Ben opnieuw

Twijfel

2008-04-08T21:05:00.002+02:00

Ik ben zo door twijfel bevangen, dat ik moet stoppen met deze blog. U kunt, als u dat wilt, mijn verdere berichten hier lezen.

Dobbelen

2008-04-07T00:27:00.004+02:00

Stel, u bent een echte christen. U gelooft in Jezus, dat die echt bestaan heeft, maar ook God was of is, en dat die man dood ging maar weer levend werd en daarna nog iets deed. Stel.
Dan gaan we een dobbelspelletje spelen. Allebei een dobbelsteen in onze handen. Wie zal er winnen, de heiden of de gelovige?
U zegt: dat weet ik niet. Maar dan is mijn goede raad: bidt U tot God! U gelooft toch in God? Bidden dus.
Mijn vraag aan het publiek is dan: wie wint deze dobbelpartij?

Waarom God niet bestaat

2008-04-07T00:12:00.002+02:00

Much of what people do is done in the name of God. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's sex lives in his name. Jewish shohets cut live animals' throats in his name. The achievements of religion in past history -- bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries, legally enforced resistance to each new piece of scientific truth until the last possible moment -- are even more impressive. And what has it all been in aid of? I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is absolutely nothing at all. There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.

(Richard Dawkins in ‘Free Inquire’)

Bent u christelijk?

2008-04-06T18:31:00.003+02:00

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

(Overgenomen uit Evil Bible.com)

Mijn muziek (53)

2008-04-06T10:17:00.002+02:00

Richard Bramston (1485? - 1554) was an English composer. Organist of Wells Cathedral 1507-31. Has a single work in the Peterhouse partbook and is also represented in the Gyffard partbook.

Mijn muziek (52)

2008-04-05T11:14:00.002+02:00

Hugh Aston (c. 1485 – buried 17 November 1558) was an English composer of the early Tudor period. While little of his music survives, he is notable for his innovative keyboard writing.

Few details of his life are certain. In 1510 he attempted to obtain the degree of BMus at Oxford University by submitting a mass and an antiphon; it is not certain if the degree was granted. Between 1510 and 1525 he may have lived in London, and may have had some association with the court of Henry VIII. Most likely he was chorus master at St. Mary Newarke Hospital and College in Leicester between 1525 and 1548. He was an applicant for the position of chorus master at Cardinal Wolsey's new Cardinal College, but Wolsey chose John Taverner instead. His exact date of death is not known, but he was buried on 17 November 1558 in Leicester, at St. Margaret's parish. Additional records show that a pension was paid to him up until that date.

Four sacred vocal compositions by Aston survive complete:

Missa Te Deum (five voices)
Missa Videte manus meas (six voices)
Gaude mater matris Christe (five voices)
Te Deum laudamus (five voices)

Other compositions survive in fragments.

In addition, he wrote keyboard music, most of which shows an unusually progressive use of idiomatic keyboard technique. Some famous pieces have been attributed to him on stylistic grounds, including the often-recorded and anthologized My Lady Careys Dompe. His Hornepype is also cited as an example of early idiomatic keyboard writing.

Jean Meslier

2008-04-05T02:40:00.002+02:00

Jean Meslier (1664-1729) was een Frans dorpspastoor die bij zijn overlijden een "tijdbom" achterliet, in de vorm van een bijzonder explosief manuscript.

Jean Meslier was zoon van een textielhandelaar en had aan een Frans seminarie gestudeerd. Veertig jaar lang, van 1689 tot 1729, had hij braaf zijn plichten vervuld als pastoor van de plattelandsparochie Étrépigny, niet ver van Charleville-Mézières in wat tegenwoordig het Franse departement Ardennes is.

Bij de bisschoppelijke inspecties had hij altijd een goede notering gekregen, met één uitzondering, in 1716, toen de plaatselijke landheer zich bij de bisschop erover beklaagd had dat de pastoor hem gekapitteld had voor zijn gebrek aan christelijke naastenliefde tegenover zijn pachters. Voor deze "onbeschaamdheid" had hij van de bisschop een reprimande gekregen. Maar verder was het - ogenschijnlijk - een heel rustige pastoorscarrière.

