YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

44 JULIE E. CUMMING
recall than is Flos de spina, and it has a greater immediate impact on the listener. The
‘dumbing down’ of sacred music through the introduction of repetition may have
appealed to these Italian patrons of the Josquin generation, out to impress their subjects
and their competitors with music that was easy to appreciate, not difficult to
understand.
Tinctoris’s almost exaggerated emphasis on the importance of varietas in his
treatises of the 1470s may have resulted from his own sense that variety and complexity
were no longer sufficiently valued by Italian patrons and audiences, including
his own patron in Naples, Ferrante I of Aragon. 34 Tinctoris is known for speaking
most strongly about musical matters when correcting others’ errors or misconceptions.
Perhaps he sensed that the aesthetic tide was turning away from variety and
toward repetition.
34 On Tinctoris and the Aragonese court of Naples, see PERKINS and GAREY, The Mellon Chansonnier,
1, pp. 17–22.