of published and verifiable material to support their edits, that is not the case. This edit represents a revert of a series of edits that removed cited content while adding considerable uncited content.
2. ... not the job of legacy editors to referee among citations and make judgments about their respective quality, evaluating sources is part of the collaborative process of all editors, including those you refer to as legacy editors. Regarding your use of that term, please review WP:FAOWN—a policy page.
3. ... minimum requirement is that citations to published literature are provided to support claims; first, they weren't, and second, please see WP:WIAFA.
4. re ... preserv[ing] an out-of-date opinion from Grove, Fallows etc, no one advocated in favor of that; no newer sources were provided in the edits made. Now that some of the issues and sources have been clarified, perhaps we can get down to work without these accusations of "gatekeeping".
5. re ... classic case of (anonymous) legacy editors gatekeeping their content in the face of (signed) knowledgeable newcomers, please refer to WP:V policy regarding the reverted original uncited additions, WP:EXPERT for some helpful advice, Wikipedia:On Wikipedia no one knows you're a dog for some levity on the same topic, and on a more serious matter, WP:TAGTEAM regarding chiming in as "an observer".
6. ... Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that legacy editors are obligated to assist newcomers integrate their contributions into Wikipedia's style and citation guidelines, which is what is happening, and could have happened sooner if the discussion of sources had happened sooner, but editors should not have to do that in an environment of accusations and personal attacks ... such as the ones you continued.

Had the original edits been cited, there's a good chance we'd be much further along by now. The good news is that work now seems to be underway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:41, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I've been stepping back through the proposed changes, and can so far only see reverts of a) unsourced edits or b) older sources being used to replace newer ones, including one lengthy old book without page numbers, as pointed out by FFF at 02:37 18 December. I also see Aza24 working towards incorporating changes, and being met with some misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy and guideline.

Discussion on this page should be based on sources; a list of the sources being introduced would be helpful, as it appears to me that in every instance, older sources are replacing newer ones, but I could be wrong. Article talk pages are for discussing improvements based on sources; we should list them, rather than wave hands in the direction of implying they exist.

Bkostrzewski, my post here, might be a helpful starting place for all three, where we can discuss understanding of Wikipedia policy and guideline without cluttering the article talk page.

So far, I support the reverts I've seen per a) and b) above, and recommend that proposing changes via working in draft may be a faster route to where we all want to end up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:48, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

As an uninvolved editor, I would tell Jesserodin and Benjamin S Ory that there is no deadline and that if changes are disputed, discussion must happen on the talk page rather than trying to force it by fiat. That is a fundamental element of how Wikipedia works. Academics rarely do well on Wikipedia, and this seems like a good example of why—a failure to understand the nature of collaboration and our needs for verifiability, and that original research and what is considered a secondary source are not identical to other fields. You cannot cite an 1867 work for the statement In recent decades many gaps in Josquin's notoriously patchy biography have been filled. Full stop. Whatever your credentials, you're just wrong. (I don't see how that would be acceptable in an academic paper, either, but I don't claim special knowledge there.) Trying to WP:TAGTEAM the article is only going to result in you and whoever you recruit to 'right the wrongs' getting restricted from editing the article, which given you feel it is terribly out of date would be a net negative, no? So you might want to actually step through and defend each of the edits you make, here, on the talk page, with justifications, so that editors can discuss them. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 16:13, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

A collectively edited platform turns out to be a bastion of intellectual authoritarianism.

We have indeed justified the changes on this talk page. To take a point to which you folks keep returning, what of the circumstance that a book apparently published in 2020 (Fallows) in fact appeared in 2009?

Another irony: over the decades Josquin research has been a site of controversy. But nothing here is controversial. It is only possible to see it that way if, knowing nothing of the field, you slavishly interpret a sentence in a "recent" book by Fallows—published in 2020, after all—as refuting an older source.

Ben and I will give this one more go, being sure that every sentence receives a citation with page references. We will include discursive footnotes explaining the choice to cite x rather than y. After that we will have exhausted the time we had set aside to perform what we thought was a public service. Jesserodin (talk) 16:48, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

@Jesserodin Could you perhaps respond to the point I raised—that you can't use a 19th-century book to make a statement about recent scholarship? Or are you going to just whataboutism about the Fallows book and start throwing around histrionic labels? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:03, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

See below for a reply. Jesserodin (talk) 18:26, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

+1 to all of this. Experts can easily be some of the most valuable contributors here on Wikipedia. Your knowledge on Josquin is clearly world-class and I commend your sense of altruistic urgency, but there really is no rush here. While editors do not own articles, there is often a well-meaning sense of stewardship towards Featured Articles. In this case it seems to be well founded, and it is a crying shame that communication has broken down to this degree instead of being a mutual exchange of information.

