1）Francesco Landini 蓝迪尼
Birth: c. 1335
Death: 1397
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: composer, poet
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Essay
Further Readings
Source Citation
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Francesco Landini (ca. 1335-1397), the greatest Italian composer before the late 16th century, was
also a poet.
Italian art music first came to the fore in the middle third of the 14th century. Earlier music--and
there certainly was much of it--seems to have been largely confined to monophony: Gregorian
chants and the songs of the troubadours and of St. Francis of Assisi. Then, suddenly, polyphonic
music began to flourish in the mid-14th century, particularly in Florence, culminating in the work
of the poet-musician Francesco Landini.
The son of a painter, Landini became blind in childhood because of smallpox; but he acquired
great virtuosity on the organ, built organs, and invented a new stringed instrument, probably
similar to the harpsichord, which emerged during his time.
Although honored as a poet in both Latin and Italian, Landini's extant poems are almost
exclusively for his own musical compositions. These, although many seem to be lost, constitute
about a quarter of all Italian music surviving from the period 1340-1480. They found widespread
popularity and reappear in many manuscripts and in arrangements for keyboard instruments. Only
one small fragment of a motet has come to light, although Landini is known to have written quite
a number. What remains are 154 secular songs, which are of three types, madrigals, caccie, and
ballate, all in two or three voice parts.
The madrigal, very different from the more familiar 16th-century type, was the first Italian poetry
set to music; hence its name, which means "in the mother tongue." It flourished particularly in the
generation before Landini. His 11 madrigals are usually composed for two or three vocalists, but
voices and instruments may combine on each melodic line. Each madrigal consists of two
musically different sections, the first serving the two or three three-line sections of the poem and
the second one the concluding two lines of text.
The caccia--the same word as the English "catch"--was a hunting or fishing song, set in the form
of a canon or round. Its poetic form is that of the madrigal, so that each caccia falls into two
canonic sections. In some madrigals, also, one of the two sections may be composed as a canon.
Only two of Landini's caccie are extant.
The rest of Landini's output are ballate, essentially songs for a solo voice with the accompaniment
of one or two instruments, though some of them are written for two or three voices. Their poetic
form differs from that of the madrigal, for a refrain, modeled after the second section of the stanza
and sung to the same melody, was sung at the beginning of the ballata and repeated after each of
the usually three stanzas.
With his lyrical, songlike melody Landini stands out among his contemporaries. His songs possess
an easy-flowing grace and are charmingly harmonized. The texts are in part by him and in part by
his Florentine compatriot Franco Sacchetti. Their subjects are quite varied: religion, love,
convivial companionship, and historical events.
2）马肖 Guillaume de Machaut
1300-1377
Also known as: Guillaume de Machault, Guillaume de Machau, Guillaume de Mauchault,
Guillelmus de Machaut, Guillelmus de Mascaudio
Birth: 1300 in Machaut, Champagne
Death: April 13, 1377 in Rheims
Nationality: French
Occupation: composer, poet
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians®, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Essay
Further Readings
Source Citation
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Machaut (also Machault, Machau, Mauchault), Guillaume de (Guillelmus de Mascaudio),
important French composer and poet; b. probably in Machaut, Champagne, c. 1300; d. probably in
Rheims, April 13?, 1377. He entered the service of John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia,
about 1323, and was his secretary until the King's death (1346). He was granted a canonry in
Verdun (1330), a second in Arras (1332), and a third Rheims (1333), retaining the first until 1335.
He settled in Rheims permanently about 1340, and from 1346 was in the service of the French
nobility, including the future King Charles V. His Messe de Nostre Dame for 4 Voices is one of the
earliest polyphonic settings of the Mass. He also wrote 42 ballades, 33 virelais, 23 motets, 22
rondeaux, 19 lais, a double hocket, a complainte, and a chanson royal. An ed. of his works was
prepared by F. Ludwig for the Publikationen Älterer Musik (1926-34; continued by H. Besseler,
1954) and by L. Schrade in Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century (Vols. 2 and 3, Monaco,
1956).
Guillaume de Machaut
Also known as: Guillaume de Machault, Guillaume de Machau, Guillaume de Mauchault,
Guillelmus de Machaut
Birth: c. 1300 in Reims, France
Death: April, 1377
Nationality: French
Occupation: composer, poet
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Essay
Further Readings
Source Citation
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) was the greatest French composer of his century, the
creator of the first complete polyphonic Mass setting, and a renowned poet.
Guillaume de Machaut was born in the village of Machault in Champagne, near Reims. He
became a cleric, and in 1323 he joined the household of King John of Bohemia as a secretary.
John was the son of one German emperor and the father of another; his ancestral castle was
Luxembourg. He was also the brother-in-law of one French king and later became the
father-in-law of another, and his closest associations were with the French court. One of the most
traveled noblemen of Europe and involved in numerous military campaigns, John took his
secretary with him to Bohemia, Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, and Italy.
Later John settled Machaut at Reims with a canonicate. There Machaut lived from about 1340 on,
quietly and peacefully, except for frequent trips to Paris and hunting expeditions; he was joined by
his brother in 1355 and by his student, the poet Eustache Deschamps, who may have been his
nephew. Machaut always kept in close touch with the royal family, and his last patron was Jean de
France, Duke of Berry, the grandson of King John and brother of King Charles V of France. The
Duke of Berry was one of the greatest art patrons of all time. The most beautiful of the five
manuscripts that contain all Machaut's works was written for the duke under Machaut's personal
supervision. Because of this "complete edition," Machaut's output reaches us fully and is the most
voluminous of any composer before the 15th century.
In 1374 Machaut's brother died, and in April 1377 Guillaume followed him. Two poems written
by Deschamps in May commemorate his death; shortly thereafter they were set to music by a
composer of the younger generation, Andrieu, and they constitute the earliest such "complaint"
about a poet or composer.
His Works
In his poetry and in his life Machaut shows himself conscious of his lowly origin but also of his
worth. He is dignified, but he can be rollicking and rustic; he is realistic and honest rather than
formal. Machaut describes nature as he saw it, responds to the events of his day as a poet-historian,
and gives a very honest account of his last love affair, that with Peronne, a girl of 18 or 20, with
whom he fell in love during his early 60s; elsewhere he records the names of some eight other
girls he had loved. But the majority of his poetry deals with love in the manner of the trouvères,
whose style he sought to revive. In fact, he was the last composer outside of Germany to write
monophonic songs like those of the trouvères.
Machaut's works can be divided into four categories. The first consists of larger poetic works:
seven historical poems (dits); Le Remède de fortune, in part a textbook of poetry; Le Veoir dit
(1362-1365), the story of his last love; La Prise d'Alexandrie (ca. 1370), chronicling the sack of
Alexandria by the king of Cyprus in 1365; and seven others. Several of these works contain poems
set to music. The second group comprises his shorter poems: La Louange des dames, some 270
poems in praise of women; and about 50 complaints and other poems. The third category includes
poems set to his own music: 19 lais; 23 motets, with 2 texts each; and 101 pieces in the standard
forms of the period (formes fixes)--ballade, virelai, and rondeau. The fourth group consists of two
large musical works: the hocket David and a Mass. Many of these works reappear in manuscripts
other than the five of his "complete edition," proving the composer's widespread fame. They are
all available in modern editions.
Musical Technique
Machaut's musical technique represents the ars nova, or new music, of the 14th century,
championed by Philippe de Vitry in the preceding generation. It employs duple meter alongside
the previously explored triple meter; the triad; isorhythm, that is, a lengthy rhythmic pattern
applied to changing melodic phrases; and complex, often syncopated rhythm. Machaut also seems
to have introduced such artifices as reading a melody backward; and his accompanied songs--a
melody accompanied by two instruments--are the first of the genre to reach us, since those of
Philippe de Vitry are lost.
In his Remède de fortune, Machaut teaches several form types, among them the lai, the complaint,
the chanson royale, and the formes fixes. His lais are in 12 stanzas, each subdivided into two or
four pairs of lines, sung to the same melody; all line pairs differ in length and rhythm, and
therefore melodically, except that the last stanza is sung to the music of the first one. Of Machaut's
25 lais 19 are set to music, monophonically (for one unaccompanied voice only), but in two of
them monophonic stanzas alternate with canonic ones (of the type of the modern round, then
called a chace).
The complaint is a poem of many (30-50) stanzas of 4X4 lines each. When sung--only one of
some 15 by Machaut is set to music (monophonically)--all stanzas are sung to the same music,
each stanza falling into two repeated sections.
The chanson royale is a poem of 5 stanzas of 8-11 lines and a refrain of 3-4 lines. Only one of
Machaut's eight chansons royales is set to music (monophonically).
Ballade, virelai, and rondeau are related forms, all derived from the dance, though only some
rondeaux were still connected with dancing at the time. All involve a refrain which is repeated in
all stanzas and may comprise 6-20 lines or more. Most of these poems are set to music: 20 of the
21 rondeaux, each for one sung part and one to three instrumental parts; 32 of 38 virelais, most of
them monophonically, but some for voice plus one or two instruments; and 42 ballades, mostly for
voice and one or two instruments.
To these types must be added the motet, the hocket, and the Mass. The motet, created shortly
before 1200 as a liturgical work, soon became the chief type of serious secular art music.
Machaut's motets are among the most artful of the century. Whereas isorhythm appears
infrequently in the ballades and rondeaux and not at all in the other form types described above, it
is ubiquitous in the motets. They are all written for two sung parts--sung to different texts, two,
indeed, to one French and one Latin text simultaneously--and either one or two instrumental parts.
The majority are secular, but some are liturgical.
The hocket David is one of the last works, and the longest, of a type created during the 13th
century. In a hocket two parts alternately give out snatches of a melody, here above an isorhythmic
cantus firmus (preexisting melody).
Machaut's Mass is probably the outstanding musical work of the entire 14th century. It is a
polyphonic setting of the entire Mass Ordinary (the portions sung at every Mass except at the
Requiem Mass, the Mass for the Dead), consisting of six sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus,
Agnus Dei, and Ite Missa Est (the last section is rarely set by other composers). Only one such
complete setting, the Mass of Tournai (ca. 1300), compiled from various composers, antedates
Machaut's, and it is artistically not comparable. Machaut's Mass may have been composed for the
Marian Feasts at a chapel served by the Machaut brothers in the 1350s (but it was not, as is often
said, written for or sung at the coronation of King Charles V in 1364). The long texts of the Gloria
and Credo are set simply in chordal style, each followed by an elaborate Amen. All the other
sections are composed in the style of the isorhythmic motet. Almost the entire work is written in
four melodic lines, for voices and instruments, and
all the sections are unified by a pervasive motif, a technique not employed before or within the
following 60 years or so.
There was no one in France during the second half of the 14th century and the first quarter of the
15th to even remotely approach Machaut's musical eminence. In fact, all composers followed his
lead and adopted his style, developing it only with respect to an increasingly mannered complexity,
which parallels the late Gothic, or mannered, style of architecture prevailing during the period.
Heinrich Schütz
Also known as: Heinrich Schutz, Henrich Schutz
Birth: October 8, 1585 in K?stritz, Germany
Death: November 6, 1672 in Dresden, Germany
Nationality: German
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
3）舒茨 Heinrich Schütz (
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The German composer Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is credited with an important role in bringing
the Italian baroque style to Germany.
Born in K?stritz, Saxony, to prosperous, middle-class parents, Heinrich Schütz learned the
rudiments of music in the chapel choir of Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. In 1608 Schütz
entered the University of Marburg to study law, but when the landgrave, who recognized his
extraordinary musical gift, offered to support him, Schütz was able to leave for Venice in 1609 to
study with Giovanni Gabrieli. Schütz returned in 1613 after his teacher's death.
While in Italy, Schütz published his first collection, Il primo libro de madrigali (1611), dedicated
to Landgrave Moritz. These 19 chromatic madrigals reveal the close attention Schütz was always
to give both the syntax and content of his texts. Even more Italianate are the Psalmen Davids
(1619), published after the composer became kapellmeister to Johann Georg, Elector of Saxony, in
Dresden. In these 26 works, composed for multiple groups of vocal and instrumental soloists,
reinforced by two or more choruses, Schütz brought to northern Europe the colorful, polychoral
methods of his beloved master, Gabrieli. The music, of overwhelming grandeur, was written for
the enhancement of the Protestant liturgy and the edification of the court.
