I think everyone is still weary from The Great Chant Cafe Josquin-Byrd Fiasco.
Perhaps, in time, the wounds will heal....

You could do a lot worse than read the very well written Wikipedia article on Josquin.

All of them.

All of them would be my thought as well.
All the Josquin works I know of would fit into the three categories mentioned in the OP.

Missa Pange lingua, anyone? One of my faves. The Ave Maria, Virgo serena is exquisite and thrilling all at once.

(Sorry, Adam. I'm not a campy person but I'm firmly in the Josquin as most fabuloso polyphonic composer camp.)

Josquin was a singer who how to craft complementary elegant, intense, coloristic, and rhythmically interesting vocal lines in respective ranges. Many singers in our time are not up to the challenge, which shows you what was expected of choir singers in his day. And the level of artistry that can come about when church singers are well trained.

I'm not sure Lassus (or di Lasso) was the greatest, but he was one of the most prolific at producing excellent polyphony ... or a different period in the Renaissance, however. Josquin predated Palestrina, Victoria, Tallis, Byrd, and of course Lassus). In many ways, he blazed the trail for those who came afterwards in the Renaissance.

His Ave Christe Immolatum is beautiful.
And Tu Solus qui Facis Mirablia is pretty stunning.


Also, el grillo is pretty fun. But it is not sacred.

True enough, but others, not you, and I think including the famous ChantCafe wars, were using "of all time."

Adam puhleeeze. Wow. Tallis is a 3rd or 4th rate composer, Victoria slightly better, Taverner possibly worse. Lassus a good second rate composer, as is Byrd. Palestrina is pretty darn good, like Chopin for moribund chorus, and Josquin is nearly first rate. Then above these at least JS Bach and Mozart.

CHGiffen, I have some comments/questions about your edition of Josquin "Ave Verum Corpus", will send soon ...

Why, of course, the best composer of all time is Stravinsky. He could and did compose music stylistically similar to (yet uniquely dissimilar from) all the greats who preceded him. Nothing second rate in his entire opera.

I love Stravinsky, too, and enjoyed the chance to play flute and piccolo in a performance of his Symphony of Psalms, under the direction of Robert Shaw, many years ago.

I wonder, seriously. With all these assertions about greatness of composers (and let's stick to the Renaissance) being bandied about ... for just how many sacred choral works of the Renaissance have you:

1. Actually heard recordings?
2. Actually heard live performances?
3. Actually studied the scores in depth?
4. Actually sung?
5. Actually conducted?

Given the rather incomplete list below of 18 Renaissance composers (and 3 Baroque or Classical composers, for comparison) and the number of scores freely available at CPDL, which any of you could easily have studied or used in connection with the above questions, it seems a stretch to think that claims of best Renaissance composer ever can be well-founded.

The entire matter is extremely subjective, even amongst experts who have intimate familiarity with a major portion of the repertoire. What we are surely getting are biased or prejudiced pronouncements of various people's favorite few composers, most likely based on rather limited experience and acquaintance with the era.

In other words: Sonny, if you haven't been in the trenches for half as long as I have, don't try to tell me what's best and what isn't.

Availability of Sacred works at CPDL
Orlando di Lasso 327 Sacred works
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 286 Sacred works
William Byrd 221 Sacred works
Thomas Luis de Victoria 202 Sacred works
Michael Praetorius 174 Sacred works
(Johann Sebastian Bach) 160 Sacred works
Hans Leo Hassler 104 Sacred works
Cristobal de Morales 96 Sacred works
Francisco Guerrero 94 Sacred works
(Claudio Monteverdi) 92 Sacred works
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) 66 Sacred works
Jacob Handl 63 Sacred works
Giovanni Gabrieli 62 Sacred works
Thomas Tallis 62 Sacred works
Andrea Gabrieli 61 Sacred works
Josquin des Prez 53 Sacred works
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck 49 Sacred works
Jacobus Clemens non Papa 34 Sacred works
Peter Philips 30 Sacred works
Melchior Vulpius 24 Sacred works
JohnTaverner 11 Sacred works

What did I start? Leave for a couple of days and look...

For the interest of you Stravinsky fans, here is a very recent re-interpretation of his 'Rite of Spring' (which I do not like at all), as a 12-minute presentation, performed just this month at a festival in Indianapolis. The video shows a rehearsal, so the ensemble from California is not in their concert attire. On the other hand, their very informal dress was thematically appropriate.

You know it's funny, actually- sometimes you have to admit that one thing is objectively better even though you like something else more. From my (limited, yes) experience, it seems to be that Josquin is (to the extent saying such a thing has any meaning) a better composer than Byrd. And, oh! Is his music beautiful.

But I have a personal affinity for English culture and English expressions of Catholicism in particular. And, due to the circumstances of my life, I have a particular connection to Byrd (and, similarly- though less so- to Tallis), so he is (and will be for some time) my favorite composer.

(Similarly, in the realm of Opera- I pretty much only like English. Call me a philistine, but I could go the rest of my life without hearing any Classical Italian opera.)

Of course, none of this deals with the (mathematically provable) fact that Bach and Mozart (oi!) pale in comparison to the amazing control and versatile agility of, if not the best composer ever, certainly the best composer of recent memory: The guy who wrote the Always Coca-Cola jingle.

"The stars will always shine, the birds will always sing,
wherever there is thirst, there is always the real thing."

(In the Spirit of The Liturgical Reform, I've been considering adapting it into a song in praise of The True Presence.)

no one can deny that J. S. Bach is the GREATEST composer of all time.

I can deny it all day long, thank you very much.

Very true. As an eighth grader my English class was next door to the chorus room, and they had a guest musician play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. We were allowed to listen, and it was love at first hearing, best music I had ever heard, though at that time there wasn't much competition for my ears -- Beach Boys, I guess, or Chuck Berry or the Statler Brothers, don't really remember what was currently popular. I thought everyone responded the same way and it took me years to realize that some people just don't respond to music.

Reading these posts frequently provides me ideas of what to upload on the Choirparts youtube channel. I like Palestrina, Byrd, Victoria, etc (including Josquin des Prez), but I am continually drawn back to Mozart. For some reason, his sacred choral music and masses provide me great peace.

The "Ave Maria ... Virgo serena a6" is actually the "a4" version with two added parts, now generally agreed to have been added by Ludwig Daser. The "Ave Maria ... benedicta tu a6" is an entirely different work, possibly by Senfl? Senfl himself composed a 6-part "Ave Maria ... Virgo serena" that is a "parody motet" on the Josquin "Ave Maria ... Virgo serena a4" and is quite different from the one with the Ludwig Daser added parts; moreover, I know of no one who ascribes the Senfl parody to Josquin.

"Memo esto a4" is indeed a masterpiece and well worth study (and performing).

I've been away about since I posted this, because some business has been keeping me swamped, and here I find this old post at the top of the list. Thanks, and Merry Christmas to all.

Kenneth