However, the jibes really need to stop. Saying people have an authoritarian agenda or are part of a bastion of intellectual authoritarianism is absolutely beyond the pale. What are you talking about? This isn't North Korea. I'm very sympathetic to your goal here – we all want the same things here, after all – but this is really not the way to go about making changes. I hope future discussion can progress collegially on both sides. UpTheOctave! • 8^va? 16:54, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

From an outsider perspective (I'm not involved in this article, and I know nothing about music) it looks like everyone has similar goals: to improve the article. It appears that Jesserodin and Benjamin S Ory were not familiar with the slow and collaborative process used to revise Featured Articles (articles with a gold star at the top). Normally, significant changes to such articles are first proposed on the Talk page (where we are now) before they are implemented. Wikipedia does not have a hard rule requiring such discussion, but it is the custom, and it promotes collegiality and consensus. Noleander (talk) 17:16, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

On the book published in 1867 (see p. 342 of the PDF)—

Two objections were raised: that a book of modern scholarship published in the nineteenth century is not a book of modern scholarship; and that the book is not recent.

The first objection has already been addressed. The second is easily managed: although now publicly available online and, to adopt Wikipedia's formulation, of a high quality, the book was not known to most scholars until recently. The contents chime with and amplify information published in 1998 by Lora Matthews and Paul Merkley and (even more) in 2009 by Herbert Kellman.

Earlier proposals about Josquin's origins, such as the notion that he was born in St-Quentin, were of necessity based on murkier and much less abundant evidence. In fact the history of such proposals is considerably longer than can be gleaned from the Josquin Wikipedia article. In the 1780s Charles Burney suggested that Josquin was born ca. 1445, in Tuscany; in the 1860s August Wilhelm Ambros suggested Josquin was born in Condé-sur-l'Ecaut; in the 1950s Claudio Sartori uncovered what he thought was evidence of a birthdate ca. 1440, based on the supposed arrival of Josquin in Milan in 1459; and in 1996 David Fallows, having brilliantly called into question Sartori's findings even in the absence of a smoking gun, proposed a birthdate in the late 1450s.

This history, which incidentally will soon be published in a book I am co-editing, is worth telling—most logically, as I suggest above, in a section on the reception of Josquin's biography. There seems little basis for mentioning any of this in the section on Josquin's early years. Part of the reason for putting this material elsewhere is that virtually all of it merits inclusion: there is arguably no substantive difference between the proposals of Ambros and Sartori, to take two prominent figures in the history of the field. Both proposals are relevant to how ideas about the composer have developed in modern times; at present writing there no basis for defending either one. Indeed no one has done so.

(Incidentally, the business about Josquin being "natif de dela le noire eauwe" [born beyond the black water], from a document of 23 August 1521 discovered by Kellman in 1982, is perhaps worth a quick reference but probably not much more than that. All this does is confirm what we already know: that Josquin was not born in Condé. No one has convincingly shown where this body of water is; in any case none of the theories currently in circulation materially narrows the geographical region that can be established on the basis other, more ample evidence.)

As to intellectual authoritarianism: this was not intended as a personal attack so much as a characterization—still apt, it pains me to observe—of what happens when appeals to authority trump reason.

The main point, in any case, is simple: although there is much about Josquin's early life that we do not and never will know, in recent years many details have been sorted out. General readers deserve a cogent and concise summary of the current state of our knowledge. Jesserodin (talk) 18:26, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

All of this is helpful, but the actual objection was that you can't use an 1867 source to cite the content: "In recent decades many gaps in Josquin's notoriously patchy biography have been filled." That is original research, synthesis. And Wikipedia cannot use your unpublished literature. Wikipedia follows published reliable sources--does not lead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:38, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the specific PDF page number. Even if the book was permissible (which it is not), it only covers a single line (unless there are more relevant pages?): On 24 January 1452 his policeman father Gossard Lebloitte dit des Prez was executed for crimes including murder. The rest of the paragraph you inserted is either uncited or under false citation premises. Here is an annotated version of the paragraph:

In recent decades many gaps in Josquin's notoriously patchy biography have been filled. He was born in the French-speaking County of Hainaut in modern-day Belgium. On 24 January 1452 his policeman father Gossard Lebloitte dit des Prez was executed for crimes including murder. As Josquin's father was a native of Saint-Sauveur (also in Hainaut), Josquin was most likely born in that town or somewhere nearby. As Josquin's father was a native of Saint-Sauveur (also in Hainaut), Josquin was most likely born in that town or somewhere nearby.