Schütz's Historia der Auferstehung Jesu Christi (1623), the Easter Story, was his first oratorio in
the Italian style. While the Evangelist performs solos to the accompaniment of four viols, the roles
of Jesus and Mary Magdalene are sung as duets over the basso continuo. In his next important
work, the Cantiones sacrae (1625), Schütz seemed to return to the older polyphonic style. But their
chromaticism, "madrigalisms" illustrating the text, and intensely subjective qualities relate these
sacred songs more closely to the madrigals of 1611.
To fulfill his task of transforming church music through the southern concerted style, Schütz made
a second pilgrimage to Italy in 1628. Now he studied the techniques of Claudio Monteverdi as he
observed them in the vocal and instrumental writing of the great Italian. The first fruits of the visit
appeared the following year as part 1 of Schütz's Symphoniae sacrae. Solo singing with obbligato
instruments over the continuo--such was the new style exemplified by the masterpiece of this first
collection, Fili mi, Absalon.
A short while after Schütz returned to Germany, he found musical activity severely curtailed
because of the religious wars raging throughout Saxony. During the 1630s and early 1640s he
stayed only intermittently at Dresden, obtaining permission from the elector to work in
Copenhagen, Wolfenbüttel, Hanover, and Weimar. Because of limited resources, the master now
wrote shorter compositions for one to five parts with continuo. Two such collections were issued
in 1636 and 1639 with the title Kleine Geistliche Konzerte.
By 1647 conditions at the Saxon court had improved somewhat, and Schütz released part 2 of his
Symphoniae sacrae. Unlike part 1, which had Latin settings for voices and various obbligato
instruments, part 2 was set to German words and used only the strings and continuo. In part 3 of
the Symphoniae sacrae (1650) Schütz joined the polychoral writing of his early Psalmen Davids
with the soloistic style he learned from Monteverdi. The masterpiece Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du
mich? is scored for a six-voice ensemble, two four-voice choruses, and two obbligato instrumental
parts. In few of his later pieces did he go beyond the resources of these compositions, which are
truly cantatas.
Although Schütz was the foremost German protagonist of the new baroque style, he did not
foresee that his apparent deemphasis of counterpoint would persuade younger compatriots to
abandon it. By 1648 this danger had become so manifest that Schütz was persuaded to publish his
Geistliche Chormusik, a collection of 29 motets in the older style, to show young composers
"before they proceed to concertizing music to crack this hard nut (wherein the true kernel and the
right foundation of good counterpoint is to be sought) and to pass their first tests in this category."
Schütz obviously viewed his artistic mission as a union of counterpoint and stile recitativo, a
cappella and concertato, rather than as a rejection of the older Flemish style.
In 1665 Schütz completed three Passions according to Luke, John, and Matthew. What first
impresses us in these works is their external austerity. Gone are the instrumentally accompanied
recitative of the Easter Story and the polychoral writing with instruments in part 3 of the
Symphoniae sacrae. Here the Bible narrative is sung a cappella with solo portions chanted in a
"Germanized" plainsong.
Even though these works seem archaic, it would be incorrect to believe that Schütz rejected his
entire mission of a concerted, soloistic church music. Only a year or two before, he had composed
the Historia der Freuden-und Gnaden-reichen Geburt Gottes und Marien Sohnes Jesu Christi, the
Christmas Story, in the richly concerted style he had espoused for over 50 years. In the Passions he
abandoned the luxuriant apparatus for pure chant and polyphony, in part as an object lesson to
younger composers and in part to demonstrate that his own era could still use the a cappella style
of the past.
Schütz passed the last of his 55 years of service to the elector of Saxony in Weissenfels and in
Dresden, where he died. Through his efforts German church music took on features we easily
recognize as baroque. In the way he put polyphony on an equal footing with the new concerted
style, Schütz resembles Monteverdi, who also brought the past into the present and subjected it to
a new esthetic.
4）Orlando Gibbons
1583-1625
Birth: December 25, 1583 in Oxford, England
Death: June 05, 1625 in Canterbury
Nationality: English
Occupation: composer, organ player
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Gibbons, Orlando, celebrated English composer and organist, father of Christopher and brother of
Edward and Ellis Gibbons; b. Oxford (baptized), Dec. 25, 1583; d. Canterbury, June 5, 1625. He
was taken to Cambridge as a small child. In 1596 he became chorister at King's Coll. there,
matriculating in 1598. He composed music for various occasions for King's Coll. (1602-03). In
1605 he was appointed organist of the Chapel Royal, retaining this position until his death. He
received the degree of B.Mus. from Cambridge Univ. in 1606, and that of D.Mus. from Oxford in
1622. In 1619 he became chamber musician to the King and, in 1623, organist at Westminster
Abbey. He conducted the music for the funeral of James I (1625), and died of apoplexy 2 months
later. Gibbons's fame as a composer rests chiefly on his church music. He employed the novel
technique of the “verse anthem” (a work for chorus and solo voices, the solo passages having
independent instrumental accompaniment, for either organ or strings). Other works followed the
traditional polyphonic style, of which he became a master. He was also one of the greatest English
organists of the time. His madrigals and motets were ed. by E.H. Fellowes in The English
Madrigal School, V (1921; 2nd ed., rev., 1964 by T. Dart), his services and anthems by P. Buck
and others in Tudor Church Music, IV (1925), his keyboard music by G. Hendrie in Musica
Britannica, XX (1962), and his verse anthems by D. Wulstan in Early English Church Music, III
(1964).
WORKS
Works
Fantasies of 3 Parts...composed for viols (1610); pieces for the virginal, in Parthenia (1611); The
First Set of Madrigals and Mottets of 5 Parts (1612); 9 Fancies, appended to 20 konincklijche
Fantasien op 3 Fiolen by T. Lupo, Coperario, and W. Daman (Amsterdam, 1648).
5）Gregorio Allegri
1582-1652
Birth: 1582 in Rome
Death: February 07, 1652 in Rome
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: singer, composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Allegri, Gregorio, Italian singer and composer; b. Rome, 1582; d. there, Feb. 7, 1652. He was a
choirboy at S. Luigi de Francesi in Rome (1591-96), and then a tenor there until 1604. He also
received instruction from G. M. Nanino (1600-07). After serving as a chorister at Fermo Cathedral
(1607-21), he was maestro di cappella at S. Spirito in Sassia (1628-30) and then a member of the
papal choir in Rome. Allegri remains best known for his Miserere for 2 Choirs in 4 and 5 parts, a
Psalm setting sung each Holy Week at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It was this work that the
youthful Mozart is reported to have heard twice during his visit to the Sistine Chapel, and then
wrote it down from memory in spite of the ban on its publication on pain of excommunication.
The work was finally publ. via the efforts of Charles Burney by Novello in London. Allegri also
composed Masses, Lamentations, and a Te Deum, and likewise publ. Concertini for 2 to 5 Voices
(2 vols., Rome, 1618-19), Motecta for 2 to 6 Voices (Rome, 1621), and Sinfonia a 4 (ed. by A.
Kirchner in Musurgia universalis, Rome, 1650).
6）Claudio (Giovanni Antoni) Monteverdi
Also known as: Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi, Claudio Monteverdi
Birth: 1567 in Cremona, Italy
Death: November 29, 1643 in Venice, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: Composer
Source: International Dictionary of Opera. 2 vols. St. James Press, 1993.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Claudio Monteverdi is regarded not only as the first great opera composer, but one of the greatest
of all time. That he has attained this stature is testimony to the extraordinary nature of his extant
operas. Of his ten operas, the only to survive are his first opera Orfeo and a fragment from his
second opera Arianna--both of which were written for the Mantua court during the early years of
the genre--along with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea. Composed
during his final years for the public opera theater in Venice. These four works, standing at the two
opposite poles of Monteverdi's operatic career, thus necessarily provide only a glimpse into the
development and full range of his operatic genius.
Monteverdi is the only seventeenth-century composer whose works have found a permanent
position in today's operatic repertoire. This is not entirely surprising; he has received more
scholarly attention than any other composer of his century. In addition, inquiry into
seventeenth-century opera has tended to focus on the origins of the genre and the humanistic
neo-classicizing impulses that inspired its birth. Thus, Orfeo, long regarded as the first great opera,
has been the subject of intense scrutiny. At a time when much of the opera produced for the Venice
stage languished in relative obscurity, Monteverdi's Venetian operas, and in particular
L'incoronazione di Poppea, were acknowledged as masterworks.
Recent scholarship has long since increased the visibility of Monteverdi's Venetian contemporaries,
yet this has only made more apparent the extent to which his latter two operas differ from those of
his younger contemporaries writing for the Venetian theater. Monteverdi brought to opera
composition his Renaissance heritage and a musical style shaped by decades of madrigal
composition. The madrigal books, masterpieces in themselves, were also a sort of laboratory in
which Monteverdi developed various rhythmic, tonal, and vocal styles that would accommodate
the dramatic requirements of opera. As Eric Chafe has recently shown, Monteverdi also inherited a
tonal language based on Renaissance modal-hexachordal thinking, which he transformed into a
highly expressive device for the new genre. In a sense, the unique quality of Monteverdi's sound
and style results from the application of the most fundamental precepts and principles of
Renaissance style to opera--the genre that embodies the Baroque aesthetic.
Monteverdi's La favola d'Orfeo was performed in 1607 in Mantua under the auspices of the
Accademia degli Invaghiti. For his librettist, Monteverdi chose Alessandro Striggio, a diplomat
and lawyer in the service of the ruling Gonzaga family of Mantua who, as the son of a composer,
also had considerable interest in music and poetry. Monteverdi's and Striggio's Orfeo was not the
first work of its kind. As numerous scholars have pointed out, Orfeo was modeled after an earlier
work, Euridice, by poet Ottavio Rinuccini and composer Jacopo Peri. Like Rinuccini, Striggio set
his libretto within the pastorale tragicomedic world that was popular from other Mantuan and
Florentine theatrical entertainments such as Guarini's play Il pastor fido. Striggio also followed a
similar dramatic structure, organizing his libretto as a prologue followed by five acts or sections,
with the first two acts of the two versions roughly analogous in terms of content. Specific
resemblances between the two works occur particularly in recitative passages--as in the
messenger's revelation of Euridice's death--and it is in those instance that Monteverdi's musical
setting demonstrates its greatest debt to Peri's work. Monteverdi also drew upon the theatrical
traditions of the Florentine and Mantuan court. Thus, rather than relying so heavily upon the stile
rappresentative favored by the Florentine opera pioneers, Monteverdi and Striggio designed Orfeo
as a composite of various forms and styles for both voices and instruments, enhanced by a wide
spectrum of instrumental colors--indicated with great specificity by the composer-- and with a
greater variety of stage settings that undoubtedly contradicted classical demands for unity of place.
The appearance of the allegorical figure of Music in the prologue provides an important clue as to
the actual purpose of this recounting of Orfeo's tale a demonstration of music's power. In Orfeo,
however, the ability to wield music's power does not necessarily rest in the hands of this gifted
protagonist. Orfeo's songs are no doubt pleasing in times of joy, as in the delightfully simple
strophic song "Vi ricorda" or as in the impetuous burst of emotional display of "Rosa del ciel," and
his sorrow is movingly expressed in the sharply felt lament "Tu sei morta." Yet Orfeo's most
virtuosic musical display and urgent evocation of music's power, "Possente spirto," only
temporarily gains him his desired goal and ultimately cannot save him from his human failings. In
Orfeo, it would seem that Monteverdi proves that the true power of music belongs to the composer.
Indeed, the organization of Orfeo is by no means determined solely by the flow of the drama.