Bij zijn overlijden bleek dat hij een manuscript van meer dan duizend bladzijden had nagelaten – vervaardigd in drie verschillende handgeschreven kopieën, in bewaring gegeven bij drie verschillende notarissen – waarin hij alle leerstellingen van de kerk weerlegde. Hij stelde honderden interne tegenstrijdigheden vast in de tekst van de bijbel en stelde een groot aantal absurditeiten aan de kaak. Het is duidelijk dat hij in de loop der jaren eerst was gaan twijfelen aan de juistheid van het christelijk geloof, en dat die twijfel vervolgens was verhard tot volledige verwerping, gepaard gaande met een grote frustratie omdat het priesterschap het enige vak was dat hij geleerd had en hij geen andere broodwinning had, zodat hij zijn parochianen jaar in, jaar uit dezelfde verhalen moest vertellen, die naar zijn eigen overtuiging leugens waren.

In de bibliotheek van de pastoor vond men een exemplaar van het destijds beroemde werk van Fénelon, Démonstration de l'existence de Dieu (Bewijs van het bestaan van God), dat door de van zijn geloof gevallen pastoor in de marge koortsachtig van aantekeningen was voorzien, waarin hij de redeneringen van Fénélon stuk voor stuk probeerde te weerleggen.

In zijn "Testament" vroeg Jean Meslier zijn parochianen om vergiffenis voor het feit dat hij hen jarenlang had misleid. Het duurde niet lang voordat kopieën van uittreksels van het "Testament" onderhands begonnen te circuleren.

Voltaire, d'Holbach, Frederik II van Pruisen, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert en alle Encyclopedisten zouden het werk lezen en de invloed van Meslier ondergaan. Voltaire liet in 1762 uittreksels publiceren van dit werk, dat zo subversief was dat hij er een "gekuiste" versie van maakte waarin het radicale atheïsme van Meslier wordt afgezwakt tot het door Voltaire voor maatschappelijk veiliger geachte deïsme. De radicale atheïst D'Holbach zou een onverzachte uitgave publiceren, onder de titel Le bon sens du Curé Jean Meslier, suivi de son testament.

Het beruchtste citaat uit het "Testament" van Meslier luidt:

« Je voudrais, et ce sera le dernier et le plus ardent de mes souhaits, je voudrais que le dernier des rois fût étranglé avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre. »

("Ik zou willen, en dit zou de laatste en vurigste van mijn wensen zijn, ik zou willen dat de laatste koning zou worden gewurgd met de darmen van de laatste priester.")

Heilige

2008-04-05T00:32:00.002+02:00

De Zalige Mariano de la Mata Aparicio (Barrio La Puebla, Palencia, 31 december 1905 - Sao Paulo, 5 april 1983) was een Spaans geestelijke en missionaris.

Mariono groeide op in een diep gelovig gezin en trad in 1921 in bij de augustijnen. Na studies in Valladolid en Burgos werd hij in 1929 priester gewijd. In 1931 trok hij als missionaris naar Brazilië. Daar werd hij bekend als boodschapper van de liefdadigheid voor de allerarmsten. Hij was geestelijk leider van de liefsdadigheidsateliers van de heilige Rita van Cassia, die zich bezighielden met het maken van stevige kledij voor de armen. Tijdens pater Mariano's leven hadden die ongeveer 9.000 vrouwen als lid. Pater Mariano bezocht steeds de vier klinieken van de Sint Augustinudparcohie van Sao Paulo. Hij zag heel graag kinderen en had altijd snoepjes voor hen in zijn zakken, zodat die steeds rondom hem zwermden. Hij was ook een groot natuurliefhebber en postzegelverzamelaar. Pater Mariano stierf in april 1983 aan kanker.

Mariano de la Mata werd in 2006 zalig verklaard door paus Benedictus XVI.

De katholieken

2008-04-04T01:43:00.002+02:00

Waar zijn de dames, heren priesters?

En gij geleuft dat?

2008-04-04T00:46:00.006+02:00

Wat er mis is met deze goochelarij is het volgende. Dames, heren! Let u op! Er wordt helemaal niet gegoocheld. Niet met enig ‘brood’, noch met enige wijn. Er wordt alleen maar gezegd dat dat brood iets heel anders is. Dat die wijn zomaar Jezus’ bloed zou zijn.
Als u de volgende keer in een katholieke kerk zulke amateuristische trucs tegenkomt, moet u daar eens naar vragen.

Rozenkrans

2008-04-04T00:30:00.004+02:00

De Rozenkrans is een gebedssnoer (met 15 grote en 150 kleine kralen), dat wordt gebruikt voor het rozenkransgebed. Dit bestaat uit 150 maal (15 x 10) het Wees Gegroet, afgewisseld, na ieder 'tientje', met een Onze Vader. In plaats van het volledige rozenkransgebed wordt veelal een derde gedeelte, met gebruik making van een kleiner snoer, het zgn. rozenhoedje, gebeden.