References

Perhaps there is another misunderstanding here: footnotes/citations on Wikipedia constitute the entire authority for the preceding sentence. This is obviously quite different than academia. We can only say something like Josquin was most likely born in that town or somewhere nearby if a source says that exactly (obviously we summarize or rephrase the information, and often conglomerate from multiple sources). Aza24 (talk) 18:57, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Is it not rather dishonorable to accuse us of trying to cite unpublished sources when we have not attempted to do so?

More to the point, what about the 1867 source makes it uncitable on Wikipedia? It is modern; it is scholarly; it is of a high quality; and it offers direct and precise information about a figure central to the biography of Josquin. The literalism being asked for as concerns the claim the source is being cited in order to make is easily managed. Jesserodin (talk) 19:32, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

It is not uncitable per say, but it is uncitable in isolation. As far as I can tell, this 1867 does not actually mentioned Josquin (is this correct?). We would need a modern authority to connect the dots directly in a published article/book or some kind. This would be the ideal scenario then: the 1867 source alongside said modern authority. But whereas the latter is fine alone, the former is not. Aza24 (talk) 01:44, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Proposed sources

Regarding changes proposed so far:

• a) is a revert of mostly unsourced edits and
• b) is a revert of an edit that seems to use only older sources to replace newer ones.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding. So, a list of proposed published sources would help focus discussion on how to accomplish improvements suggested. Brevity will help other participants. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:56, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

See above for an explanation, bearing in mind in particular that: (1) a dictionary article Wikipedia cites more than twenty times as having been published in 2011 in fact dates largely from 2001 (in fairness the first citation notes this in parentheses); the updated version of the article shows no awareness of Kellman, 2009; and (2) a book by David Fallows that Wikipedia cites more than sixty times—and that has been referred to in this discussion—as having been published in 2020 in fact dates from 2009 (again, this is briefly noted in the first citation). Jesserodin (talk) 19:02, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand this. You both only used Kellman a single time, for this line: From early on Josquin lived with his probably well-to-do aunt and uncle Jaque Banestonne and Gilles Lebloitte dit Desprez in Condé-sur-l'Escaut. Everything else is sourced to the 1867 book or Matthews and Merkley, both of which I don't see actually supporting the information (see above). Aza24 (talk) 19:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

As has been noted, some references evidently did not come through properly. As has been noted, this is easily remedied. Jesserodin (talk) 19:18, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

And that's why working in draft can save time for everyone and get us to our mutual goal sooner. Unlike other academic publishing, Wikipedia edits are instantly live. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:31, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I'll try again. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

• a) With considerable changes to content, the only citation added is for the portrait. Doubts about the portrait were already expressed and cited. Macey (2011) and Fallows were removed, and not replaced or supplemented with citations to newer scholarship.
• b) The Nedonchel 1867 book, without page nos and already discussed, was added, replacing Macey (2011), Elders (2013) and Fallows. Also added was Matthews, Merkley (1998), again replacing Macey (2011) and Fallows.

As an example, if Matthews & Merkley 1998 is now to be used to refute Macey and Fallows, published later, that difference of opinion between scholars needs to be worked in and attributed, after a discussion about why we would use an older source to refute newer ones. If all newer sources disagree with Macey and Fallows, we need sources for that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:28, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

In a dynamic field such as this it is almost always preferable to cite the article or book that first brought the finding to light. Later sources tend, though not exclusively, merely to summarize.

A related issue is that in the years around 2000 much was changing in Josquin scholarship. Owing to the slow rate of publication, the date of a source can be misleading. Take the 2011 revision to the Grove article, for instance. I do not know the details, but we can conclude with near certainty that the article had been submitted before the authors became aware of—or had had a chance to read—Kellman's 2009 contribution, the details of which had already been reported at a conference years earlier.

