French composer of the Renaissance Jean Mouton was famous at his time for his motets, which are among the most refined of the time. His another important deed - he was the teacher of Adrian Willaert, one of the founders of the Venetian School. He probably was born in 1459 or earlier from the village Holluigue, near Boulogne-sur-Mer. Jean Mouton was hugely influential both as a composer and as a teacher. Of his music, 15 masses, 20 chansons, and over 100 motets survive; since he was a court composer for a king. The survival rate of his music is relatively high for the period. We know, that it was widely distributed, copied, and archived. In addition, the famous publisher Ottaviano Petrucci printed an entire volume of Mouton’s masses. Mouton was a fine musical craftsman throughout his life, highly regarded by his contemporaries and much in demand by his royal patrons. His music was reprinted and continued to attract other composers even later in the 16th century. Several later composers used his music as the basis for masses.
He probably began his first job, singer and teacher at the collegiate church in Nesle , near Amiens in 1477, and in 1483 was already made maître de chapelle there. Sometime around this time he became a priest, and in 1500 he was in charge of choirboys at the cathedral in Amiens. In 1501 he was in Grenoble, teaching choirboys, but he left the next year, most likely entering the service of Queen Anne of Brittany, and in 1509 he was granted a position again in Grenoble which he could hold in absentia. Mouton was now the principal composer for the French court. For the remainder of his life he was employed by the French court in one capacity or another, often writing music for state occasions–weddings, coronations, papal elections, births and deaths.
Mouton composed a motet for the election of Leo X as pope in 1513. Leo evidently liked Mouton’s music, for he rewarded him with an honorary title on the occasion of a motet he composed for the pope in 1515; the pope made this award during a meeting in Bologna between the French king and the pope after the Battle of Marignano. This trip to Italy was the first, and probably only trip that Mouton made outside of France. Sometime between 1517 and 1522 the Swiss music theorist Heinrich Glarean met Jean Mouton, and praised him effusively; he wrote that everyone had copies of his music.
Mouton may have been the editor of the illuminated manuscript known as the Medici Codex, one of the primary manuscript sources of the time, which was a wedding gift for Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was Duke of Urbino. It is considered to be very likely, but not proven, that Mouton was in charge of the elaborate musical festivities by the French at the meeting between François I and Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, based on the similarity to the similar festivities five years earlier after the Battle of Marignano. Near the end of his life, Mouton moved to St. Quentin, where he may have been a canon, taking over for Loyset Compère who died in 1518. Mouton died in October 1522 in St. Quentin and was buried there.
Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance Heinrich Isaac is regarded as one of the most significant contemporaries of Josquin des Prez. Little is known about Isaac’s early life or even his real name, but it is probable that he was born in Flanders around 1450. The influence of Isaac was especially profound in Germany, since he was the first significant master of the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style who both lived there, and whose music was widely distributed there.
Isaac composed a wide variety of music, including masses, motets, German and Italian songs and instrumental music. He was one of the most prolific composers of his time, but his work has been largely neglected in favor of Josquin . Some of his melodies were later used by Johann Sebastian Bach and Johannes Brahms. His huge anthology of over 450 chant-based polyphonic motets for the Proper of the Mass remain some of the finest examples of chant-based Renaissance polyphony in existence.
He was writing music by the mid 1470s, and the first documentary reference to him is from 1484, when he was court composer at Innsbruck. The following year, he entered the service of Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence, where he was organist, choir master, and teacher to Lorenzo’s children. One of his students in Florence was the future Pope Leo X.
In 1494, the Medici were banished from Florence. The era of Savonarola was beginning, and Isaac was left to find employment elsewhere. However, he had married a Florentine and maintained a household there throughout the remainder of his life. By 1497, Isaac was in the employ of Emperor Maximilian I. He travelled widely in Germany, and is credited with having a big influence on German composers of the time. In 1502, he returned to Italy, going to Florence and then Ferrara, where he competed with Josquin for employment. There is a famous letter from the agent of the d’Este family comparing the two composers. It said the following “Isaac is of a better nature than Josquin, and while it is true that Josquin is a better composer, he only composes when he wants to, and not when asked; Isaac will compose when you want him to.” Still this recommendation did not help him get a job. In the end Isaac returned to Florence in 1514, and died there in 1517.
Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance Josquin des Pres, or simply Josquin was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime. During the 16th century, Josquin gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. Josquin wrote in all of the important forms current at the time, including masses, motets, chansons, and frottole. He even contributed to the development of a new form, the motet-chanson, of which he left at least three examples. In addition, some of his pieces were probably intended for instrumental performance. Writers such as Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame; theorists such as Heinrich Glarean and Gioseffo Zarlino held his style as that best representing perfection. He was so admired that many anonymous compositions were attributed to him by copyists, probably to increase their sales. Hundreds of works are attributed to him. After the advent of modern analytical scholarship some of these mistaken attributions have been challenged, on the basis of stylistic features and manuscript evidence. Yet in spite of Josquin’s colossal reputation, which endured until the beginning of the Baroque era, and was revived in the 20th century, we know practically nothing about his personality. The only surviving work which may be in his own hand is a graffito on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, and only one contemporary mention of his character is known, in a letter to Duke Ercole I of Ferrara. The lives of dozens of minor composers of the Renaissance are better documented than the life of Josquin. Josquin wrote both sacred and secular music, and during the 16th century, he was praised for both his supreme melodic gift and his use of ingenious technical devices. In modern times, scholars have attempted to ascertain the basic details of his biography, and have tried to define the key characteristics of his style to correct misattributions, a task that has proved difficult. Josquin liked to solve compositional problems in different ways in successive compositions. Sometimes, he wrote in an austere style devoid of ornamentation, and at other times he wrote music requiring considerable virtuosity.
Josquin lived during a transitional stage in music history. Musical styles were changing rapidly, in part due to the movement of musicians between different regions of Europe. Many northern musicians moved to Italy, the heart of the Renaissance, attracted by the Italian nobility’s patronage of the arts; while in Italy, these composers were influenced by the native Italian styles, and often brought those ideas with them back to their homelands. Indeed Josquin who created for fifty productive years was to be the leading figure in this musical process, which eventually resulted in the formation of an international musical language. While other composers were influential on the development of Josquin’s style, especially in the late 15th century, he himself became the most influential composer in Europe, especially after the development of music printing, which was concurrent with the years of his maturity and peak output. This event made his influence even more decisive than it might otherwise have been.
Little is known for certain of Josquin’s early life. Much is inferential and speculative, though numerous clues have emerged from his works and the writings of contemporary composers, theorists, and writers of the next several generations. Josquin was born in the area controlled by the Dukes of Burgundy, and was possibly born either in modern-day Belgium, or immediately across the border in modern-day France, since several times in his life he was classified legally as a Frenchman. More recent scholarship has shown that Josquin des Prez was born around 1450 or a few years later.
According to an account made by a librarian of Cardinal Richelieu in 1633, who used the records of the collegiate church of Saint-Quentin, Josquin became a choirboy at Saint-Quentin, probably around 1460, and was in charge of its music. He may have studied counterpoint under Ockeghem, whom he greatly admired throughout his life. All records from Saint-Quentin were destroyed in 1669. However the cathedral there was a center of music-making for the entire area, and in addition was an important center of royal patronage. Both Jean Mouton and Loyset Compère were buried there, and it is certainly possible that Josquin acquired his later connections with the French royal chapel through early experiences at Saint-Quentin.
The first definite record of his employment is dated April 19, 1477. It shows that he was a singer at the chapel of René, Duke of Anjou, in Aix-en-Provence. He remained there at least until 1478. No certain records of his movements exist for the period from March 1478 until 1483, but if he remained in the employ of René he would have transferred to Paris in 1481 along with the rest of the chapel. One of Josquin’s early motets suggests a direct connection with Louis XI, who was king during this time. In 1483 Josquin returned to Condé to claim his inheritance from his aunt and uncle, who may have been killed by the army of Louis XI in May 1478, when they besieged the town, locked the population into the church, and burned them alive.