De rozenkrans dankt zijn ontstaan aan zeer verschillende religieuze gebruiken, o.a. het herhalend gebed, dat we bij de oude egyptische kluizenaars aantreffen dat in de oosterse kerken leeft (Jezusgebed) en ook in buitenchristelijke godsdiensten (zoals het hindoeisme, boeddhisme en de islam) aangetroffen wordt.

In de liturgische getijden van kloostergemeenschappen werden alle psalmen (150) gebeden; voor de ongeletterden werden de psalmverzen vervangen door 150 Onze Vaders. In de 12de eeuw kwam hiervoor het Wees Gegroet in de plaats. De verdeling in tientjes, waartussen telkens een Onze Vader wordt gebeden, ontstond in de 15de eeuw. Ook ontstond in deze eeuw de aanroepingen bij elk tientje van de rozenkrans, de zogeheten geheimen

Bij het bidden van de rozenkrans staan wij stil bij elk van de vijf onderdelen van de blijde, de droevige en de glorievolle geloofsgeheimen. Dat zijn respectievelijk de geheimen van de menswording, van het lijden en van de verheerlijking van Jezus Chrsitus.

Paus Johannes Paulus II heeft 16 oktober 2002 in de Apostolische Brief Rosarium Virginis Mariae vijf ‘Geheimen van het Licht’ toegevoegd aan het traditionele rozenkransgebed. In deze brief zegt de Paus dat de rozenkrans, als deze met devotie en niet mechanisch wordt gebeden, een ware meditatie is over de geheimen van het leven van Christus. "Door de aanroepingen van het Weesgegroet te herhalen, kunnen wij diepgaand reflecteren op de essentiële gebeurtenissen van de missie van Gods Zoon op aarde, die aan ons zijn doorgegeven door het Evangelie en de Traditie", aldus de Paus. Omdat de vijftien geheimen die tot nu toe bij de rozenkrans werden overwogen, niet de grote gebeurtenissen uit het Openbare Leven van de Heer omvatten, voegt de Paus in zijn apostolische brief vijf geheimen aan de rozenkrans toe, die hij de "geheimen van het licht" heeft genoemd. Deze benaming, zo legde de Paus uit, is gebaseerd op het feit dat Jezus Zich tijdens Zijn openbaar leven gemanifesteerd heeft als het "geheim van het licht": "Zolang Ik in de wereld ben, ben Ik het licht der wereld" (Joh. 9,5). Het gaat om vijf momenten uit het openbare leven van de Heer, te beginnen met Zijn doop in de Jordaan, de aanvang van het openbare leven, en eindigend vlak voor Zijn lijden, dus vlak voor het begin van de droevige geheimen.

Op maandag en zaterdag worden de ‘Blijde Geheimen’ overwogen,
op donderdag de 'Geheimen van het Licht',
op dinsdag en vrijdag de ‘Droevige Geheimen’
op woensdag en zondag de ‘Glorievolle Geheimen’.

Bij het bidden van de rozenkrans staan wij stil bij - dat onzinnige gedeelte moet u eens lezen.

Heilige

2008-04-04T00:13:00.002+02:00

Gaetano Catanoso (Chorio de San Lorenzo, Reggio Calabria, 14 februari 1879 - Reggio Calabria, 4 april 1963) was een heilige in het christendom.

Hij werd priester gewijd voor het aartsbisdom Reggio Calabria-Bova. Hij was kapelaan en pastoor in verscheidene parochies. Zijn bisschop benoemde hem ook tot kathedraal kanunnik penitentiarius. Verder was hij spiritueel directeur van het diocesaan seminarie, ziekenhuispastor en biechtvader voor kloosterlingen. Catanoso stichtte ook een zustercongregatie, de Congregatie van de Dochters van de Heilige Veronica (Missionarissen van het Heilig Gelaat).

Hij werd heilig verklaard op 23 oktober 2005. Zijn feestdag is op 4 april.

Je vraagt je toch werkelijk af.

Mijn muziek (51)

2008-04-03T13:49:00.003+02:00

William, Monk of Stratford (fl. late 15th - early 16th century) was an English composer. Stratford has a single work, a four-part Magnificat, in the Eton Choirbook. Nothing more is known.