As I have noted, in revising the article Ben and I would be happy to include more information about why it is appropriate to cite one source rather than another. The main takeaways in any case are that later is not always better; and that citing one source rather than another is sometimes about issues of dissemination and chronology rather than evidence of disagreement. Jesserodin (talk) 19:49, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Re In a dynamic field such as this it is almost always preferable to cite the article or book that first brought the finding to light. Later sources tend, though not exclusively, merely to summarize. –– understood and accepted. One thing we have the option to do on Wikipedia, though (remember, we have to deal with "anyone can edit") to show that something is still current is to cite both the original and the later summary. That is something you and Aza24 and other musicology editors can work through though; I am mostly a medical editor.

The point re Kellman 2009 is helpful, but this is also a factor Wikipedians are accustomed to dealing with (the lag between publication of a secondary review and the factoid being cited in medical content is often of critical importance). It's also why we need to discuss and come to consensus about sources. Thanks for engaging; the fastest way over this rough start is to work through sourcing issues sooner rather than later, to avoid having edits reverted again. I've no doubt everyone looks forward to an improved article via a collaborative talk page environment. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:11, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Revision notes

Lead

moved from above – Aza24 (talk) 01:48, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

–Birth date: now ca. 1450–51, on the basis of new documentation. There is also more to say about Josquin's father and the location of Josquin's birth and early years.

Source and page number(s)? Grove still says 1450–1455?

–"High Renaissance": a term best avoided altogether, but especially as concerns a composer born in the mid fifteenth century. (Taruskin's sideways sanctioning of the term, as noted in the "talk" for this article, is surely not worth very much.)

Removed

–The claim that Josquin "buil[t] on" the work of Du Fay is overstated. He doubtless knew many of Du Fay's compositions, but as writers since Sparks have made plain, his style is drastically different from music composed before ca. 1480. (By way of analogy, we'd probably avoid saying that Berlioz "built on" the music of Mozart.)

Removed

–"expressive . . . movement between independent voices" needs clarifying, as does the rest of this sentence. In my rewrite I attempted a more precise formulation.

This sentence was originally more streamlined, the current formulation is a compromise. It was changed due to concerns by other editors the word "polyphony" alone was too technical of a term for this general opening lead (welcome to Wikipedia).

–The overall biographical picture is now clear enough that "highly uncertain" is overstated.

Removed

–Josquin's stint in Cambrai as a youngster is fairly well established. The document was brought to light by Bruno Bouckaert.

Is "he may have been" too uncertain?

–"Taught by Ockeghem" is based on nothing, though there is ample evidence that Josquin admired Okeghem's music.

Agreed, removed

–There is good reason to believe that Josquin was in René's chapel in Aix-en-Provence already by 1475; even 1473 is possible (Matthews and Merkley).

This is already in the article (1475 is, I mean). Do you have a page in M&M for 1473?

–'Now a wealthy man"—perhaps, but not if the bulk of Josquin's inheritance was in property destroyed in 1478 when Louis XI's army decimated Condé. Some caution is in order.

This is directly sourced to Fallows, but given that it is a little unclear without further clarification, I've removed for the lead, but kep in the body

–The dating of the Missa De beata virgine is uncertain; the mass, or at least the Gloria and Credo (which circulate independently early on), could predate Josquin's return to Condé. In this sentence one could instead mention one of the other two Condé masses: Sine nomine and Faisant regretz.

Source? Grove says "Missa de Beata Virgine is, on both internal and external evidence (Glarean, again), a late work"

–Inviolata may well date from ca. 1500 rather than the Condé years.

Source?

–As noted above, Josquin did not compose Mille regretz.

Removed from lead

–"retain posthumous fame" could benefit from reformulation.

This was agreed upon wording (my original was different). Suggestions?

–"During the 20th-century early music revival, publications by August Wilhelm Ambros...". Slightly confusing because Ambros was publishing in the nineteenth century. Indeed the scholarly revival goes back a good deal further than Ambros, as Andrew Kirkman has shown.

–"...caused his reevaluation as a central figure in Renaissance music." The wording is unclear. It would be better to say that work by these scholars led to a renewed recognition of Josquin having been a central figure. Moreover, that work did not stop in 1971, the year of the conference referenced here. Most of what we can say about how Josquin's music differs from that of his contemporaries dates from the 1980s and later. Here Joshua Rifkin (not included in this list) is the central figure.

–The number of dubious attributions stands at over 200. (By the same token, further down, under "Music," it is misleading to say that Josquin "Josquin's body of work is larger than that of any other composer of his period, besides perhaps Isaac and Obrecht." Isaac composed much, much more than any of his contemporaries. Josquin and Obrecht are in the middle of the pack.)