The period of 1480 to 1482 has puzzled biographers: some contradictory evidence exists, suggesting either that Josquin was still in France, or was already in the service of the Sforza family, specifically with Ascanio Sforza, who resided temporarily in Ferrara or Naples. Alternatively it has been suggested that Josquin spent some of that time in Hungary, based on a mid 16th century Roman document describing the Hungarian court in those years, and including Josquin as one of the musicians present. In either 1483 or 1484 Josquin is known to have been in the service of the Sforza family in Milan. While in their employ, he made one or more trips to Rome, and possibly also to Paris.
From 1489 to 1495 Josquin was a member of the papal choir, first under Pope Innocent VIII, and later under the Borgia pope Alexander VI. He may have been the one who carved his name into the wall of the Sistine Chapel; a “JOSQUINJ” was recently revealed by workers restoring the chapel. Since it was traditional for singers to carve their names into the walls, and hundreds of names were inscribed there during the period from the 15th to the 18th centuries, it is considered highly likely that the graffiti is by Josquin – and if so, it would be his only surviving autograph.
Josquin’s mature style evolved during this period; as in Milan he had absorbed the influence of light Italian secular music, in Rome he refined his techniques of sacred music. Several of his motets have been dated to the years he spent at the papal chapel.Around 1498 Josquin most likely re-entered the service of the Sforza family. He probably did not stay in Milan long, for in 1499 Louis XII captured Milan in his invasion of northern Italy and imprisoned Josquin’s former employers. Around this time Josquin most likely returned to France, although documented details of his career around the turn of the century are lacking.
Some of Josquin’s compositions have been tentatively dated to the period around 1500 when he was in France. One of his motets was composed as a gentle reminder to the king to keep his promise of a benefice to Josquin, which he had forgotten to keep. According to contemporaries, it worked: the court applauded, and the king gave Josquin his benefice. Upon receiving it, Josquin reportedly wrote another motet to show his gratitude to the king. Josquin probably remained in the service of Louis XII until 1503, when Duke Ercole I of Ferrara hired him for the chapel there. One of the rare mentions of Josquin’s personality survives from this time. Prior to hiring Josquin, one of Duke Ercole’s assistants recommended that he hire Heinrich Isaac instead, since Isaac was easier to get along with, more companionable, was more willing to compose on demand, and would cost significantly only 120 ducats, while Josquin services would cost 200. Ercole, however, chose Josquin.While in Ferrara, Josquin wrote some of his most famous compositions, which became one of the most widely-distributed motets of the 16th century. Josquin did not stay in Ferrara long. An outbreak of the plague in the summer of 1503 prompted the evacuation of the Duke and his family, as well as two thirds of the citizens, and Josquin left by April of the next year, possibly also to escape the plague. His replacement, Jacob Obrecht, died of the plague in the summer of 1505.
Josquin went directly from Ferrara to his home region of Condé-sur-l’Escaut, southeast of Lille on the present-day border between Belgium and France, becoming provost of the collegiate church of Notre-Dame on May 3, 1504, a large musical establishment that he headed for the rest of his life.
During the last two decades of his life, Josquin’s fame spread abroad along with his music. The newly-developed technology of printing made wide dissemination of his music possible, and Josquin was the favorite of the first printers In fact, the earliest surviving print of music by a single composer, was a book of Josquin’s masses which he printed in Venice in 1502. This publication was successful enough that Italian printers published two further volumes of Josquin’s masses, in 1504 and 1514, and reissued them several times.
On his death-bed Josquin asked that he be listed on the rolls as a foreigner, so that his property would not pass to the Lords and Ladies of Condé. This bit of evidence has been used to show that he was French by birth. Additionally, he left an endowment for the performance of his late motet at all general processions in the town when they passed in front of his house, stopping to place a wafer on the marketplace altar to the Holy Virgin. This motet may have been his last work.
Jacob Obrecht was the most famous composer of Masses in Europe in the late 15th century, and in addition wrote many motets and songs. He was Flemish, and was born in either 1457 or 1458, the only son of Ghent city trumpeter Willem Obrecht. His mother died young, when she was only 20 . I found out that scientists managed to establish his age with the help of a portrait painted in 1496, that says that on that picture he is thirty eight years old.