Numerous scholars have noted the symmetrical design in the distribution of the closed forms, as in
the patterns of choruses between the nymphs and shepherds in act I. More recently, Eric Chafe has
shown the careful and logical way in which tonality is used both in terms of overall organization
and in expressing the allegorical meaning of the drama. The dramatic tonal juxtapositions that
occur in moments of rapidly shifting emotion--as in the messenger's announcement of Euridice's
death--are not only localized effects, but rather can logically be accounted for within a rational
tonal system that Monteverdi carefully employed in this work and explored in his
contemporaneous madrigal composition.
In his musical characterization of the allegorical, somewhat two-dimensional Orfeo, Monteverdi
provides only a glimpse of the psychological depth and human insight that was to mark the
characters in his later operas. In the surviving fragment from the opera Arianna, written the
following year, Monteverdi uses the monodic style to trace the various stages of Arianna's reaction
to her abandonment by Theseus. Closely mirroring the intricacies of the text, Monteverdi
sensitively evokes Arianna's despair, disbelief, hope, and anger. Yet the entire lament is musically
unified by the repetitions of her obsessive cries for death, poignantly set with a striking
chromaticism that has since become inseparable from the idea of lament.
In his latter two operas, Monteverdi also succeeds in creating characters with profoundly human
depth; nevertheless, these works differ sharply from the earlier operas in musical and rhetorical
style as well as in meaning. Undoubtedly, some of this is a result of the cultural and aesthetic
climate in which they were produced. No longer employed by the Gonzaga family of Mantua,
Monteverdi was now writing for the relatively new and successful public opera theater in Venice.
Some of the striking peculiarities of these works thus reflect the intellectual leanings of those
involved in Venetian opera production during its early decades. Both of the librettists for
Monteverdi's late operas, Giacomo Badoaro and Gian Francesco Busenello, were members of the
Accademia degli Incogniti, a group whose libertine and skeptical brand of philosophy was adopted
by much of the noble intelligentsia of Venice. Opera librettos were but a small portion of their
literary output, yet it is evident that these works reflect in some ways the numerous Incogniti
discussions on love, women, virtue, death, and the survival of the flesh. As Ellen Rosand has
pointed out, Il ritorno d'Ulisse, with its demonstration of the victory of virtuous love, and
L'incoronazione di Poppea, with its celebration of illicit, passionate love, can be viewed as
representing two sides of an Incogniti debate.
Neither the skepticism nor the intellectual leanings of these librettists interfered with Monteverdi's
ability to infuse his characters with extraordinary humanity. Notably, among his contemporaries
only Monteverdi chose to reshape portions of his librettos so as to alter their musical or dramatic
implications. This is particularly evident in Il ritorno d'Ulisse, where the librettist Badoaro
provided Monteverdi with mostly recitative poetry, with few stophic texts or other explicit
indications for lyricism. In Penelope's opening lament, for example. Monteverdi rearranged the
text in a manner that was not only more compelling dramatically--capturing Penelope's shifting
moods as she longed for Ulisse's return--but also more musically coherent. Penelope's repeated
lyrical plea for Ulisse's safe return, with its haunting melody and surprising tonal shifts, not only
provides contrast from the recitative and bestows musical unity on the lengthy monologue, but
also appropriately reflects Penelope's obsessive devotion to Ulisse, despite his continued absence.
As Rosand has shown in her discussion of Iro, the parte ridicolo in Il ritorno d'Ulisse--whose
expanded role in this libretto was librettist Badoaro's only significant departure from
Homer--Monteverdi uses an extreme sort of musical imitation that captures and yet exaggerates
the essence of each word, distorting the musical surface so as to realize Iro's amusing but highly
disturbing craving for nourishment that precipitates his suicide.
It is precisely this kind of musical imitation, employed with such opposite results in Penelope's
lament and Iro's suicide, that Monteverdi used to such advantage in his masterpiece,
L'incoronazione di Poppea. These characters bear little resemblance to the allegorical Orfeo or the
heroically lamentful Arianna. They are complex combinations of conflicting emotions and
motivations, yet their depth is made explicit through Monteverdi's musical realizations. The
listener may sympathize with the unfortunate predicament of Nero's abandoned wife Ottavia, but
it is not solely on account of her murderous actions that she ultimately fails to inspire compassion.
In Ottavia's act I monologue, Monteverdi uses a terse, somewhat angular recitative for her
denouncement of women's fate and their victimization by men, moving easily into a strained
lyricism as she visualizes Nero and Poppea's passion, then briefly employing the guerriero style in
a futile gesture of anger as she decries Jove's impotence--and her own. The starkness of Ottavia's
music is directly in contrast to the seductive, voluptuous nature of Poppea's music. In the first of
Nero and Poppea's exquisite duets, for example, Monteverdi empowers Poppea with languid lyric
gesture, seductive virtuosity, and tonal control that infuse the spent Nero with new passion and
thus extract from him the first of several promises that ultimately lead to her coronation. Above all,
it is Poppea's music that urges the listeners to abandon their moral reservations and rejoice with
her in the triumph of love over virtue.
The complicated state of the surviving sources as well as some of their notational anomalies, noted
most recently by Alan Curtis, have called into question the authorship of portions of
L'incoronazione di Poppea, including the popular and highly sensuous final duet. Some
commentators, however, have argued that the uniformity of feature such as text setting, tonal style,
melodic writing, and the application of musical devices from the madrigal tradition, still point to
Monteverdi's authorship for much of the opera. While it is likely that these questions will never be
definitively solved, the unique and subtle musical realizations of the characters throughout this
opera would seem at the very least to argue for Monteverdi's guiding spirit in the creation of this
masterwork.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Composer. Born 1567 (baptized 15 May), in Cremona. Died 29 November 1643, in Venice.
Married: Claudia de Cattaneis (died 10 September 1607), a singer at the Mantuan court, 20 May
1599 (two sons, one daughter who died in infancy). Learned to play the organ, and studied singing
and theory with Marc' Antonio Ingegneri, maestro di capella at the Cathedral of Cremona; visited
Milan, 1589; viol and violin player at the court of Vincenzo I, Duke of Mantua, by 1592; met
Giaches de Wert, maestro di capella at the Mantuan court; accompanied the Duke of Mantua on
battles against the Turks in Austria and Hungary, and accompanied him to Flanders in 1599;
appointed maestro di capella in Mantuan, succeeding Pallavicino, 1601; La favola d'Orfeo
performed for the Accademia degli Invaghiti in Matua, 1607; membership in the Accademia degli
Animori of Cremona, 1607; L'Arianna composed to celebrate the marriage of Francesco Gonzaga
of Mantua to Margaret of Savoy, 1608; lost his post in Mantua after the death of Vincenzo 1, 1612;
maestro di capella at San Marco, Venice, 1613; cantata Il combattimento di Taneredi e Clorinda
performed for the Venetian nobleman Girolanmo Mocenigo, 1624; his late operas performed in the
then recently opened public theaters of Venice, 1640-42. Monteverdi is buried in the church of the
Fratri in Venice.
WORKS
Operas
Editions
C. Monteverdi: Tutte le opere. Edited by G. F. Malipiero, 16 vols. Asolo, 1926-42; 2nd revised
edition, 1954; supplement, vol. 17, 1966.
C. Monteverdi: Composizioni vocali profane e sacre (inedite). Edited by W. Osthoff. Milan, 1958.
C. Monteverdi: Opera Omnia. Edited by Fondazione Claudio Monteverdi, Instituta e monumenta,
Monumenta, vol. v. Cremona, 1970.
La favola d'Orfeo. A. Striggio, Mantua, February 1607.
L'Arianna, O. Rinuceini, Mantua, 28 May 1608.
Le nozze di Tetide, 1616 [unfinished; lost].
Andromeda. E. Marigliani, 1618-20 [unfinished; lost].
La finta pazza Licori, G. Strozzi, composed for Mantua, 1927. [lost].
Gli amori di Diana e di Endimione, A. Pio, Parma, 1628 [lost].
Proserpina rapita, G. Strozzi, Venice, 1630 [music mostly lost].
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. G. Badoaro, Venice, 1640.
Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia, Venice, 1641 [lost].
L'incoronazione di Poppea, G. F. Busenello, Venice, 1642.
Other works: sacred and secular vocal works.
7）Manuel Cardoso
1566-1650
Birth: December 11, 1566 in Fronteira
Death: November 24, 1650 in Lisbon, Portugal
Nationality: Portuguese
Occupation: composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Cardoso, Manuel, distinguished Portuguese composer; b. Fronteira, near Portalegre (baptized),
Dec. 11, 1566; d. Lisbon, Nov. 24, 1650. After studies with Manuel Mendes and Cosme Delgado
at the évora Cathedral choir school, he was made a member of the Carmelite order (1588) and
took his vows (1589) at Lisbon's Convento do Carmo, where he was active as an organist and
choirmaster. He wrote much sacred music, most of which perished in the devastating Lisbon
earthquake and fire of 1755. His extant works, all publ. in Lisbon, include Cantica BVM for four
to five Voices (1613), Missae for four to six Voices, lib. 1 (1625), Missae for four to six Voices, lib.
2 (1636), Missae de BVM for four to six Voices, lib. 3 (1636), and Livro de varios motetes officio
da semana santa e outras cousas for four Voices (1648), all of which have been ed. in Portugaliae
Musica, series A, V-VI, XIII, XX, XXII, XXVI (1962-74).
8）Ruggiero Giovannelli
1560-1625
Birth: 1560 in Velletri
Death: January 07, 1625 in Rome
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Giovannelli, Ruggiero, Italian composer; b. Velletri, near Rome, c. 1560; d. Rome, Jan. 7, 1625.
He settled in Rome and served as maestro di cappella of S. Luigi dei Francesi (1583-91), the
Collegio Germanico (1591-94), and the Cappella Giulia of St. Peter's (1594-99). In 1595 he took
holy order, and in 1599 he joined the Sistine Chapel as a singer, where he later held several
positions, including that of maestro di cappella (1614-15) before retiring in 1624. Among his
works were 2 vols. of motets (1593, 1604) and various other sacred compositions, and 6 vols. of
madrigals (1585-1606).
9）Giovanni Bernardino Nanino
1560-1623
Also known as: Giovanni Bernardino Nanini
Birth: 1560
Death: 1623 in Rome
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: composer, teacher
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Nanino (Nanini), Giovanni Bernardino, Italian composer and teacher, brother of Giovanni Maria
Nanino; b. c. 1560; d. Rome, 1623. He was a boy soprano at Vallerano Cathedral, and studied
music with his brother. From 1591 to 1608 he was maestro di cappella at S. Luigi dei Francesi in
Rome. His brother lived with him in a home maintained by the church, where they boarded and
taught the boy sopranos. He subsequently was maestro di cappella at S. Lorenzo in Damaso, the
small church in the home of Cardinal Montalto. He was a significant composer and teacher.
WORKS
Works
VOCAL
SACRED:
Motecta for 2 to 4 Voices (Rome, 1610); Motecta, liber secundus for 1 to 5 Voices, with Basso
Continuo (Rome, 1611); Motecta, liber tertius for 1 to 5 Voices, with Basso Continuo (Rome,
1612); Motecta, liber quartus for 1 to 5 Voices, with Basso Continuo (Rome, 1618); Salmi
vespertini for 4 to 8 Voices (Rome, 1620; ed. by K. Proske, Musica divina, I/3 and II/2,
Regensburg, 1860-74); Venite exultemus for 3 Voices, with Basso Continuo (Assisi, 1620); etc.
10）Felice Anerio
1560-1614
Birth: 1560 in Rome
Death: September 26, 1614 in Rome
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Anerio, Felice, significant Italian composer, brother of Giovanni Francesco Anerio; b. Rome, c.
1560; d. there, Sept. 26 or 27, 1614. He pursued his career in Rome. He was a choirboy at S.
Maria Maggiore from 1568 to 1574, and then sang at the Cappella Giulia from 1575 and at S.
Luigi dei Francesi from 1579 to 1584. In 1584 he received the tonsure and was made maestro di
cappella at the Collegio degli Inglesi, where he served until 1585. In 1594 he was named
composer to the papal choir. He became a deacon in 1607 and soon thereafter was made a priest.
