Josquin Des Prez - In principio erat Verbum

From the sacred motet for five voices "Verbum caro factum est" by Josquin Des Prez (1455-1521). The motet is sometimes attributed to Benedictus Appenzeller (1485-1558). Performed by Alexander Blachly & Pomerium; from the album: "Pomerium ‎– Musical Book Of Hours" (1998). http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/B... https://www.discogs.com/Pomerium-Musi... "During the 16th century, Josquin gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. Writers as diverse as Baldassare Castiglione and Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame, with Luther declaring that "he is the master of the notes. They must do as he wills; as for the other composers, they have to do as the notes will." Theorists such as Heinrich Glarean and Gioseffo Zarlino held his style as that best representing perfection. He was so admired that many anonymous compositions were attributed to him by copyists, probably to increase their sales. More than 370 works are attributed to him; it was only after the advent of modern analytical scholarship that some of these attributions were challenged, and revealed as mistaken, on the basis of stylistic features and manuscript evidence. Yet in spite of Josquin's colossal reputation, which endured until the beginning of the Baroque era and was revived in the 20th century, his biography is shadowy, and virtually nothing is known about his personality. The only surviving work which may be in his own hand is a graffito on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, and only one contemporary mention of his character is known, in a letter to Duke Ercole I of Ferrara. The lives of dozens of less revered Renaissance composers are better documented than that of Josquin." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josquin... "POMERIUM was founded by Alexander Blachly in New York in 1972 to perform music composed for the famous chapel choirs of the Renaissance. (The name—medieval Latin for “garden” or “orchard”—derives from the title of a treatise by the 14th-century music theorist Marchettus of Padua, who explained that his Pomerium in arte musice mensurate contains the “flowers and fruits” of the art of music.) Widely known for its interpretations of Du Fay, Ockeghem, Busnoys, Josquin, Lassus, and Palestrina, the 15-voice a cappella ensemble has performed for numerous international festivals, including the Festival di Musica Sacra Bressanone e Bolzano (Brixner Initiative), the Tage Alter Musik festival in Regensburg, Germany, the Flanders Festival Antwerp, and the Holland Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht." http://pomerium.us/?page_id=5