ABSTRACT
During the more than twenty years since the publication of Howard Mayer Brown’s influential article on the musical relationships between selected fifteenth-and sixteenth-century secular pieces, the study of borrowing has taken great strides toward a fuller understanding of both compositional process and musical meaning in the Renaissance.1 Brown’s article laid the groundwork for most later studies, especially in that his main concern was with the compositional process and how a composer dealt with preexistent models. Furthermore, as exemplified in the first part of his title, “Emulation, Competition, and Homage,” he also placed great emphasis on relationships between composers as the inspiration behind the choice of a model.2 Although his analytical examples came exclusively from chansons, Brown concluded his article by broadly applying his ideas to the composition of masses, and in particular to masses based upon polyphonic cantus firmi.3 Subsequently, the mass repertoire and specifically the relationships between composers that led to the repeated use of specific cantus firmi and compositional techniques became a favorite focus of borrowing studies.4