With Soriano, he was entrusted with reforming the Roman Gradual in 1611, a task completed in
1612. Anerio composed in a conservative style that was greatly admired for its expressive power.
WORKS
Works
SACRED Madrigali spirituali for 5 Voices (2 vols., Rome, 1585); Sacri hymni, et cantica for 8
Voices (Venice, 1595) and for 5, 6, and 8 Voices (Rome, 1602); Responsoria ad lectiones divini
officii feriae quartae, quintae, et sextae sanctae hebdomadae for 4 Voices (Rome, 1606); also
masses, Psalms, spiritual canzonettas, laudi, motets, etc. SECULAR Canzonette for 4 Voices
(Venice, 1586); Madrigals for 5 and 8 Voices (Venice, 1587), 6 Voices (Venice, 1509 and Rome,
1602), 3 Voices (Venice, 1598), and 5 Voices (not extant).
11）Giovanni Gabrieli
Birth: c. 1557 in Venice, Italy
Death: August 12, 1612 in Venice, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: composer, organist
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The works of the Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1557-1612) mirror the transition from
the 16th-century Renaissance style to the 17th-century baroque. His compositions were very
influential on Italian and German masters.
Giovanni Gabrieli was born in Venice. He was associated with the court chapel of Roland de
Lassus in Munich (1576-1580). Despite this important contact, the formative influence on the
young Giovanni was his uncle Andrea Gabrieli, whose career as composer and organist anticipated
his own. Giovanni's devotion to Andrea is witnessed by a collection of concerti (1587) issued by
the younger man from among his own works and those of the older man, dead but a year.
Like his uncle, Giovanni worked in the Cathedral of St. Mark in Venice, first as deputy to the
famed master Claudio Merulo (1584), then as second organist (1585), and finally as first organist
(1586). He also composed vocal and instrumental pieces for church and state festivities and taught
a young generation of composers the new musical idioms of the baroque. He died in Venice on
Aug. 12, 1612.
Only a few of Gabrieli's secular vocal pieces have survived. But a collection of madrigals by his
student Heinrich Schütz, printed in 1611 as the fruits of an apprenticeship with Gabrieli, suggests
that the teacher was deeply interested in the genre. Among Gabrieli's madrigals is the eight-voice
Lieto godea for two choruses. Here, as in the sacred pieces, antiphonal effects, created by means
of vertical, chordal combinations, replace the linear movement of the older polyphonists.
Many more of Gabrieli's instrumental pieces have survived, including numerous canzonas,
ricercars, and sonatas. Some early canzonas such as La Spiritata are conventional, sectional pieces
in imitative, multithematic polyphony. Several of the monothematic ricercars, on the other hand,
are virtually forerunners of the latebaroque fugue. Of particular interest is Gabrieli's Sonata piano
e forte, the first composition ever to bear this title. In addition to marking dynamics throughout the
individual parts, the composer prescribed the instrumentation of the sonata--a novel departure
from Renaissance practice, in which instrumentation was usually an ad libitum matter. Among his
late instrumental pieces is a Sonata con tre violini e basso se piace, for which the master made the
decisive turn to the basso continuo, the foundation voice of most baroque music.
Of all Gabrieli's works, first place must go to the motets. Polychoral writing (cori spezzati), as
promulgated by Adrian Willaert and continued by Andrea Gabrieli, found its most brilliant
exponent in Giovanni Gabrieli. In his collection Sacrae symphoniae (1597) there were motets for
six to sixteen parts and arranged for one to four choruses. For these works he replaced the older,
imitative, melismatic polyphony of the Franco-Flemish school by syllabic, harmonic writing. Bass
parts moving in fourths and fifths supported separated choirs responding antiphonally to one
another in short, declamatory phrases. For Gabrieli, who designed his creations for large spaces,
traditional counterpoint was less important than dramatic changes in texture and dynamics.
Gabrieli's second volume of Sacrae symphoniae, printed posthumously (1615), contains early as
well as late pieces in the new concerted idiom. Characteristic of the late compositions are the
juxtaposition of voices and instruments, virtuoso solo writing, and the basso continuo.
The motet In ecclesiis reveals most of the innovations of Gabrieli's late style: solos and duets
supported by organ (basso continuo) or instrumental ensemble; a solo quartet of voices responding
to or joining the chorus; and instrumental ensembles accompanying the singers or playing
independent sinfonie. With such a work resplendent with color, Gabrieli helped inaugurate a new
musical epoch that was carried forward by many 17th-century Roman masters and, even more
significantly, by the Germans Heinrich Schütz and Michael Praetorius.
12）
Tomás Luis de Victoria
Also known as: Tomas Luis de Victoria
Birth: c. 1548 in ávila, Spain
Death: 1611
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548-1611) was the most renowned Spanish Renaissance polyphonist.
His works are characterized by mystical fervor and nobility of musical concepts.
Tomás Luis de Victoria was the seventh child of 11 born in ávila to Francisco Luis de Victoria and
Francisca Suárez de la Concha. His father's death in 1557 left the family in the care of an uncle
who was a priest. Victoria spent several years as a choirboy in ávila Cathedral.
In 1565 (or 1563) Victoria entered the German College at Rome. This was a Jesuit school lavishly
supported by Philip II and Otto von Truchsess von Waldburg, the cardinal archbishop of Augsburg.
Victoria served as organist at the Aragonese church of S. Maria di Monserrato in Rome from 1569
to 1574. In 1571 the German College hired him to teach music to the young boys. He was
ordained on Aug. 28, 1575. From that year to 1577 he directed the German College choir singing
at the church of S. Apollinare in Rome; from 1578 to 1585 he held a chaplaincy at S. Girolamo
della Carità, the church of the newly founded Oratorians at Rome.
Victoria returned to Spain in 1587 and until 1603 served as chapelmaster of the Descalzas Reales
convent in Madrid, where Philip II's sister, the Dowager Empress Maria, and her daughter,
Princess Margaret, resided. From 1604 until his death on Aug. 27, 1611, he was also the organist
at the convent.
In 1572 Victoria dedicated his first, and still most famous, publication to Cardinal Truchsess, a
great connoisseur of church music. The 33 motecta ranging from four to eight voices in this
collection include the sensuous Vere languores and O vos omnes, which to this day form the
bedrock of Victoria's reputation with the broad public that knows nothing of his Magnificats,
hymns, sequences, psalms, antiphons, and 20 Masses--five of which appeared in 1576, four more
in 1583, seven in 1592, and the rest in 1600 and 1605.
In his 1572 motets Victoria closely followed the detail technique of Giovanni Pierluigi da
Palestrina, evincing a commanding mastery of Palestrina's dissonance treatment. Personal contact
with Palestrina and perhaps even lessons probably explain Victoria's absorption of the technique.
From 1566 to 1571 Palestrina served as chapelmaster at the Roman College near the German
College. What distinguishes Victoria's personal manner in 1572 from Palestrina's is the younger
composer's frequ
ent recourse to printed accidentals, his fondness for what would now be called melodic minor
motion (sharps ascending, naturals descending), and the anticipation of 19th-century functional
harmony.
Throughout his career, even when writing Missa Quarti toni (1592), Victoria always succeeded in
sounding like a "major-minor" rather than a truly "modal" composer. For him Quarti toni meant A
minor cadencing on the dominant. In 1600 he published Missae, Magnificat, motecta, psalmi, &
alia, which consists very largely of organ-accompanied F-major music. True, he reverted to
unaccompanied minor keys in the Officium defunctorum, published in 1605 as a tribute to his
patroness, the Dowager Empress Maria, but this was funeral music. In none of Palestrina's
publications did he specify organ accompaniments. Victoria did--even publishing organ parts in
1592 and 1600.
Victoria's miscellany of 1600 includes a Missa pro Victoria modeled on Clément Janequin's
famous battle chanson. Philip III liked this ebullient nine-voice Mass founded on a secular model
more than any of Victoria's other works, but it contravenes every quality endearing Victoria to his
modern public. However, it does at least prove him to have been more versatile emotionally and
technically than his admirers will admit. Philip III's partiality for it served as a sales gambit when
Victoria sought funds from its publication to bail his youngest brother out of prison.
13）
William Byrd
Birth: c. 1543 in Lincolnshire, England
Death: 1623
Nationality: English
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The English composer William Byrd (ca. 1543-1623) was one of the greatest polyphonists of his
time. He also excelled in the composition of keyboard music, stage songs, and instrumental
fantasias.
William Byrd was born in Lincolnshire, probably in 1543. Nothing is known of his boyhood
except that he became a child of the Chapel Royal some time after 1550, moving then to London,
where he was "bred up under Thomas Tallis." At the age of 20 Byrd received his first appointment,
returning to his native shire as organist at Lincoln Cathedral. Within a few years he succeeded
Robert Parsons as one of the gentlemen of the Chapel Royal. The records are unclear as to
whether Byrd moved to Westminster at this time. In 1572, however, he was replaced at Lincoln
Cathedral by Thomas Butler, whom he himself had chosen, and it is clear that at that time he
moved to London, where he shared the post of organist with Tallis.
In 1568 Byrd married Juliana Birley; they had a son in 1569 and a daughter in 1572. It was during
this period that he was charged with recusancy, for which he was troubled the rest of his life, and
that he acquired the first of his leases, which were to embroil him in litigation from this time
forward.
These were years of close professional association with Tallis, his former mentor and senior by
some 40 years. Together they received in 1578 a license "to imprint any and so many as they will
of set songe or songes in partes, either in English, Latine, Frenche, Italian or other tongues that
may serve for musicke either in Church or chamber, or otherwise to be plaid or soong...." This
license, a virtual monopoly for music printing, passed to Byrd's sole ownership upon the death of
Tallis in 1585. The proprietary fervor it inspired no doubt was a factor in the extraordinarily
productive period which followed. During the next few years Byrd published no less than four
major collections, all devoted entirely to his own works: Psalmes, Sonets & Songs (1588), Songs
of Sundrie Natures (1589), Cantiones sacrae I (1589), and Cantiones sacrae II (1591).
The music in these, along with that available only in manuscript, such as the important keyboard
collection "My Lady Neville's Book," reflects his esthetic position as a transitional figure between
medieval and modern times. The very fact that these collections were composed and prepared for
circulation in print furnishes one aspect of their modernity. And that the composer himself was
launching these editions as a financial venture is another. Both these considerations relate to
innovative features on the esthetic side, which in turn signalize several new developments in the
musical culture of 17th-century England.
No hint of a new praxis appears in the title of the first collection, Psalmes, Sonets & Songs of
Sadness and Piety, Made into Musicke of Five Parts (1588). However, Byrd did provide for a
glimpse of contemporary procedures in the circulation of music with his expressed resolve to
expose untrue copies of his works then abroad. All this, music printing was to change.
In the body of the collection, one of the upper parts of pieces in all three categories indicated in
the title is marked "the first singing voice." Byrd probably composed all these as solo songs with
viol accompaniment (we know that "Though Amaryllis dance in green" originated thus), then
adapted the accompanying viol parts to the text in preparing these for publication. Presumably his
motivation was to increase sales by appealing to a wider public, or at least to a greater number of
performers. On the whole, though, the effect of this procedure was to bring Byrd's compositions
into alignment with the Italian madrigal, by then new only in England, and they are rather stiff and
unwieldy part-songs compared to the livelier polyphonic works of the Italians.
More evidence of Byrd's concern for marketability appears with the Songs of Sundrie Natures,
Some of Gravitie and Others of Myrth, Fit for All Companies and Voyces (1589). And the title of
the last set of secular part-songs, that of 1611, is even more explicit with its prescription for
aleatory performance: Psalmes, Songs & Sonnets: Some Solemne, Others Joyful, Framed to the
Life of the Words: Fit for Voyces or Viols In other words, both content and medium are arranged
for the largest possible number of hearers or performers.
In the Cantiones sacrae Byrd clearly though tacitly went against the policy of the English
Reformation, intended not only to remove the political hegemony of Rome from England but also
to expunge Latin from the liturgy. But in the two books of Gradualia which marked his next flurry
of editorial activity, he publicly avowed the recusancy for which he and members of his family
had already been called to account numerous times.
