oa ‘Virtual’ Ascriptions in Ms. AugsS 142a: A Window on Alexander Agricola’s Late Style

Within published scholarship on the music of Alexander Agricola, the significance of the manuscript Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 2^o Cod. 142a has been virtually confined to its unique transmission of one of his most popular works in the modern period, the six-voice setting of Fortuna desperata. Building on unpublished research by Joshua Rifkin, this study re-evaluates the gathering in the source containing Agricola’s music. In addition to reviewing the codicological evidence, it offers close stylistic analyses of another of the Augsburg source’s unica, a four-voice setting of the tenor of Du Fay’s chanson Le serviteur, and of the setting of Dulces exuviae, endorsing Martin Staehelin’s published suggestion of Agricola’s authorship of both works. An edition of the Le serviteur setting is included as an appendix. From all this it emerges that AugS 142a ought to be viewed as a privileged witness to the later stages of Agricola’s career.