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Text, Music and Mannerist Aesthetics in Agricola’s Songs

The art-historical stylistic category known as Mannerism has enjoyed mixed success in its musical applications, especially in the medieval and early Renaissance periods — partly because of the pejorative associations that have attached to it. This article seeks to validate its use by privileging its status as a trans-historical category (in that any musical style is susceptible of a Mannerist extension). Alexander Agricola’s music is here proposed as an instance of late-fifteenth-century Mannerism. Agricola’s songs are the medium through which his Mannerist tendencies may most readily be examined. At the same time, a deal of confusion attends the published volume of his song output (not least as regards the distinction between the songs proper and his so-called ‘instrumental’ works, which is significantly blurred there). Some consideration is therefore devoted to this problem, and to Agricola’s use of quotation of both text and music, which introduces a strongly self-referential tendency into a genre in which such references are less easy to trace than in others (at least for this period). The extensive reference to previous works accentuates the sense of the forme fixe repertory reflecting on its own history, such self-consciousness being an essential condition of Mannerist aesthetics. The composer’s credentials as a mannerist are examined with reference to the seminal work in English on the question, John Shearman’s Mannerism (1967). While Shearman dealt primarily with the historical period associated with the term in art history (roughly, the second quarter of the sixteenth century) and was guarded in accepting the possibility of a trans-historical application of his ideas, his own attempts at doing so (particularly in music) justify his caution to some extent. The proposal of Agricola as Mannerist draws on the most salient features of Shearman’s definition, and restores to the term itself the positive qualities he intended.