The composer Pescard (1400–1474) is known to have been prolific, but little appears to have survived from the middle of Pescard’s career (1440–1450). There are, however, many anonymous musical compositions from that decade, and modern scholarship has tentatively attributed several of them to Pescard. The recent attribution of one such piece, a particularly fine large-scale work, seems secure, being based on a newly discovered theoretical treatise from 1560 that names Pescard as that work’s composer.
Which of the following, if true, would provide the most justification for judging secure modern scholarship’s attribution of the large-scale work to Pescard?
A. The 1560 treatise considers many works from the 1400s about whose authorship modern scholars had reached agreement before the treatise was discovered, and its attribution of these works to composers never disagrees with that of modern scholars.
B. The 1560 treatise itself says that authorship of the work at issue is in dispute and attributes it to Pescard on the basis of a few stylistic features that turn out to be equally characteristic of other composers of the period.
C. There are many other compositions from the 1400s whose authorship is in dispute among modern scholars that the 1560 treatise attributes to named composers.
D. Around the time that the treatise was written, works were frequently attributed to prestigious composers, such as Pescard, simply because the person making the attribution thought well of the work.
E. There are stylistic features of the work at issue that although first appearing in Pescard’s early works also appear both in works of Pescard’s contemporaries and in later works by Pescard.
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