The first book of Gradualia we know only from the second edition of 1610. The second book,
published in 1607 and also appearing in a second edition in 1610, consists of 43 motets for four,
five, and six voices. Again, these motets are generally shorter than those in the Cantiones sacrae
collections and are obviously intended for use by those who sought formal musical expression of
their Catholic faith. That he would have dared publish two such books, particularly just after the
Gunpowder Plot in 1605, which raised such a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment, testifies to the
strength of his position at court and to the excellence of his general reputation as the "father of
English music." Musically, these books represent the work of the greatest English polyphonic
master of the 16th century.
The same may be said of his more than 60 English anthems, some being his own adaptations of
Latin motets; of his 50 stage songs; of the keyboard works in the "Fitzwilliam Virginal Book," in
"My Lady Neville's Book," and in the printed collection Parthenia; and, not least, of his
miscellaneous canons, rounds, and music for strings.
14）
Roland de Lassus
Birth: 1532 in Mons
Death: June 14, 1594
Nationality: Franco-Flemish
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The enormous production of the Franco-Flemish composer Roland de Lassus (1532-1594), over
1,200 works in all categories, and their extraordinarily high quality, make him one of the greatest
masters of Renaissance music.
Roland de Lassus, also known as Orlando di Lasso, was born in Mons, where he sang as a
chorister in the church of St-Nicolas. Because of his unusual talent and beautiful voice, he was
kidnaped three times for other choirs. After the third attempt, in 1544, his parents gave up the
12-year-old boy to Ferdinand Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily, who retained Lassus in his service for 6
years, taking him to Palermo and later to Milan.
Formative Years in Italy
In 1550 Lassus went to Naples, where he lived in the household of the Marchese della Terza.
Toward the end of 1552 he proceeded to Rome, staying with Antonio Altovito, Archbishop of
Florence. Lassus was choirmaster of St. John Lateran from April 1553 until 1555, when he left for
Antwerp.
These formative years in Italy were decisive for Lassus' musical development. As part of his
training he learned to compose the many genres cultivated in Italy--simple, note-against-note
villanelle, sophisticated madrigals, Masses, and motets for one or more choruses. In most of his
works his awareness of text and its musical depiction marked the Italian reorientation of musical
architecture handed down by the older Franco-Flemish school. Probably connected with Naples is
the Prophetiae Sibyllarum, a cycle of poems by an unknown Italian contemporary. The prophecies
of these ancient Sibyls suggested to Lassus a chromatic idiom atypical of his other works, but it
was destined nevertheless to impress many contemporaries, particularly those at the French court
of Charles IX.
Antwerp Period
Lassus remained at Antwerp until the fall of 1556, during which time publishers began to vie for
his works. Within a few months of his arrival Tielman Susato of Antwerp issued a miscellaneous
collection of four-voice madrigals, villanelle, chansons, and motets; the Venetian Antonio Gardana
restricted his edition to madrigals for five voices. The following year saw a collection of five-and
six-voice motets in which Lassus unveiled the emotional expression he favored for these sacred
pieces.
Munich (1556-1575)
In 1556 Duke Albert of Bavaria called Lassus to Munich, and the composer spent the remaining
38 years of his life there. Engaged as a singer in the choir directed by the composer Ludwig Daser,
Lassus was advanced to court kapellmeister in a short time and was put in complete charge of all
music for secular and sacred functions. His personal charm and artistic talent made him a favorite
of the duke and his son William. In 1558 Lassus married a lady-in-waiting at court, Regina
W?chinger, with whom he had six children. Two sons, Rudolph and Ferdinand, were to become
musicians and edit posthumously over 500 of their father's motets in a monumental edition,
Magnum opus musicum (1604).
Within a dozen years of his coming to the Bavarian capital, Lassus published volume after volume
of madrigals, chansons, lieder, motets, and Masses. The French publishers LeRoy and Ballard
issued in 1560 the first of many chansons by the master. Stylistically these works range from
homophonic patter songs after the Parisian fashion to intricately contrapuntal, and occasionally
chromatic, pieces reflecting in their word treatment the Italian madrigal.
Lassus' Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales (ca. 1560) are settings of the penitential psalms (Nos. 6, 31,
37, 50, 101, 129, and 142). The composer responded in a particularly sensitive way to the sad
words of these poems. He conveyed their mood so penetratingly that Samuel Quickelberg, a
Bavarian court official, referred to the music as a superb example of musica reservata. By this
term he meant music faultlessly adapted to, and bestowing profound expression on, the words.
Duke Albert was so impressed with the penitential psalms that he ordered them copied into
handsome folio volumes and illuminated with miniatures by the court painter Hans Mülich. Other
sacred music from Lassus' early years in Munich is his Sacrae lectiones novem ex propheta Job
(1565) and a volume of Magnificats on the eight tones (1567).
In a collection of German songs, Neue teutsche Liedlein (1567), Lassus abandoned the traditional
tenor cantus-firmus lied favored by older masters such as Heinrich Isaac and Ludwig Senfl.
Lassus preferred imitative, yet freely composed pieces full of tonal word painting, a technique
clearly derived from the madrigal. He can justifiably be considered the innovator of the late
Renaissance lied.
Lassus' astounding productivity brought him honors and renown. On Dec. 7, 1570, Emperor
Maximilian II conferred on him a noble title and coat of arms. Three years later William, heir to
the Bavarian throne, was the patron of a 12-volume edition, Patrocinium musices, in large part
devoted to the works of Lassus. Also in 1573 Catherine de Médicis of France commissioned music
from Lassus to celebrate the accession of her son Henry of Anjou to the throne of Poland. Henry's
brother, King Charles IX of France, also admired Lassus and made strenuous efforts to lure him to
Paris. The composer never seriously considered leaving Munich, however, and the death of
Charles in 1574 brought all negotiations to an end.
Five Masses by Lassus (Ite rime dolenti, Scarco di doglia, Sidus ex claro, Credidi propter, Le
Berger et la bergère) were published as volume 2 of the Patrocinium musices (1574). Although his
Masses do not always represent him at his best, and rarely achieve the level of the most inspired
motets, Pope Gregory XIII so valued these five works that he invited Lassus to Rome and named
him a knight of the Golden Spur.
Munich (1576-1594)
In the later 1570s and first half of the 1580s Lassus was at the height of his fame and power.
Volume 5 of the Patrocinium musices (1576) was dedicated to a new collection of Magnificats. In
contrast to his Magnificats of 1567, based on traditional chants, Lassus now "parodied" secular
and sacred polyphony for his borrowed material. Like some of the Masses admired by Pope
Gregory, these Magnificats seem to ignore the religious spirit demanded of Church music by the
Council of Trent. This "secularization," however, is by no means a true or complete picture of
Lassus' later output. On the contrary, the mature works on the whole tend to be more spiritual in
text and tone and are closely related to political and religious changes at the Bavarian court.
In 1579 an event occurred that was to have momentous repercussions on the composer's career:
the death of his revered patron, Duke Albert. Faced with awesome debts, Duke William was
obliged to curtail chapel expenses and discharge many singers and instrumentalists. More
important still was the duke's religious nature and attitude, which made for a changed court
atmosphere. Piety and penitence, the fruits of Counter Reformation fervor, pervaded the court and
strongly affected Lassus himself. With the Jesuits strongly entrenched in Bavaria, the composition
of frivolous chansons and madrigals was now unwelcome.
Lassus altered the sprightly secular genres of the past by transforming them into sacred or at least
serious pieces. In his fifth book of madrigals (1585) the contents were completely spiritualized
into madrigali spirituali. They were set to poems from the Rime spirituali by Gabriele Fiamma,
Bishop of Chioggia, whose verse was closely attuned to the temper of the times.
The following year Lassus experienced the beginnings of a deep melancholy that paralyzed his
creative efforts for a time. By April 1587 he had recovered from his depression and issued a new
volume of spiritual madrigals. These were followed in 1588 by a setting of 25 psalms for three
voices in the German translation of Ulenberg. By 1590 Lassus' mental health had once again
deteriorated, and he required constant care and attention. He was able to return to his duties in
1593. His last work, Le lagrime di San Pietro, a series of 20 spiritual madrigals on poems by Luigi
Tansillo, was completed shortly before his death on June 14, 1594.
15）
Guillaume Costeley
1531-1606
Birth: 1531
Death: January 28, 1606 in Evreux
Nationality: French
Occupation: organ player, composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Costeley, Guillaume, French organist and composer; b. c. 1531; d. évreux, Jan. 28, 1606. Theories
that he was an Irishman named Costello who settled in France, or that he was of Scottish
extraction, have been discarded. He was court organist to Charles IX of France. In 1570 he
became the first annually elected “prince” or “ma?tre” of a society organized in honor of St.
Cecilia, which, beginning in 1575, awarded a prize each year for a polyphonic composition.
Costeley excelled as a composer of polyphonic chansons. His Musique, a book of such works for
four to six voices, appeared in 1570. Modern eds. of some of those for four voices are in H. Expert,
Ma?tres Musiciens de la Renaissance Fran?aise (vols. III, XVIII, XIX, 1896-1904). An example
for five voices is in Cauchie's Quinze chansons.
16）
Claude Le Jeune
Also known as: Claudin Le Jeune
Birth: c. 1530 in Valenciennes, France
Death: September 26, 1600 in Paris, France
Nationality: Flemish
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Claude Le Jeune (ca. 1530-1600) was a Flemish composer active in France. He created a new
species of composition, musique mesurée, and was also acclaimed for his numerous settings of the
French Psalter.
Born in Valenciennes (now in France, then part of Flanders), Claude Le Jeune spent his earliest
years in Flanders and may have traveled thereafter to Venice for a stay with the composer Adrian
Willaert. Le Jeune settled in Paris about 1564. Although an avowed Huguenot, he was in charge of
planning musical activities at the French court, particularly those attending the marriage of the
Duc de Joyeuse in 1581. The following year saw the composer's appointment as maistre des
enfans de musique to Fran?ois d'Anjou, brother of King Henry III. In 1596 Le Jeune was listed as
maistre compositeur ordinaire de la musique to King Henry IV and retained this post until his
death in Paris about Sept. 26, 1600.
Although much of Le Jeune's music is lost, 659 works have come down to us. They include 67
chansons, 146 airs, 320 psalms, 41 sacred songs, 10 motets, 1 Mass, 1 Magnificat, and 3
instrumental pieces. The last four genres are of little importance: they belong to his early,
formative years or inadequately represent the composer's stature or development. Of greater
weight are the chansons, airs, and settings of the Huguenot Psalter. The chansons extend from
music-oriented, elaborately contrapuntal pieces of the 1550s, through Italianate, text-oriented,
chromatic works of the 1560s and 1570s, to a clarified idiom free of "madrigalisms" in the last
pieces of the 1580s and 1590s.
Much more significant are the hundred-odd airs in musique mesurée. By adapting classical
quantitative meters to French poetry, the poet Jean Antoine de Ba?f wrote many lyrics in vers
mesurée; these in turn were set by Le Jeune in note-against-note counterpoint. Despite their
artificial structure, these strophic songs are among the composer's loveliest inspirations.
Le Jeune turned to the French Psalter as translated by Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze at
least four times in his career, employing the original Genevan tunes for the last three. In the first
arrangement (1564) he set 10 of the psalms in motet (imitative) style. His Dodecachordon (1598)
was 12 psalms composed as imitative motets in each of the 12 modes. In contrast to these settings
were two volumes of psalms, one for three voices (first published 1602-1610) and one for four to
six voices (first published 1601). Written in simple note-against-note style, they were probably
designed for congregations or choirs of Protestant churches. The version for four to five parts, in
particular, was admired throughout Europe and America during the 17th and 18th centuries and
established Le Jeune's reputation even at the expense of his larger and more important creations.
17）
William Mundy
1529-1591
Birth: 1529
Death: October 1591 in London, England
Nationality: English
Occupation: composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Mundy, William, English composer, father of John Mundy; b. c. 1529; d. probably in London, Oct.