He likely learned to play the trumpet, like his father, and in so doing learned the art of counterpoint and improvisation. Most likely he knew another famous Flemish composer Antoine Busnois at the Burgundian court. At any rate he certainly knew his music, since his earliest mass shows close stylistic parallels with the elder composer.
Obrecht seems to have had a succession of short appointments, many of which ended in less than ideal circumstances. At least twice he was in trouble for financial irregularities, more likely from careless bookkeeping than anything else, and there is one interesting record of his covering a shortfall in his accounts by a donation of his compositions to his employer. Throughout the period, though as an employee he may have been undesirable, he was held in the highest respect both by his patrons and by the composers who were his peers. In Italy he was mentioned in the list of master composers of the day, although he was only twenty five years old.
While most of Obrecht’s appointments were in Flanders in the Netherlands, he made at least two trips to Italy, once in 1487 at the invitation of Duke of Ferrara, and again in 1505. Duke had heard Obrecht’s music, which is known to have circulated in Italy at the time and said that he appreciated it above the music of all other contemporary composers; consequently he invited Obrecht to Ferrara for six months in 1487.
In 1504 Obrecht once again went to Ferrara, but on the death of the Duke at the beginning of the next year he became unemployed. In what capacity he stayed in Ferrara is unknown, but he died in the outbreak of plague there just before August 1, 1505.
For his source material he clearly preferred the popular chansons of the day. While it may seem strange to a modern listener that a composer would build a sacred composition upon fragments of secular, even profane popular songs, this procedure was neither considered improper nor even particularly irreverent at the time. Though he was renowned in his time, Obrecht had little influence on subsequent generations. Most likely he simply went out of fashion.
Alexander Agricola was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was a renowned composer in the years around 1500, and his music was widely distributed throughout Europe. He composed music in all of the important sacred and secular styles of the time and he was a prominent member of the Grande chapelle, the Habsburg musical establishment.
We at the web analytics company found practically nothing about his early life. His place of birth remains unknown as well. As you may have noticed, this is common with composers of that period. He may have been born in 1445 or 1446 in present-day Germany, since he is referred to in some Italian documents as d’Allemagno or d’Allemagna. He spent most of his life in posts in Italy, France and the Low Countries, though there are gaps where his activities are not known, and he seems to have left many of his posts without permission. He was a singer for Duke Sforza of Milan from 1471 to 1474, during the period when the Milanese chapel choir grew into one of the largest and most famous ensembles in Europe. Other famous Renaissance composers such as Loyset Compère, Johannes Martini, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and several other composer-singers were also in Milan during those years.
In 1474 Duke Sforza wrote a letter of recommendation for him to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Agricola went to Florence. In 1476 he is known to have been in Cambrai, in the Low Countries, where he probably was employed as a singer. For the long period from 1476 to 1491 we again know nothing definite except that he spent part of the time in the French royal chapel, and he must have been building his reputation as a composer during this time, for he was much in demand in the 1490s, with France and Naples competing for his services. In 1500 he took a position with Philip the Handsome, who was Duke of Burgundy and King of Castile. He apparently accompanied the Duke on his travels through his empire; by this time he was one of the most esteemed composers in Europe. He was in Valladolid, Spain, in August 1506, where he died during an outbreak of the plague on August 15 of that year.
Loyset Compère was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italian Renaissance style to France. Compère had a gift for melody, and many of his chansons became popular. Later composers even used several of them for masses. His chansons are his most characteristic compositions, and many scholars of Renaissance music consider them to be his best work.
Many of Compère’s compositions were printed and disseminated widely. Their availability contributed to their popularity. Our company’s chief Web Analyst told me that Compère was one of the first composers to benefit from the new technology of printing, which had a profound impact on the spread of the Franco-Flemish musical style throughout Europe.