Mijn muziek (50)

2008-04-03T13:26:00.002+02:00

Christopher Hoskins (fl. before 1548) was an English composer. Represented by a single work, a Speciosa facta es, in the Gyffard partbooks.

Heilige

2008-04-02T16:20:00.001+02:00

Nikolaas (Mykolay) Charnetskyi (Semakivtsi, 18 december 1884 - L'viv, 2 april 1959) was een Oekraïens martelaar.

Mykolay was de oudste van een vrome boerenfamilie. In 1903 ging hij naar Rome om filosofie te studeren en in 1909 werd hij tot priester gewijd in de Grieks-katholieke Kerk. In 1910 werd hij pmrofessor filosofie en dogmatische theologie iaan het seminarie van Stanislaviv. In 1919 trad hij in in het noviciaat van de redemptoristen in Zboiska, nabij L'viv.

In 1926 stichtten de redemptoristen van de ordeprovincie L'viv een missiehuis in Kovel. Na de opening van het klooster en de kerk won pater Charnetski de achting van de bevolking en zelfs van de orthodoxe geestelijken. Hij zette zich in om de oostelijke liturgie zuiver te bewaren. Paus Pius XI benoemde hem tot titulair bisschop van Lebed en tot apostolisch visitator van de Oekraïense katholieken in Wolhynië en Pidliashsha.

Als eerste Oekraïens bisschop uit de congregatie der redemptoristen werd Mykolay Charnetskyi van in het begin een schietschijf. Tijdens de Sovjetbezetting van het Westen van Oekraïene in 1939 werden de redemptoristen er toe gedwongen om Wolhynië te verlaten., Bisdchop Charnetskyi trok zich vervolgens terug in het klooster der redemptoristen in L'viv om moraaltheologie te onderwijzen. Na de intocht der Duitse troepen in 1941, doceerde hij filosofie, psychologie en moraaltheologie aan de theologische academie. Nadat de sovjettroepen in 1944 Galicië heroverd hadden, werd hij in april 1945 gearresteerd, gevangen genomen en meermaals mishandeld. Vervolgens wordt hij Kiev gebracht en veroordeeeld tot 10 jaar gevangenis omdat hij als agent van het Vaticaan gewerkt had. In zijn periode van gevangenschap onderging Charnetskyi samen 600 uur foltering en verhoor. Hij zat op 30 verschillende plaatsen vast, o.m. in Siberië. In 1956 verslechterde zijn gezondheidstoestand zodanig dat de artsen niet meer op zijn overleven rekenden. Hij werd vrijgelaten en naar het ziekenhuis van L'viv gebracht. Hij herstelde echter en betrok een woning samen met de redemptoristenbroeder Klymentiy een woning, voerde zijn apostolaat verder als plaatsvervanger van de bisschop van de Grieks-katholieken Kerk van Oekraïene en bracht zijn tijd door met lezen en bidden, dikwijls in extase verzonken. Hij ondersteunde zijn medebroeders, begeleidde kandidaat-priesters en wijdde meer dan 10 van hen tot priester.

Allen die Mykolay Charnetskyi hebben gekend, getuigen over zijn heilige levenswijze. Van verre bezoeken zieken zijn graf voor genezing. Hij werd in 2001 zalig verklaard als martelaar door paus Johannes Paulus II. Zijn gedenkdag is op 2 april.

De Gyffard en Christ Church partbooks

2008-04-02T14:33:00.004+02:00

In the early sixteenth century choirbooks gradually passed out of use in favor of partbooks. (At least for a time some choirs seem to have preferred one type of manuscript, some the other, for in 1524 all the polyphonic music at Magdalen College, Oxford was contained in choirbooks, nine of which had been bought between 1518 and 1524, while in 1529 King's College, Cambridge relied almost entirely on partbooks). Partbooks with small paper leaves were undoubtedly cheaper to produce than large elaborately bound choirbooks of parchment. They were also easier to handle, and probably more convenient for a large number of singers to read from. The choir would no longer gather round a lectern, but would presumably sing from the choir-stalls, except in votive antiphons performed before images, where, unless singing from memory was the practice, each book must have been held by one or more singers for all of those on that part to see.

The number of partbooks surviving is quite considerable, but complete sets are very few. These few include the important Forrest-Heyther and Gyffard sets and the source of Ludford's Lady Masses, British Museum Royal Appendix MSS. 45-48. The Peterhouse and Christ Church sets both lack their tenor books; reconstruction is easy where proper plainsongs in equal notes are involved, but at other times it is an awkward task.