1591. He became head chorister at Westminster Abbey in 1543. In 1564 he was made vicar-choral
at St. Paul's Cathedral and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. He composed services, anthems, and
Latin antiphons. See F. Harrison, ed., William Mundy: Latin Antiphons and Psalms, Early English
Church Music, II (1963).
18）
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Also known as: Giovanni Palestrina
Birth: December 27, 1525 in Palestrina, Italy
Death: February 2, 1594 in Rome, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca. 1525-1594) was one of the greatest
masters of Renaissance music and the foremost composer of the Roman school.
Born Giovanni Pierluigi, the composer is known as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina from the
name of his birthplace, a hill town near Rome. It is assumed without historical evidence that
Giovanni was a choir singer at the church of St. Agapit in 1532, when he was but 7 years old.
When the bishop of Palestrina, Cardinal della Valle, was transferred to the basilica of S. Maria
Maggiore in Rome in 1534, the 9-year-old chorister may have followed him, but the earliest
cathedral record naming Giovanni carries the date 1537. Except for a brief return to his birthplace,
Giovanni served at S. Maria Maggiore until his nineteenth birthday. During this formative period
he probably trained with one of the Franco-Flemings in Rome: Robin Mallapert, Firmin Le Bel, or
Jacques Arcadelt.
In 1544 Palestrina was summoned to his native town as organist and singing master of the local
church. During the following half dozen years he married, fathered the first of his three sons, and
began composing. Most important for his future career was the attention accorded his music by the
new bishop of Palestrina, Cardinal del Monte. When he became Pope Julius III in 1550, one of his
first acts of the following year was to appoint Palestrina choirmaster of the Julian Chapel of St.
Peter's.
By 1554 Palestrina had published his first book of Masses and dedicated it to Pope Julius, who
rewarded him with a coveted assignment to the Pontifical (Sistine) Choir at St. Peter's. By custom
all singers of this choir were unmarried, and they were admitted only after rigorous examination.
Since the Pontiff had ignored both traditions, Palestrina's designation was viewed with little
enthusiasm. When Pope Julius died a few months later, Paul IV dismissed the composer but
awarded him a small pension for his services. He also approved Palestrina's appointment as
choirmaster at the church of St. John Lateran, where Roland de Lassus had been active only the
year before.
Palestrina conducted the chorus at St. John Lateran from 1555 until 1560. But stringent economies
and political intrigues made it difficult for him to achieve his artistic aims. After a particularly
unpleasant incident about food and lodging for his choirboys, Palestrina left his post without
notice. Such bold behavior did not seem to affect adversely his future career, for he became
choirmaster at S. Maria Maggiore in 1561. Working conditions in this basilica were considerably
better than at the Lateran, and Palestrina remained reasonably content for the next 5 years.
In 1566 Palestrina became music director of the newly formed Roman Seminary. Although he
received a smaller salary than at S. Maria Maggiore, he was in part compensated by permission to
enroll his sons Rodolfo and Angelo at the institution. What seems to have been initially a suitable
arrangement did not, however, work out to his satisfaction, for he left the seminary very soon
thereafter. For the next 4 years he was music director for Cardinal Ippolito d'Este II, an
outstanding patron of the arts.
In March 1571 Palestrina was appointed choirmaster at the Julian Chapel, where he stayed for the
rest of his life. On at least two occasions attempts were made to lure him from Rome. In 1568
Emperor Maximilian had invited him to the imperial court at Vienna. And in 1583 the Duke of
Mantua, an amateur musician of talent and frequent correspondent of the composer, invited
Palestrina to his court. To both invitations the master set such a high price on his services that it
might be assumed that he never seriously considered leaving the Eternal City.
Reforms in Music
Intermittently from 1545 to 1565 the Council of Trent considered the reform of Church music,
even contemplating the ban of all polyphony from the liturgy. According to one report, Palestrina
saved the art of music by composing the Missa Papae Marcelli according to the requirements of
the council. But the role alleged to have been played by this Mass is undoubtedly mythical.
Palestrina's reputation makes it likely, however, that he was consulted on decisions about music.
We do know that his works were performed before, and approved by, Cardinal Borromeo, who
was charged with securing a liturgical music free of secular tunes and unintelligible texts.
Palestrina's influence with the Roman hierarchy is also witnessed by a papal order of 1577. He and
a colleague, Annibale Zoilo, were directed to revise the Graduale Romanum by purging the old
tunes of barbarisms and the excrescences of centuries. Palestrina never did complete this laborious
task, and the Medicean Gradual of the early 17th century, sometimes thought to be his work, is
actually the labor of others.
His Works
Palestrina's voluminous works encompass the most important categories cultivated in the late
Renaissance: Masses, motets, and madrigals. Of these three the madrigals played a small role, for
his orientation was overwhelmingly on the side of sacred music. His 250 motets include settings
of psalms and canticles, as well as exclusively liturgical items such as 45 hymns, 68 offertories, 13
lamentations, 12 litanies, and 35 Magnificats. Most of these compositions reveal the so-called
Palestinian style, in which stepwise melodic movement dominates expansive leaps, and diatonic
tones in both horizontal and vertical combinations are preferred to their chromatic counterparts.
Important as are the motets, they are decidedly secondary to the 105 Masses for which Palestrina
was justly admired. He essayed various types: the archaic tenor cantus firmus Mass; the
paraphrase Mass; the Mass erected on hexachord and other contrived subject; and the "parody"
Mass, which elaborates a preexistent polyphonic model. True to his preferences Palestrina avoided
secular models, opting for the tunes of the Church or at least tunes associated with sacred texts. He
was not modern in the same way as his Venetian colleagues with their polychoral pieces. His fuller
identification with the older Franco-Flemish masters, however, made him the representative of
that illustrious group best remembered by posterity.
19）
Thoinot Arbeau
1520-1595
Also known as: Jean Tabourot
Birth: March 17, 1520 in Dijon, France
Death: July 23, 1595 in Langres
Nationality: French
Occupation: ecclesiastic, writer
IOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Arbeau, Thoinot (real name, Jean Tabourot), French ecclesiastic and writer; b. Dijon, March 17,
1520; d. Langres, July 23, 1595. He was educated in Dijon and Poitiers. He served in
ecclesiastical positions in Langres, where he later became vicar-general. Arbeau publ. the
invaluable treatise Orchésographie, et traité en forme de dialogue par lequel toutes personnes
peuvent facilement apprendre et practiquer l’honnête exercice des danses (Langres, 1588; 2nd ed.,
1589; Eng. tr., 1948), which treats of social dances of his day with a new tablature to correlate
steps and music. It also includes many dance tunes. Its historical value is further enhanced by the
information it gives on how dance music of the 16th century was performed.
20）
Diego Ortiz
1510-1570
Birth: 1510 in Toledo, Spain
Death: 1570 in Naples
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: music theorist, composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Ortiz, Diego, Spanish music theorist and composer; b. Toledo, c. 1510; d. probably in Naples, c.
1570. He was maestro de capilla at the viceregal court in Naples (1558-65). He was one of the
earliest masters of variations (divisions). His greatest work is Trattado de glosas sobre clausulas y
otros géneros de puntos en la música de violones (Rome, 1553; modern ed. by M. Schneider,
Berlin, 1913; 3rd ed., Kassel, 1967), containing early examples of instrumental variations and
ornamental cadenzas (for Viola da Gamba alone with harpsichord). An Italian version of this work
was also publ. at Rome in 1553 (Il primo libro de Diego Ortiz Toletano, etc.). In addition, he publ.
a vol. of sacred music at Venice in 1565 (hymns, motets, Psalms, etc., for 4 to 7 Voices). Some
motets by him (in lute tablature) were included in Valderrabano's Silva de Sirenas (1547).
21）
Antonio de Cabezon Cabecon
1510-1566
Birth: 1510 in Castrillo de Matajudios
Death: March 26, 1566 in Madrid
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: organ player, composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Cabezón (Cabe?on), Antonio de, great Spanish organist and composer; b. Castrillo de Matajudios,
near Burgos, 1510; d. Madrid, March 26, 1566. He became blind in infancy; went to Palencia
about 1521 to study with the Cathedral organist Garcia de Baeza and with Tomás Gómez. He was
appointed organist to the court of the Emperor Charles V and Empress Isabella (1526); after her
death, Cabezón entered the service of Prince Philip and accompanied him to Italy, Germany, the
Netherlands (1548-51), and England (1554); he returned to Spain (1556) and remained court
organist until his death. His keyboard style greatly influenced the development of organ
composition on the Continent and the composers for the virginal in England; Pedrell called him
“the Spanish Bach.” The series Libro de Cifra Nueva (1557), which contains the earliest eds. of
Cabezón's works, was reprinted by H. Anglès in La música en la corte de Carlos V (1944). His son
and successor at the court of Philip II, Hernando (b. Madrid; baptized, Sept. 7, 1541; d. Valladolid,
Oct. 1, 1602), publ. his instrumental works as Obras de música para tecla, arpa y vihuela (Madrid,
1578). This vol. contains exercises in two and three parts, arrangements of hymn tunes, four-part
“tientos,” arrangements of motets in up to six parts by Josquin and other Franco-Flemish
composers, and variations on tunes of the day (El caballero, etc.). See Cabezón's Collected Works
(C. Jacobs, ed.; N.Y., 1967-76).
22）
Pierre de Manchicourt
1510-1564
Birth 1510 in Bethune
Death October 05, 1564 in Madrid
Nationality Flemish
Occupation composer
Source Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Manchicourt, Pierre de, Franco-Flemish composer; b. Bethune, c. 1510; d. Madrid, Oct. 5, 1564.
He was a choirboy at Arras Cathedral (1525); after serving as director of the choir at Tours
Cathedral (1539) and as master of the choirboys and maitre de chapelle at Tournai Cathedral
(1545), he was made a canon of Arras Cathedral in 1556; from 1559 he was master of Philip II's
Flemish chapel in Madrid. He composed many fine masses, motets, and Parisian chansons.
23）
Jacobus Clemens non Papa
Birth: c. 1510 in Ypres, Flanders
Death: c. 1556 in Dixmuide, Flanders
Nationality: Flemish
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Jacobus Clemens non Papa (ca. 1510-ca. 1556) was a Flemish composer whose a cappella Masses,
motets, and chansons represent high points in the history of Renaissance polyphonic vocal music.
Jacobus Clemens non Papa was born in Ypres, Flanders. Nothing is known of his education except
that he was trained as a priest, and little is known about his career. He seems to have spent his
early creative years in Paris, where his first works were published, but he returned to the Low
Countries in 1540. It is known that he was in Bruges until 1545, where he served as priest and
choirmaster of the children at St. Donatien. In subsequent years Clemens was active as a singer
and composer at the cathedrals in Antwerp and's Hertogenbosch, at Ypres, and finally at Dixmuide,
where he died and was buried.
Clemens published under the name Jacques Clément or Jacobus Clemens until 1546, after which
he added the appellation "non Papa" to the Latin form of his name. Why he did this is not known,
though scholars have suggested it may have been done so that Clemens might distinguish himself
from a priest-poet active in Ypres at the time who bore the same name and called himself Jacobus
Papa.
The extant works of Clemens--all works for unaccompanied voices--include 15 Masses, 231
motets, a number of songs in French and in Flemish, and 4 books of Souterliedekens, or "little
psalter songs." These last are simple three-part settings of the Psalms in Flemish that Clemens
based on popular melodies of the day. These Psalm settings were intended as devotional pieces for
the home, which accounts for their simplicity and easy tunefulness. By contrast, in his Masses and
motets, Clemens wrote a rich and varied polyphony, with a seriousness and thoroughness typical
of the Renaissance Netherlandish composers. His motets, in which Clemens shows himself ever
responsive to the moods and images of his texts, are especially remarkable for both their clarity
and expressive power. Many of his motets are remarkable, as well, for their unusual use of
chromaticism, much of it notated in the scores, but more of it, many scholars believe, implied and
meant to be added to the music only in its performance by the initiate.
Clemens was an outstanding composer in an epoch that produced many composers of genius. His
contributions to the genres of the Mass and the motet, in particular, stand as great monuments of
the art of polyphony in the Renaissance.
