Emily Zazulia presents: "The Late-Medieval Song Mass and the Limits of Analogic Thinking." with a response from Daniel Koplitz (Music)

Love songs and the Catholic Mass do not make easy bedfellows. The earthly, amorous, even carnal feelings explored in fifteenth-century chansons seem at odds with the solemnity of Christian observance’s most central rite. Recent scholarship on this registral-crossing genre has tended to proceed by analogy, by seeking similarity across media. In this paper I consider the limits of analogy for the song mass and implications of analogical thinking more generally through one of the late-fifteenth centuries most audacious masses, Josquin des Prez’s Missa L’ami baudichon.