The Gyffard partbooks (British Museum Additional MSS. 17802-5) are an invaluable source for smaller-scale works for the Sarum rite by Taverner, Tye, Tallis and Sheppard in particular: concordances have been traced for only three out of ninety-four pieces. The basic arrangement is: music for the Lady Mass, including Kyries and Alleluias; works for the Office in liturgical sequence from All Saints to Whit Sunday; the Proper of the Jesus Mass, and the three Masses Apon the square; Magnificats; and votive antiphons.

The books were copied in the middle years of the sixteenth century. Work on them may have begun 'as early as the 1540s', but much or most of it was probably done during the Marian reaction of 1553-8, by which time William Mundy and Robert Whyte (b. c. 1530) could have been composing. It would be easy to assume that the manuscripts were still incomplete when Mary died, for the name of 'mr birde' appears. But in fact the man who composed In exitu Israel jointly with Sheppard and William Mundy is probably not the great William Byrd, but Thomas Byrd, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal 1546-8, or the William Byrd who was a chorister at Westminster Abbey when William Mundy was head of the choristers there in 1543-4. Similarly it seems rather improbable that the John Mundy who composed a Kyrie was William Mundy's son John who died in 1630; possibly William had a brother John, or possibly the Christian name is wrong. The Gyffard partbooks show no sign of use, and contain many uncorrected scribal errors. But if designed for liturgical use under Mary, the brevity of their 'working life' might be sufficient reason for this.

The Christ Church Oxford partbooks (MSS. 979-83 ) were copied between about 1580 and 1600 by John Baldwin, who had a hand in completing the Forrest-Heyther manuscripts and who kept a fascinating musical commonplace-book sometimes known as the Baldwin manuscript. The Christ Church books are beautifully neat, and have been used little if at all; they probably formed a kind of private musical treasury. Today they are the leading source for compositions written in the last years of the Sarum rite (especially for numerous responds and hymns by Sheppard and Tallis), and an important one for Latin works composed under Elizabeth. It is interesting to note that some works by Fayrfax and Taverner are still included, as indeed they are in other late sixteenth century manuscripts.

The Gyffard and Christ Church partbooks contain a number of works by lesser composers who, like Tallis, Sheppard and Tye, are known or assumed to have been active before the death of Henry VIII.

Gyffard has works by four men known also from Peterhouse: Knyght (with three works, including a stylish Alleluia Obtine sacris), Appleby (whose Mass for a Mene is a rather pedestrian effort in something of the same style as Taverner's similarly titled piece), Bramston, and Whytbrook (composer of a Mass Apon the square briefly noted in the article on William Mundy). Other composers, most of them represented by single works, include Philip Alcoke, Robert Barber, (?Thomas) Byrd (joint composer with Sheppard and Mundy of In exitu Israel), Robert Cooper, John Ensdale, John Hake, Christopher Hoskins, Hyett, Robert Okeland, Stenings, and Thomas Wryght. Finally there are three composers known also from the Christ Church partbooks: Robert Johnson, John Redford and Philip van Wilder. Gyffard has unusually many anonymous pieces for a mid or late sixteenth-century source, eighteen out of ninety-four. There is a St Matthew Passionand four settings of the Asperges(these seem to be among the oldest works in the manuscript), aVidi aquam, a setting of the Jesus Mass Proper, aKyrie, aTe Deum on the faburden, several responds and short antiphons.

Christ Church contains Wood'sExsurge Domineand a Dum transissetby John Strabridge. There are a few Continental pieces includingIn convertendoand Ubi est Abel, ascribed to (Robert) Douglas, a Scot, but by Lassus.

Mijn muziek (49)

2008-04-02T14:10:00.004+02:00

Thomas Ashwell or Ashewell (c. 1478 – after 1513 (possibly 1527?)) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He was a skilled composer of polyphony, and may have been the teacher of John Taverner.

His admission to St. George's Chapel as a chorister in 1491 suggests a birthdate of approximately 1478, but nothing else is known about his early life. He stayed at St. George's until 1493, and account records at Tattershall College in Lincolnshire list him as a singer there in 1502 and 1503.^[1] He was in a position of authority at Lincoln Cathedral in 1508, according to records there, and was employed at Durham Cathedral as Cantor or Master of the singing boys, and to provide music for the Lady Chapel, in 1513; no further records survive of his life. The Durham Cathedral archives show the first successor to his duties there as being a William Robson, who began his duties in 1527, and this may be an indication of Ashwell's death some time before that.