He was probably born around 1445. His exact place of birth is not known, but documents of the time assign him to a family from the province of Artois in France, and suggest he may have been born in Hainaut . Some sources indicate that he described himself as coming from Arras, also in Artois. One can’t help to notice, that the area around the current French-Belgian border produced an astonishing number of excellent composers in the 15th and 16th centuries, whose fame spread throughout Europe. Often they are known as the Franco-Flemish, or as the Dutch School.
In the 1470s Compère worked as a singer in Milan at the chapel of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The chapel choir in the early 1470s grew into one of the largest and most famous singing ensembles in Europe. After the murder of the duke in 1476, Compère appears to lose his job in the chapel, and he may have returned to France at this time. During the next ten years he began to work at the French court, and he accompanied Charles VIII on his invasion of Italy in 1494. We find his traces in Rome in 1495 during the occupation of the city by Charles and his army. Next he had a series of church positions. By 1498 Compère was at Cambrai, and from 1500 to around 1504 he was at Douai; his final appointment was at a church in St Quentin. Throughout this time he seems to have been in part-time service to the French court, as evidenced by his many compositions for official and ceremonial occasions. Contemporaries mention that he died at St Quentin in August 16, 1518.
Unlike his contemporaries, Compère seems to have written few masses. By temperament he seems to have been a miniaturist, and his most popular and numerous works were in the shorter forms of the day—primarily chansons and motets. Two stylistic trends are evident in his music: the style of the Burgundian School, and the lighter style of the Italian composers current at the time. Compère wrote several works in a unique form, sometimes called a free motet, which combines some of the light elegance of the Italian popular song of the time with the technique of the Netherlanders. His choice of secular texts tended towards the irreverent and suggestive.
Johannes Ockeghem was one of the most famous composers in Europe in the latter half of the 15th century. Very few of his works have survived. Yet we know, that Ockeghem was famous throughout Europe for his expressive music and his technical mastery. Being a renowned bass singer himself, his use of wide-ranging and rhythmically active bass lines sets him apart from many of the other composers in the Netherlandish Schools.
Recent research has shown that Ockeghem was born in the town of Saint-Ghislain. The birthdate of Ockeghem is controversial, and dates as early as 1410, and as late as 1430 have been proposed. The comment by the poet Guillaume Crétin, in the lament he wrote on Ockeghem’s death in 1497, “it was a great shame that a composer of his talents should die before 100 years old”, is also often taken as evidence for the earlier date.
Details of his early life are lacking. Like many composers in this period, he started his musical career as chorister, and the first record of his musical activity comes from the cathedral of Notre Dame in Antwerp, where he was employed in 1443 and 1444. Between 1446 and 1448 he served Charles, Duke of Bourbon, in Moulins, France. Around 1452 he moved to Paris where he served as maestro di cappella to the French court, as well as treasurer to the St. Martin cathedral in Tours. In addition to serving at the French court for kings Charles VII and Louis XI, he held posts at Notre Dame Cathedral and St. Benoît. He is known to have traveled to Spain in 1470, as part of a diplomatic mission, which was an attempt to arrange a marriage between Isabella of Castile and Charles, Duke of Guyenne, the brother of king Louis XI. After the death of Louis XI in 1483, not much is known for certain about Ockeghem’s whereabouts, though it is known that he went to Bruges and Tours, and he probably died in the latter town in February 6, 1497, since he left a will there.
Ockeghem probably studied with Gilles Binchois, and at the very least was closely associated with him at the Burgundian court. Since Antoine Busnois wrote a motet in honor of Ockeghem sometime before 1467, and writers of the time often link Dufay, Busnois and Ockeghem. Although Ockeghem’s musical style differs considerably from that of the older generation, it is probable that he acquired his basic technique from them, and as such can be seen as a direct link from the Burgundian style to the next generation of Netherlanders, such as Obrecht and Josquin.
Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. He was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the 15th century.
His music was copied, distributed and sung everywhere. Almost all composers of the succeeding generations absorbed some elements of his style. The wide distribution of his music is all the more impressive considering that he died in November 27, 1674, several decades before the availability of music printing.
Dufay was not an innovator, with the exception of a few late works, and wrote within a stable tradition. He was one of the last composers to make use of medieval techniques, but one of the first to use the harmonies, phrasing and expressive melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance. During the 15th century he was universally regarded as the greatest composer of the time, and that belief has largely persisted to the present day.
