Une biographie sans style - une style sans biographie. Reconter la vie et l'oevre de Johannes Ockeghem

In recent decades, the biographical method has been the subject of intense theoretical debate within the humanities. Although musicology has been part of this debate, theoretical and methodological reflection has generally focused on the biographies of modern composers, and has only marginally concerned those of composers who lived in earlier periods. This essay therefore aims to investigate the musical historiography of one such composers: Johannes Ockeghem. Ockeghem constitutes a particularly significant case for the themes discussed here. There are many documents concerning his life, and a substantial body of compositions attributed to him has survived. However, there is no information regarding the dates of composition of his works; consequently, even the chronology of his oeuvre is the result of an essentially interpretative process. This chapter analyses how, for what purposes and on what premises Ockeghem’s artistic biography has been narrated, focusing on the role played in this narrative by the works attributed to the final phase of his compositional activity.