Only scattered remnants of Ashwell's music survives. As was common for pre-Reformation music in England in Latin, the large majority of manuscripts were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII (and a large proportion of English-language sacred music was destroyed during the subsequent reign of Mary, during her attempt to re-impose Roman Catholicism on the island). Two masses, both for six voices, survive complete in the Forrest-Heyther Partbooks, the first layer of which were copied for Taverner's usage at Cardinal College in 1526-1530. With the fall of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 the college founded by him was not able to devote resources to such music and so the manuscript was discontinued, and this situation was probably the reason for Taverner's departure that year. This first layer contains the Missa Jesu Christe (for 6 voices) and ten other works by various composers, including Taverner. The other Mass-setting (Missa Ave Maria, also for 6 voices, which is the finer of the two and an outstanding work with similarities to Taverner's Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas) was copied into the partbooks mid-century along with five other settings by other composers, though the dates of composition of both Ashwell Masses were considerably earlier: their style indicates dates of composition possibly even before his appointment at Durham. A few other works survive in other sources, mostly very fragmentary, including a fragment of a Mass for St. Cuthbert, which must date from his time at Durham. A song, "She may be callyd a sovrant lady", printed in a 1530 collection, is Ashwell's only surviving secular composition.

The connection with John Taverner as his possible teacher is tenuous but suggestive. The unsubstantiated suggestion has long existed that Taverner was a chorister at Tattershall, and should this have been the case he would have been there at the same time as Ashwell. Taverner seems to have at least been very familiar with the two Ashwell Masses, as he appears to have used them as models for his own (if the apparent dating is not incorrect, and Ashwell based his on Taverner's). A personal connection with Ashwell would account for the inclusion of his Masses in the Forrest-Heyther Partbooks, copied either by Taverner or for him when he became head of music at Cardinal College, Oxford in 1526. The first layer of the Forrest-Heyther partbooks is headed by Taverner's own Mass Gloria tibi Trinitas (which seems to have much in common with Ashwell's Missa Ave Maria) in six voices, and the only other six-part Mass in this layer is Ashwell's Jesu Christe, all the other works in this first layer being for only five voices (however, the piece immediately following Gloria tibi Trinitas is the hexachord Mass by Avery/Davy Burton: but although there are only five parts in the partbooks, it seems that a sixth part was unintentionally omitted). These partbooks contain generally rather newer music than that of Ashwell, and his inclusion would be typical of a student-teacher relationship.

However, it may equally go some way to explaining Ashwell's presence in the Forrest-Heyther partbooks to recall that the partbooks were compiled for Cardinal Wolsey's new college, and that Wolsey was also Bishop of Durham earlier in his career, and many of the composers had connections to institutions which had connections to Wolsey. It could be that the partbooks were also meant to act as a kind of survey in homage of the most important composers from many of Wolsey's dioceses.

Ashwell's reputation survived at least until the end of the 16th century, since Thomas Morley listed him as an authority in his 1597 treatise A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke.

Mijn muziek (48)

2008-04-02T13:32:00.004+02:00

William Rasor (fl. 1499 - 1514/15) was an early 16th century English composer. Took the Cambridge BMus degree in 1616, and was organist at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1628-44. His output includes English and Latin church music, a dialog between Saul and the Witch of Endor on the text later used by Purcell, and madrigals among which is a lament in the dialog form on the death of Prince Henry. The influence of the new Italian style can be seen in his work, especially in the settings of Latin texts.He composed a Mass found in the Forrest-Heyther Partbooks.

Mijn muziek (47)

2008-04-02T11:33:00.004+02:00

Avery Burton (c. 1470 - c. 1543) was an English composer. He is known as the composer of a Mass, Ut re mi fa sol la, in the Forrest-Heyther partbooks (this is probably not the Mass of 1494) and of a Te Deum for organ.In November 1494 he was paid 20 shillings by Henry VII for composing a Mass; in 1509 he became a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. In 1513 he went to France with the Chapel Royal, a Te Deum of his being sung after Mass at Tournai in September; in June 1520 he was present at the historic meeting between Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France, known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. His name disappears from the records of the Chapel Royal after 1542.

