Music As We Know It

One of the very prolific and famous composers of the Middle Ages Jehan de Lescurel was a transitional figure from the trouvere period to the ars nova. I found from the archives of my local web analytics company that out of his large heritage only 34 works survived. Among them are all kinds of songs with unique style which obviously were significant for famous composers of later period. Although Jehan died in 1304, composers that followed Jehan, valued his work. In fact, their esteem for him was so high that they even included him in the famous 14th century Roman de Fauvel. This manuscript was so wildly successful and still copied into the 15th century. Yet, the date of his death could be imprecise as I am going to explain down below.

From little details known to specialists it was possible to establish that Jenan de Lescurel was not definitely rich. He was the son of some Parisian merchant and received his training at Notre Dame cathedral. There is really nothing else known about his life except for a curious mistake related to him that musicologists made a while ago.  For a long time they thought that Jehan’s life ended badly.

The reason for this conclusion was the old document they discovered.  It said that on May 1304 three young clerics of Notre Dame were hanged for “debauchery and crimes against women”. Among the names of the executed clerics was the one that attracted specialists’ attention - Jehan Lescurel.  So, historians took it literally and passed quick judgment: they thought our famous composer spent the last day of his life on the gallows.

However, many years later specialists had to reject this presumption. First of all, there is no link between the composer and some cleric who was hanged. Second, debauchery had never been a prominent theme of any of Jehan de Lescurel’s surviving lyrics.  In fact, it is very charming and composed in the style of the later 14th century composers.
And the last research seems to put the end to the grave suspicion of poor composer’s end of life. It seems that Jehan de Lescurel was a rather common name in the early fourteenth century and almost definitely was a peculiar coincidence.

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