The One Who Comes After Me

Abstract

Abstract Studies of the past two decades have shown that late medieval and Renaissance composers participated in a culture of symbolic representation by inscribing Christian figures and concepts into musical design. One figure who has been overlooked in this line of scholarship is John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ. This essay outlines the Baptist's historical impact on the conception of Christian temporality and proceeds to demonstrate some distinct experiments in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century music for John that express his predecessory character through emblematic manipulations of temporal parameters. By the sixteenth century, several inscriptions found in Vatican manuscripts reveal that the Baptist was associated with a particular musical craft that controls masterfully the unfolding of time: the art of canon. Drawing heavily on Scripture (especially John 1:15, 27, 30) to articulate the compositional conceits, the rubrics likened the leader (dux) and follower (comes) of a canon to the relationship between John (the forerunner saint) and Jesus. The analogy intensified around the papal chapel choirbook Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Cappella Sistina 38.

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