Ruimtefotografie

2008-04-02T00:34:00.003+02:00

Could life exist beneath Enceladus? A recent flyby of Saturn's icy moon has bolstered this fascinating idea. Two years ago, images from the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn led astronomers to the undeniable conclusion that Saturn's moon Enceladus was spewing fountains of gas and ice crystals through cracks in its surface dubbed tiger stripes. Last month, Cassini dove through some of these plumes and determined that they contained water vapor laced with small amounts of methane as well as simple and complex organic molecules. Surprisingly, the plumes of Enceladus appear similar in make-up to many comets. What's more, the temperature and density of the plumes indicate they might have originated from a warmer source -- possibly a liquid source -- beneath the surface. A liquid water sea containing organic molecules is a good place to look for life. Pictured above is a vertically exaggerated close-up of some long, venting tiger stripes. The computer composite was generated from images and shadows taken during the recent Cassini flyby. Nine more flybys of Enceladus by Cassini are planned.

Mijn muziek (46)

2008-04-01T16:48:00.003+02:00

Hacomplaynt (c. 1455 - 1528) was a King's scholar at Eton in 1469, and Provost of King's 1509-28 - his name is on the King's Chapel lectern. He has a single work, a setting of Salve regina, in the Eton Choirbook.

Heilige

2008-04-01T13:12:00.002+02:00

De heilige Hugo van Grenoble (nabij Valence, 1053 - Grenoble, 1 april 1132) werd in 1078 kanunnik in Valence en in 1080 bisschop van Grenoble. Overtuigd van zijn eigen onkunde, trok hij zich terug en werd hij benedictijner monnik in Chaise-Dieu, maar paus Gregorius VII beval hem weer zijn functie in Grenoble op te nemen. Het was Hugo die land gaf aan de H. Bruno van Keulen om er zijn abdij van Chartreuse te bouwen, de eerste abdij van de kartuizers.

Hugo van Grenoble was een oom van de heilige Hugo van Bonnevaux.

In 1134, slechts twee jaar na zijn dood, werd hij door paus Innocentius II heilig verklaard. Zijn feestdag is op 1 april. Hij is de patroonheilige van Grenoble en wordt aanroepen tegen hoofdpijn.

Topjaar

2008-04-01T01:58:00.005+02:00

Het is 1981. We bevinden ons in het laatste jaar van Glenn Gould, zijn topjaar. Zijn allerbeste jaar, met de Goldberg Variaties onder meer. Het hoogtepunt van de barokperiode: dit en dit.

Mijn problemen

2008-04-01T00:40:00.004+02:00

Het kunnen er niet zoveel zijn. Er zijn ook mensen, van het liefste geslacht, die bijvoorbeeld borstkanker krijgen.
Ik ken een man die gescheiden is van zijn vrouw, nadat ze borstkanker had gekregen. Ik weet niet of het daardóór was dat ze gescheiden zijn. Maar het lijkt me wel. Een halve vrouw, of zo, heb ik overgehouden.
Die man heeft het leven, dacht ik, niet doorgehad. Na elke operatie zie je elkaar, en je omhelst elkaar - wetend dat er nooit iets stuk kan gaan.

Mijn muziek (45)

2008-03-31T19:09:00.006+02:00

Richard Sampson (died 25 September 1554) was an English clergyman and composer, who was Anglican bishop of Chichester and subsequently of Coventry and Lichfield. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, the Paris Sorbonne and Sens (also in France). Having become Doctor of Canon Law, he was appointed by cardinal Wolsey diocesan chancellor and vicar-general in his Diocese, the bishopric of Tournai, where he lived till 1517. Meanwhile he gained English preferment, becoming Dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster and of the Chapel Royal (1516), Archdeacon of Cornwall (1517) and prebendary of Newbold (1519). From 1522 to 1525 he was English ambassador to Emperor Charles V. He was now Dean of Windsor (1523), Vicar of Stepney (1526) and held prebends at St. Paul's Cathedral and at Lichfield; he was also Archdeacon of Suffolk (1529).

Being a man of no principle, and solely bent on a distinguished ecclesiastical career, he became one of Henry VIII Tudor's chief agents in the royal divorce proceedings, being rewarded therefor by the deanery of Lichfield in 1533, the rectory of Hackney (1534), and treasureship of Salisbury (1535). On 11 June, 1536, he was elected Bishop of Chichester, and as such furthered Henry's political and -from the Catholic point of view schismatical- ecclesiastical policy, though not sufficiently thoroughly to satisfy archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

On 19 February, 1543, he was translated to the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield on the royal authority alone, without papal confirmation. He held his bishopric through the reign of Edward VI, though Dodd says he was deprived for recanting his disloyalty to the pope. Godwin the Anglican writer and the Catholic John Pitts both agree that he did so retract, but are silent as to his deprivation. He wrote an "Oratio" in defence of the royal prerogative (1533) and an explanation of the Psalms (1539-48) and of the Pauline Epistle to the Romans (1546).