24）
Alonso de Mudarra
1508-1580
Birth: 1508 in Palencia diocese
Death: April 01, 1580 in Seville
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: vihuelist, composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Essay
Source Citation
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Mudarra, Alonso de, Spanish vihuelist and composer; b. Palencia diocese, c. 1508; d. Seville,
April 1, 1580. He became a canon (1546) and was elected major domo (1568) at Seville Cathedral.
He publ. the important vol. Tres libro de música en cifras para vihuela (Seville, 1546; ed. in
Monumentos de la Musica Espa?ola, VII, 1949).
25）
Thomas Tallis
Also known as: Thomas Tallys, Thomas Talys, Thomas Talles
Birth: c. 1505 in Greenwich, England
Death: November 23, 1585 in Greenwich, England
Nationality: English
Occupation: composer, organist
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The English composer and organist Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-1585) wrote anthems, services, and
other music for the Anglican rite. He is considered the father of English cathedral music.
Evidence points to Leicestershire as the birthplace of Thomas Tallis. Of his youth, education, and
musical training nothing certain is known. The earliest official record of his professional activity
places him as organist at Dover Priory in 1532. From his Benedictine cloister he moved first to St.
Mary-at-Hill in Billingsgate about 1537 and then to the Augustinian Abbey of the Holy Cross at
Waltham, where he served until its dissolution in 1540.
Under the adverse circumstances which ensued, Tallis next joined the musical establishment at
Canterbury, leaving 2 years later to become a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. He stayed in that
position for the rest of his life. For nearly a half century he composed, played, sang, and taught
music at the English court. During that period he witnessed the stylistic transition from medieval
to tonal polyphony, which culminated in his own compositions and in those of his brilliant pupil
William Byrd. Tallis died in Greenwich on Nov. 23, 1585, survived by his widow, Joan.
Tallis composed mainly sacred works, and his oeuvre may most conveniently be divided into two
kinds: those with Latin texts and those with English texts. Of the former there are four Marian
motets, the colossal 40-voiced Spem in alium, along with some two dozen other motets; several
responsories, antiphons, and office hymns; two Lamentations and two Magnificats; and three
Masses. His sacred compositions on English texts include a "Great" and a "Short" Service; two
service movements; various preces, litanies, responses, and psalms; and, most important of all, 28
anthems, among which 10 are clearly derived from his own Latin motets. The few extant secular
pieces actually do not compose a separate class, since most of these are somehow related to sacred
compositions. The instrumental In nomine and Felix namque compositions were composed upon
sacred cantus firmi, and at least one piece, "Fond youth is a bubble," is a secular contrafactum.
Some of Tallis's Marian motets, especially Gaude Virgo, reflect the hocketed, elaborate polyphony
of the previous century, while the seven-part Miserere, with six parts in canon, and the elaborate
polyphonic imitation of Spem in alium demonstrate the "deep learning" for which both Tallis and
Byrd were famous. The same quality, but in more modern guise, is found in some of the 17 motets
which make up Tallis's contribution to the Cantiones sacrae, a collection he and Byrd published
jointly in 1575 as the first edition appearing under their new royal license.
Clarity of harmony and word setting become more pronounced in Tallis's compositions on English
texts. Here too the transition from ancient to modern style may be traced, as can be seen by
comparing the retrospective "Dorian" Short Service with the brighter and more tuneful anthems
"Heare the voyce and prayer" and "If ye love me."
26）
Christopher Tye
1505-1572
Birth: 1505
Death: 1572
Nationality: English
Occupation: organ player, composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Tye, Christopher, English organist and composer; b. c. 1505; d. c. 1572. In 1536 he received his
Mus.B. from Cambridge, and in 1537 was made lay clerk at King's Coll. there. In 1543 he became
Magister choristarum at Ely Cathedral, and in 1545 he received the D.Mus. degree from the Univ.
of Cambridge. After becoming a deacon and a priest in 1560, he left his position at Ely Cathedral
in 1561; held livings at Doddington-cum-Marche in the Isle of Ely (from 1561), and at Wilbraham
Parva (1564-67) and Newton-cum-capella (1564-70). His son-in-law was Robert White or Whyte.
He described himself as a gentleman of the King's Chapel on the title page of his only publ. work,
The Actes of the Apostles, translated into Englyshe metre to synge and also to play upon the Lute
(London, 1553; it includes the first 14 chapters of the Acts). The hymn tunes Windsor and
Winchester Old are adaptations from this collection. Tye was an important composer of English
church music; he left masses, services, motets, and anthems. The following eds. of his works have
been publ.: R. Weidner, Christopher Tye: The Instrumental Music (New Haven, Conn., 1967), J.
Satterfield, Christopher Tye: The Latin Church Music (Madison, Wisc., 1972), and J. Morehen,
Christopher Tye: The English Sacred Music in Early English Church Music, XIX (1977).
27）
Jacob Arcadelt
1505-1568
Also known as: Jacques Arcadelt
Birth: 1505 in Liege
Death: October 14, 1568 in Paris
Nationality: Flemish
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Arcadelt, Jacob or Jacques, significant Flemish or French composer; b. probably in Liège, c. 1505;
d. Paris, Oct. 14, 1568. He was in the papal service from 1540 to 1551, and also was in the service
of the Duc de Guise in France until about 1562. Many of his works were publ. in his lifetime,
bringing him wide recognition in Italy and France. He was especially known for his secular vocal
music, his 200 madrigals being particularly important in the development of that genre. He also
wrote 126 chansons, 3 masses, 24 motets, and Lamentations. A. Seay ed. his complete works in
Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, XXXI/1-10 (1965-71).
28）
Luis Milán
Also known as: Luis Milan, Luis de Milan
Birth: c. 1500 in Valencia, Spain
Death: c. 1561
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Luis Milán (ca. 1500-ca. 1561) was the earliest Spanish composer to publish a collection of
secular music.
Luis Milán was born of noble parents at Valencia and presumably died there. His Libro de música
de vihuela de mano; Intitulado El Maestro (1535/1536) was the first of the seven vihuela tablature
books published in 16th-century Spain. He also published two other books: a book on parlor
games for gallants and their ladies to play, Libro de motes de damas y caualleros; Intitulado el
juego de mandar (1535), and El Cortesano (1561; The Courtier), an imitation of Baldassare
Castiglione's popular etiquette book, Il Cortegiano (1528).
Like the other Spanish vihuela tablatures, El Maestro purports to be a self-instructing manual, easy
pieces filling book I, hard ones book II. But unlike the others, it contains no transcriptions of other
masters' works, and the top line of the six horizontal lines in the tablature refers to the
highest-pitched course rather than the lowest. Dedicated to the Portuguese king Jo?o III, El
Maestro is the only Spanish tablature that contains any Portuguese songs. In addition it includes
six villancicos (polyphonic songs) and four romances in Spanish and six Italian sonetos. Although
free of religious pieces, El Maestro does end with an elaborate explanation of the church modes in
polyphonic music.
Forty fantasias, four tentos (alternately called fantasias, a word which for Milán means simply
"product of the imagination"), and six pavanes interlard the vocal music in El Maestro. Alternate
settings of ten of the vocal pieces allow the singer to improvise long virtuoso runs between lines
of the text. Milán's pavanes, especially those on Italian lines, are the most transcribed and
performed Spanish vihuela music of the Golden Age.
Milán's El Cortesano (dedicated to Philip II) pictures life a generation earlier at the Valencian
court of Germaine de Foix and her third husband, Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria. In retrospect,
Milán sees himself as arbiter elegantiarum at their polyglot court, where nearly everyone was a
poetaster idling his time in hunts, biting repartee, jests, masquerades, and amorous escapades. Juan
Fernández de Heredia, his defeated rival in one such escapade (described in El Cortesano, 1874
ed.), was the most famous Valencian poet of the time. In return for the snipings scattered through
every day of the six into which El Cortesano is divided, Fernández de Heredia advised Milán to
stick with the only art of which he was a master, vihuela playing (Obras, 1955 ed.). Dance pieces
were his forte, not singing, and as a teacher Milán was guilty of neglect or even cruelty, claimed
Fernández de Heredia.
29）
Nicolas Gombert
1495-1560
Birth: 1495 in Flanders
Death: 1560
Nationality: Flemish
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Gombert, Nicolas, important Flemish composer; b. southern Flanders, possibly between Lille and
St. Omer, c. 1495; d. c. 1560. He was one of the most eminent pupils of Josquin des Prez, on
whose death he composed a funeral dirge. The details of his early life are obscure and uncertain.
The physician Jerome Cardan reported that Gombert violated a boy and was sentenced to the
galleys on the high seas. He is first positively accounted for in 1526, when his name appears on
the list of singers at the court chapel of Charles V that was issued at Granada in that year; the
restless Emperor traveled continually throughout his extensive domain—Spain, Germany, and the
Netherlands—and his retinue was obliged to follow him in his round of his courts at Vienna,
Madrid, and Brussels; Gombert probably was taken into the service of the Emperor on one of the
latter's visits to Brussels. He is first mentioned as “maistre des enffans de la chapelle de nostre sr
empereur” (“master of the boys of the royal chapel”) in a court document dated Jan. 1, 1529; he
remained in the Emperor's employ until 1538-40, during which time he took an active part in the
various functions of the court, composing assiduously. After his retirement from his post in the
royal chapel, he seems to have returned to his native Netherlands (Tournai), and there continued to
compose until his death. He held a canonship at Notre Dame, Courtrai, from June 23, 1537,
without having to take up residence there, and was also a canon at the Cathedral of Tournai from
June 19, 1534. Despite his many trips abroad and the natural influence of the music of other
countries, Gombert remained, stylistically, a Netherlander. The chief feature of his sacred works is
his use of imitation, a principle which he developed to a high state of perfection. The parts are
always in motion, and pauses appear infrequently; when they do occur, they are very short. In his
handling of dissonance he may be regarded as a forerunner of Palestrina. His secular works, of
which the earliest known printed examples (9 4-part chansons) are included in Attaignant's
collection of 1529-49, are characterized by a refreshing simplicity and directness. Gombert's
greatest contributions to the development of 16th-century music lay in his recognizing the
peculiarities of Netherlandish polyphony and his developing and spreading it abroad. His extant
works include 10 masses, over 160 motets, and 70 chansons, many of which appeared in
contemporary (mostly Spanish) lute and guitar arrangements, a fact which shows the great vogue
they had. Gombert's Opera omnia, ed. by J. Schmidt-Gorg, was publ. in Corpus Mensurabilis
Musicae, VI/1-11 (1951-75).
30）
Birth: 1490
Death: September 13, 1562 in Paris, France
Nationality: French
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Sermisy, Claudin or Claude de, significant French composer; b. c. 1490; d. Paris, Sept. 13, 1562.
He served as a cleric at the Saint-Chapelle in Paris in 1508. He also was a singer in the private
chapel of Louis XII, and may have traveled abroad with the King's chapel. After serving as a
canon at Notre-Dame-de-la-Rotonde in Rouen, he went to the parish church of Cambron in the
Amiens diocese in 1524. In 1532 he returned to Paris as sous-ma?tre at the royal chapel, and also
held the eleventh canonry of the Saint-Chapelle from 1533. He was an outstanding composer of
both sacred and secular music. A number of his chansons, masses, and motets were publ. in
contemporary collections. G. Allaire and I. Cazeaux ed. a complete collection of his works in
Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, LXII/1 (1970-74).
31）
Pierre Passereau
Nationality: French
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Passereau, Pierre, French composer who flourished in the first half of the 16th century. He was
chapel singer to the Duke of Angoulême, and later of later Francis I. Twenty-three of his chansons
were publ. in contemporary anthologies (1533-47). G. Dottin ed. his complete works (1967).
32）
c.1485–1558, French composer, famous for his descriptive four-part chansons about birds, battles,
hunts, and other subjects. He also composed motets and spiritual chansons.