The comparison is directly sourced to Grove. Is it not "me" saying anything...

I will stop there. I hope this begins to make clear why an overhaul is needed. Incidentally, if I am to work on this, I would vastly prefer to revise the text directly, with ample citations where appropriate, rather than introduce changes piecemeal via the talk. Jesserodin (talk) 06:13, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

I have only just now seen these followup comments. Some responses:

–"expressive . . . movement between independent voices". "Expressive movement" doesn't work. We aimed for a more precise formulation: ""Building on—but also departing from—the work of his predecessors Guillaume Du Fay and Johannes Ockeghem, he developed a style of multi-voice writing in which repetition and imitation produce music that is at once technically complex and rhetorically simple." (I have removed the word polyphony.)

–Josquin in Cambrai: "may have been" seems too weak, yes. Why not "probably"?

–I don't have access to the source at the moment (Matthews/Merkley) but will dig it out when I have a chance.

–For the Missa De beata virgine we have Jeffrey J. Dean, "The Scribes of the Sistine Chapel, 1501–1527" (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1984), 84, 88–89, 228, which establishes a copying date of ca. 1507–8 for the Gloria and Credo (p. 228). This dating is more or less echoed in Richard Sherr, Papal Music Manuscripts in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology and Hänssler-Verlag, 1996), 138–39, 225. Glareanus, writing probably in the 1530s, is vague: per Ronald Miller's translation (vol. II, p. 268), "both [i.e., Josquin and Brumel, were] already approaching extreme old age." Especially considering that we now have evidence of at least one piece by Josquin having been composed in 1520, it seems not quite right to call the Missa De beata virgine a product of his "final years."

–On Inviolata, see Rodin, "The Josquin Canon at 500," p. 483.

–"retain posthumous fame": we proposed "Josquin was the first Western composer to achieve significant posthumous fame."

–"During the 20th-century early music revival, publications by August Wilhelm Ambros, Albert Smijers, Helmuth Osthoff and Edward Lowinsky, and a successful academic conference, caused his reevaluation as a central figure in Renaissance music." This sentence remains confusing. We proposed: "During the 19th- and 20th-century early-music revival, publications by August Wilhelm Ambros, Albert Smijers, Helmuth Osthoff, and Edward Lowinsky culminated in a successful academic conference that took place in 1971, 450 years after the composer's death."

–"particularly in light of over a hundred attributions now considered dubious." As noted, the probable number now stands at over 200 (Rodin, "The Josquin Canon," p. 479). Moreover, it is arguably not "particularly in light" of spurious works that questions about Josquin's stature emerged. In any case this is a minority viewpoint. In our version we suggested: "This has led to some controversy over whether he has been fairly elevated above his contemporaries; a related issue concerns over 200 mostly posthumous attributions now considered dubious."

–"Josquin's body of work is larger than that of any other composer of his period, besides perhaps Isaac and Obrecht." This is best removed, unless it is deemed interesting to say that Josquin composed about as much music as other composers of the period. To make that point one would cite the Grove work lists for composers like Obrecht, La Rue, Compere, and de Orto alongside my "The Josquin Canon at 500"; one would then need to point out, again on the basis of Grove, that Isaac composed more than anyone else.) Jesserodin (talk) 22:39, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @Jesserodin, these more specific comments (i.e. with citations) make these suggestions actionable, when some were not entirely so before. Happy to go with your wordings on these things (polyphony, Cambrai, fame, revival etc.). As for the Condé line (In his final years in Condé, Josquin produced some of his most admired works), my intention here was "final years in Condé" = 1504–1521 in Condé, which would then correctly include Missa De beata virgine (?) Perhaps the current wording is erroneously suggesting something like c. 1515–21 in Condé? If the word "final" were simply removed, perhaps that might solve this. Aza24 (talk) 02:02, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

As concerns the Missa De beata virgine the only issue is that copying dates so close to 1504 open the door to an earlier dating, so it may be better for a sentence about Condé to focus on other music. One thing that could be said about this mass, citing the New Josquin Edition (vols. 1 and 3) is that it survives in more sources than any other work. Jesserodin (talk) 05:00, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, thought I saw this comment. I've removed the masses, and stuck with the later-in-life motets and chansons. Since other editors have recently had concerns on this opening lead section being too long (I've now trimmed it), it seems a safer bet to remove the masses without re-adding them in another way here. Aza24 (talk) 02:03, 4 May 2026 (UTC)