From the evidence of his will, he was probably born around 1397 in the vicinity of Brussels. He was the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt. Marie moved with her son to Cambrai early in his life, staying with a relative who was a canon of the cathedral there. Soon Dufay’s musical gifts were noticed by the cathedral authorities, who evidently gave him a thorough training in music. Authorities must have been impressed with the boy’s gifts because they gave him his own copy of Villedieu’s Doctrinale in 1411, a highly unusual event for one so young. In June 1414, at the age of only 16, he had already been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, immediately adjacent to Cambrai.
In 1420 he left Cambrai for Rimini, and possibly Pesaro, where he worked for the Malatesta family. Although no records survive of his employment there, several compositions of his can be dated to this period; they contain references which make a residence in Italy reasonably certain. It was there that he met the composers Hugo and Arnold de Lantins, who were among the musicians of the Malatesta household. In 1424 Dufay returned to Cambrai, this time because of the illness and subsequent death of the relative with whom his mother was staying. By 1426, however, he had gone back to Italy, this time to Bologna, where he entered the service of Cardinal Louis Aleman, the papal legate. While in Bologna he became a deacon, and by 1428 he was a priest. In 1428, and Dufay left his position at this time, going to Rome. He became a member of the Papal Choir, serving first Pope Martin V, and then after his death in 1431, Pope Eugene IV. In 1434 he was appointed maistre de chappelle in Savoy, where he served Duke Amédée VIII. Yet in 1435 he was again in the service of the papal chapel, but this time it was in Florence — Pope Eugene having been driven from Rome in 1434 by the establishment of an insurrectionary republic there, sympathetic to the Council of Basel and the Conciliar movement. In 1436 Dufay composed the festive motet Nuper rosarum flores, one of his most famous compositions, which was sung at the dedication of Brunelleschi’s dome of the cathedral in Florence, where Eugene lived in exile.
During this period Dufay also began his long association with the d’Este family in Ferrara, some of the most important musical patrons of the Renaissance, and with which he probably had become acquainted during the days of his association with the Malatesta family; Rimini and Ferrara families were related by marriage, and Dufay composed at least one ballade for Niccolò III, Marquis of Ferrara. In 1437 Dufay visited the town. When Niccolò died in 1441, the next Marquis maintained the contact with Dufay, and not only continued financial support for the composer but copied and distributed some of his music.
The struggle between the papacy and the Council of Basel continued through the 1430s, and evidently Dufay realized that his own position might be threatened by the spreading conflict. At this time Dufay returned to his homeland, arriving in Cambrai by December of that year. In order to be a canon at Cambrai, he needed a law degree, which he obtained in 1437. He may have studied at Turin University in 1436. One of the first documents mentioning him in Cambrai is dated December 27, 1440, when he received a delivery of 36 lots of wine for the feast of St. John the Evangelist; how long it took to drink them is not known.
Dufay was to remain in Cambrai through the 1440s, and during this time he was also in the service of the Duke of Burgundy. In addition to his musical work, he was active in the general administration of the cathedral. In 1444 his mother died, and was buried in the cathedral. In 1445 Dufay moved into the house of the previous canon, which was to remain his primary residence for the rest of his life.
After the abdication of the last antipope, the struggle between different factions within the Church began to heal, and Dufay once again left Cambrai for points south. This time he did not return to Cambrai for six years, and during that time he attempted to find either a benefice or an employment which would allow him to stay in Italy. Numerous compositions, including one of the four Lamentationes that he composed on the fall of Constantinople in 1453, his famous mass, as well as a letter to Lorenzo Medici, survive from this period. He was unable to find a satisfactory position for his retirement and returned north in 1458. While in Savoy he served more-or-less officially as choirmaster for Louis of Savoy, but he was more likely in a ceremonial role, since the records of the chapel never mention him.
When he returned to Cambrai for his final years, he was appointed canon of the cathedral. He was now the most renowned composer in Europe. Once again he established close ties to the court of Burgundy, and continued to compose music for them.