Birth: 1485 in Chatellerault
Death: 1558 in Paris, France
Nationality: French
Occupation: composer
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Janequin (Jannequin), Clément, important French composer; b. Chatellerault, c. 1485; d. Paris,
1558. He is first mentioned as a clerc in the service of Lancelot du Fau, a man of the court and
church, in 1505. His patron became Bishop of Lu?on in 1515, and he appears to have remained in
the bishop's service until 1523, at which time he entered the service of Jean de Foix, bishop of
Bordeaux. Having become a priest, he received several minor prebends there. He became canon of
St. Emilion in 1525, then procureur des ames there in 1526. He was named curé of St. Michel de
Rieufret in 1526, then of St. Jean de Mezos in 1530, and also doyen of Garosse that same year.
With the death of his patron in 1529, he lost his prebends. However, he had become known as a
composer through Pierre Attaingnant's publication of some of his chansons. Janequin served as
master of the choirboys at Auch Cathedral in 1531, then was made curé of Avrille in 1533; he was
also ma?tre de chapelle of Angers Cathedral (1534-37), and subsequently curé of Unverre. In 1549
he settled in Paris, being listed as a student at the Univ. He wrote a chanson on the siege of Metz,
which brought him the honorary title of chapelain to the Duc de Guise. He later was made chantre
ordinaire du roi and then compositeur ordinaire du roi. Janequin was an outstanding composer of
chanso
ns and chansons spirituelles, of which more than 400 are extant. His mastery is evidenced both in
his brief and witty settings and in those more lengthy and programmatic. Among his finest are Le
Chant des oiseaux, La Chasse, Les Cris de Paris, and his most celebrated work, La Bataille, most
likely written to commemorate the battle of Marignano. Pierre Attaingnant publ. several of his
chansons between the 1520s and the 1530s; others appeared in various collections of the time. A.
Merritt and F. Lesure ed. Clément Janequin (c. 1485-1558): Chansons polyphoniques (Monaco,
1965-71).
WORKS
Works
MASSES Missa super “L'Aveuglé Dieu,” Missae duodecim (Paris, 1554); Missa super “La
Bataille” (1532). MOTETS Attaingnant is believed to have publ. a vol. of his motets in Paris in
1533; however, no copy of the vol. has been found. The motet Congregati sunt (1538) is extant.
PSALMS AND CHANSONS SPIRITUELLES Premier livre contenant XXVIII pseaulmes de
David... for 4 Voices (Paris, 1549); Premier livre contenant plusieurs chansons spirituelles, avec
les lamentations de Jeremie (Paris, 1556); Proverbes de Salomon... for 4 Voices (Paris, 1558);
Octante deux pseaumes de David... for 4 Voices (Paris, 1559).
33）
Juan del Encina
Birth: 1468 in Encina, Salamanca, Spain
Death: 1529?
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: dramatist, composer, poet, playwright, musician, singer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Juan del Encina (1468-1529) is called the father of Spanish drama. He was also the foremost
Spanish musical composer of his time.
The original name of Juan del Encina was Fermoselle, but he adopted the name of his probable
birthplace, a small village in the province of Salamanca. In all likelihood Encina studied at the
University of Salamanca under Antonio de Nebrija, the foremost Spanish humanist of his time. He
then entered the service of the Duke of Alba, in whose palace of Alba de Tormes he discharged the
multiple functions of playwright, poet, composer, and musician for 7 years. Encina published his
Cancionero (a collection of plays and villancicos, or polyphonic songs) in Salamanca in 1496;
other works were added to this collection in later editions.
Encina went to Rome in 1498, where he entered the papal chapel and eventually became singer to
Leo X. During this time Encina continued to write plays. While in Rome he obtained several
ecclesiastical benefices in Spain, and in 1510 and 1513 he was in Málaga as archdeacon and canon.
He had obtained, however, papal dispensation to collect his benefices without discharging his
duties.
In 1519, aged 50, Encina took holy orders and went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he
described in his poem La Trivagia. He celebrated his first Mass in Jerusalem. Encina returned to
Spain as prior of León, where he resided from 1523 until his death.
As a poet, Encina was most successful in brief, lyrical pieces, which he set to music himself; his
romances were also more lyrical than narrative. His great popularity as a composer is attested to
by the fact that 61 of his villancicos were collected in the Cancionero musical de Palacio (ca.
1500). As a playwright, Encina brought to their final development the theatrical forms derived
from medieval liturgical drama. He inaugurated Renaissance drama in Spain. His early dramas
(such as Egloga de las grandes lluvias) were Nativity plays, with rustic shepherds as protagonists.
His later plays (such as Egloga de Plácida y Vitoriano) were Italianate in spirit, much longer, and
complicated in form. His shepherds were now of classical inspiration. The joy of life he sang
about in his later plays was almost neopagan in its exuberance.
34）
Johannes Ockeghem
1410-1497
Also known as: Johannes Okeghem, Johannes Okengheim, Johannes Ockenheim, Jean Ockeghem
Birth: 1410
Death: February 06, 1497 in Tours
Nationality: Flemish
Occupation: composer
Source: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians?, Centennial Edition. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Editor Emeritus. Schirmer, 2001.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Ockeghem (Okeghem, Okengheim, Ockenheim, etc.), Johannes (Jean, Jehan de), great Flemish
composer; b. c. 1410; d. probably in Tours, Feb. 6, 1497. He may have been a pupil of Binchois.
He is first listed among the vicaires-chanteurs at Notre Dame in Antwerp on June 24, 1443, and
served there until 1444. By 1446 he was in the service of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, in Moulins,
remaining there until at least 1448. By 1452 he was in the service of Charles VII of France as first
among the singer-chaplains who were non-priests; by 1454 he was premier chapelain. He
subsequently served Louis XI and Charles VIII, and in 1459 the latter made him treasurer of the
church of St. Martin-de-Tours. Under Louis XI, he also was a canon at Notre Dame in Paris from
1463 to 1470. He likewise was a chaplain at St. Benoit. In Jan. 1470 he traveled to Spain at the
King's expense. In 1484 he journeyed to Bruges and Dammes. Upon his death, Guillaume Cretin
wrote a poetic “Deploration,” and Josquin Des Prez and Lupi composed musical epitaphs. With
his contemporaries Dufay and Josquin, Ockeghem ranks among the foremost masters of the
Franco-Flemish style of composition in the second half of the 15th century. Among his settings of
the Mass is the earliest extant polyphonic Requiem. The inventiveness displayed in his masses is
only excelled in his superb motets. His achievements in the art of imitative counterpoint
unquestionably make his music a milestone on the way to the a cappella style of the coming
generations. A major ed. of his works is found in D. Plamenac, editor, J. Ockeghem: S?mtliche
Werke, in the Publikationen Alterer Musik, Jg. I/2 (Leipzig, 1927), which contains eight masses; a
second ed., rev., 1959, was publ. as Masses I-VIII in J. Ockeghem: Collected Works, I (N.Y.);
Masses and Mass Sections IX-XVI appeared in the same ed. as vol. II (N.Y., 1947; 2nd ed., 1966).
35）
Guillaume Dufay
Also known as: Guillaume Du Fay, Willem Du Fayt
Birth: c. 1400 in Hainaut, Belgium
Death: November 27, 1474 in Cambrai, Belgium
Occupation: composer
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The works of the Netherlandish composer Guillaume Dufay (ca. 1400-1474) marked the
beginning of the Renaissance and influenced the course of music during the 15th and 16th
centuries.
Born probably in the province of Hainaut in what is now Belgium, Guillaume Dufay received his
musical training at the cathedral school of Cambrai under Nicholas Malin and Richard Loqueville
(1409-ca. 1419). One of Loqueville's three-voice works is preserved in a four-voice arrangement
by Dufay. Cambrai was famous for its cathedral school and for its bishop, Pierre d'Ailly, one of the
more influential figures in the Church at this time, who was also chancellor of the University of
Paris. Dufay may have been in his retinue during the bishop's stay at the Council of Constance
(1414-1418).
This gathering of churchmen from all over Europe may have been the occasion of Dufay's
introduction to his first Italian patrons, the Malatesta family. He was in Rimini at the court of the
Malatestas in 1419/1420; the works he wrote for members of the family date from this time until
1426.
Between 1426 and 1428 Dufay was in Cambrai. A chanson, Adieu ces bon vins de Lannoys, dated
1426 in a contemporary manuscript, may indicate a stay in Laon, a city in which he would hold
two benefices in 1430. In 1428 he went to Italy to become a member of the papal chapel, where he
remained until 1433. After 2 years in Savoy and Cambrai, Dufay returned to serve in the papal
chapel until 1437. During this period his name moves from ninth to first position in the lists of
singers.
In his remaining years Dufay's activities can be traced only with difficulty. He is known to have
spent much of this time in Cambrai, especially after 1445. According to his will, he also spent at
least 5 more years at the court of Savoy. The duchy of Savoy under Louis and his wife, Anne of
Cyprus, boasted one of the best chapels in Europe. It appears that during Dufay's later stay in
Savoy he received a degree in law from the University of Turin. An incomplete motet, Juvenis qui
puellam, jokingly portrays the disputation required of a degree candidate.
Dufay became a canon at St. Waltrudis in Mons in 1446, having also received a canonicate in
Cambrai in 1436. At St. Waltrudis he met the composer Gilles Binchois, who was a canon there.
Dufay also had some connection with the Burgundian court in this period since he is named as a
member of the chapel of the Duke of Burgundy in a document that is not, however, from that court.
The title may have been an honorary one since Dufay's presence there cannot be documented.
The last 30 years of Dufay's life were centered on the Cathedral at Cambrai. Archival documents
from the Cathedral contain references to the copying of his music and, on at least one occasion, to
the payment to him of 60 écus for having enriched the services with his music. His fame was
widespread; for example, in 1458 he was invited to Besan?on to arbitrate a dispute over the mode
of an antiphon, and later Piero de' Medici referred to Dufay as the ornament of his age. He died in
Cambrai on Nov. 27, 1474.
Dufay's will, which is preserved, indicates that he achieved considerable material success in life.
He made bequests of artworks, music books, and money to various individuals and institutions,
including the bequest of four music books to Charles the Bold of Burgundy. He also requested the
performance of some of his own music in his last hour and for his last rites. The motet he specified,
Ave Regina caelorum, is preserved and has, in addition to the traditional text, a plea for "mercy on
thy dying Dufay," indicating that he probably composed it for this purpose. The Requiem Mass he
asked to have performed is the earliest polyphonic setting of this service; it has not been
preserved.
Dufay achieved a synthesis of the different national styles of the early 15th century. His earliest
works are naturally French in nature, but those written in the 1420s show the strong impression
the flowing vocal lines of Italian music made on the young composer. This is especially true in his
setting of Petrarch's Vergine bella. The works of the late 1420s and 1430s give evidence of
possible contact with English music and its "sweet sound" of thirds, sixths, and full triads. This
mature style is the beginning of the international style of the Renaissance, and it is the music that
the theorist Johannes Tinctoris (ca. 1476) calls the "new art ... whose fount and origin is held to be
among the English, of whom Dunstable stood forth as chief. Contemporary with him in France
were Dufay and Binchois, to whom directly succeeded the moderns Ockeghem, Busnois, Regis
and Caron." The poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des dames (1441-1442) writes that
Dufay "has taken the English countenance and follows Dunstable."
More than 200 compositions by Dufay have been preserved. These include all genres common at
the time: Mass Ordinaries, both individual movements and cycles, Mass Propers, motets, and
minor liturgical works, as well as French chansons and settings of Italian texts. He used the older
isorhythmic technique, but only for festival motets where this older technique would carry a
certain connotation suitable to the occasion. He was among the earliest Continental composers to
compose cyclic Mass Ordinaries and one of the first to use a secular cantus firmus (in the Mass Se
la face ay pale). He also composed a cycle of hymns for the Church year. In these works one finds
the "sweet sound" of thirds, sixths, and full triads and classic examples of fauxbourdon. His
chansons, datable in all periods of his creative life, show the changes in style taking place in the
15th century; changes in conception of melody, harmony, and metric flow gradually occur from
the earliest to the latest of these works. His style, a fusion of features of French, Italian, and
English music of the 1420s, becomes the starting point for composers whose line extends into the
16th century.