After an illness of several weeks, Dufay died on November 27, 1474. Dufay was buried in the chapel of St. Etienne in the cathedral of Cambrai; his portrait was carved onto his tombstone. After the destruction of the cathedral the tombstone was lost, but it was found in 1859, as a stone that was used to cover a well, and is now in a museum in Lille.
Antoine Busnois was a French composer and poet of the early Renaissance Burgundian School. While also noted as a composer of sacred music, such as motets, he was one of the most renowned 15th-century composers of secular chansons.
We don’t know much about his life. He was probably born around 1430, in the vicinity of Béthune in the Pas de Calais. He may have been related to the aristocratic family of Busnes He clearly received an excellent musical education. An aristocratic origin may explain his early association with the French royal court: references to him appear there, and in 1461 he was a chaplain at Tours. He was not entirely a man of peace. This is indicated by a petition for absolution he filed in Tours, in which he admitted to being part of a group that beat up a priest, “to the point of bloodshed”, not one but five times. While in a state of anathema he was foolhardy enough to celebrate mass, an act which got him excommunicated; however Pope Pius II pardoned him.
He moved from the cathedral to the collegiate church of St. Martin, also in Tours, where he became a subdeacon in 1465. Johannes Another famous composer Ockeghem was treasurer at that institution, and the they seem to have known each other well. Later in 1465 Busnois moved to Poitiers, where he not only became master of the choirboys, but managed to attract a flood of talented singers from the entire region; by this time his reputation as singing teacher, scholar, and composer seems to have spread widely. However he departed just as suddenly as he came, in 1466 and moved to Burgundy.
By 1467 Busnois was at the court of Burgundy, and he had begun composing for them immediately before the accession of Charles to the title of Duke. Charles, on becoming Duke of Burgundy, quickly became known as Charles the Bold, for his fierce and sometimes reckless military ambitions, that got him killed ten years later. In addition to his love of war, however, Duke Charles loved music, and in his employ Busnois was appreciated and rewarded.
In addition to his duties as a singer and a composer, Busnois accompanied the Duke on his military campaigns. Busnois was at the siege of Neuss in Germany in 1475, and survived the disastrous Battle of Nancy in 1477 at which Charles was killed and the expansion of Burgundy was forever stilled. Busnois remained in the employ of the Burgundian court until 1482, but nothing exact is known about his exploits between then and 1492, when he died. At the time of his death, he was working for the church in Bruges. Throughout this time he was exceptionally well-known as a composer, and his music circulated widely.
Gilles Binchois, also known as Gilles de Binche or Gilles de Bins, was a Franco-Flemish composer, and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstable, by contemporary scholars, his influence was arguably greater than either, since his works were cited, borrowed and used as source material more often than those by any other composer of the time.
He was probably born around 1400 in Mons, the son of Jean and Johanna de Binche, who may have been from the nearby town of Binche. His father was a councilor to Duke Guillaume IV of Hainault, and also had a position in a church in Mons. Nothing is known about Gilles until 1419, when he became organist at the church of in Mons. In 1423 he went to live in Lille. Around this time he may have been a soldier in the service of the Burgundians, or perhaps the English Earl of Suffolk, as indicated by a line in the memorial motet written on his death by Ockeghem.
Sometime near the end of the 1420s he joined the court chapel of Burgundy, he was evidently a singer there, since the text of the motets list him among other 19 singers. He retired to Soignes, evidently with a substantial pension for his long years of excellent service to the Burgundian court, and died in 1460.
Binchois is often considered to be the finest melodist of the 15th century, writing carefully shaped lines which are easy to sing, and utterly memorable; his tunes continued to appear in copies decades later, and were often used as sources for mass composition by later composers. Most of his music, even his sacred music, is simple and clear in outline, sometimes even ascetic. Most of his secular songs are rondeaux, which had become the commonest song form of the century; but Binchois rarely writes simple strophic form, instead shaping his melody almost independent of the rhyme scheme of the verse. Binchois wrote music for the court, secular songs of love and chivalry, music that was expected by the Dukes of Burgundy and that was evidently loved by them.