He died at Eccleshall in Staffordshire.

Mijn muziek (44)

2008-03-31T16:31:00.002+02:00

All that is known for certain about Richard Davy's life (c. 1465 - c.1507) is that he was at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1490 to 1492, first as organist and joint choirmaster, then as choirmaster and one of the organists.

But it is very probable that he was the Richard Davy, priest, who was a vicar choral at Exeter Cathedral between 1497 and 1506.

Davy is third among the Eton choirbook composers in size of contribution, and probably in excellence of achievement as well. His work shows somewhat less diversity than Browne's or Lambe's, with its preference for the long antiphon in five parts for men and boys, and it has less 'depth'. Instead there is a certain facility which makes quite credible the Eton scribe's note that O Domine coeli terraeque creator(Davy's second longest piece at 260-odd bars) was written in one day ('hanc antiphonam composuit Ricardus Davy uno die Collegio Magdalenae Oxoniis'). Short passages of very rapid soloistic display are more prominent than in Browne's music or in Lambe's. At the same time there is an avoidance of the most complex rhythms which, despite a somewhat more limited use of imitation, puts Davy's music a little closer to that of the early sixteenth century than Browne's is.

Mijn muziek (43)

2008-03-31T10:06:00.003+02:00

Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521) was born in Deeping Gate, Lincolnshire, on April 23, 1464; nothing is yet known of his childhood or early musical training. The first information that we have about Fayrfax's musical career is that he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal by December 6, 1497 when he was granted a chaplaincy of the Free Chapel at Snodhill Castle, a post which was relinquished a year later to Robert Cowper, a fellow Gentleman. He is reported as being organist of St Alban's abbey from 1498-1502. Fayrfax gained a Mus.B. from Cambridge in 1501, and a Mus.D. in 1504; he later acquired a D.Mus. from Oxford (by incorporation) in 1511. He became a member of the Fraternity of St Nicholas in 1502.

As a singer he is first recorded in 1500 among the lay clerks at the funeral of Prince Edmund, the third son of Henry VII; he was also present at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII, on February 23, 1503, Later lists place him at the head of the singingmen at the funeral of Henry VIl (May 11, 1509), the coronation of Henry VIII (June 24, 1509), the funeral of Prince Henry (February 27, 1511), and the great Anglo-French summit at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in the summer of 1520. Henry VIII, who was somewhat of a skilled musician himself, evidently admired Fayrfax's musical talents and granted the composer numerous royal benefices during the last few decades of his life. From 1509 he was awarded an annuity of £9 2s 6d on top of his salary as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

Henry VIII made Fayrfax a Poor Knight of Windsor on September 10, 1514 to supplement his existing income; he received 12d a day for life. Henry continued to reward him by paying most handsomely each New Year's Day from 1516 to 1519 for books of music; in 1519 payment was for 'a ballad book limned' (that is, illuminated, or more probably simply copied), but the other sums for a 'book', 'a book of anthems' and a 'pricksong book' may have been for composition as well as copying. Fayrfax was paid enormous sums of money for music manuscripts, some amounting to £20. In June 1520, only a year before his death, Fayrfax once more headed the list of Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal when Henry went to France to meet Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

From 1502 he may have been on the musical staff at the very rich St Alban's Abbey, though it is not known in what capacity. It has been suggested that Fayrfax was never likely to have been employed at St Alban's and probably held some sort of honorary post there; however, as he composed a mass and antiphon dedicated to St Alban and requested burial in the Abbey, a more substantial connection would seem once to have existed. Very little is known of Fayrfax's private life; a seventeenth-century rubbing of the monument brass which once marked his tomb in St Alban's Abbey reveals that he died on October 24, 1521 at the age of 57. He was survived by his wife, Agnes, and an unknown number of children.

Fayrfax may have been a composer of some national repute by his mid-thirties when a few of his compositions were copied into the Eton Choirbook (c.1500); Although Fayrfax, born in 1464, was therefore little over ten years younger than Browne and Lambe, only three of his surviving works were included in the Eton choirbook (Salve regina, Regali Magnificat, and Ave lumen gratiae). The Caius and Lambeth Choirbooks (assembled in the mid to late 1520s) contain the earliest surviving collections of his masses. Missa O quam glorifica is perhaps Fayrfax's most complex if not most impressive work. According to an inscription in the Lambeth Choirbook it was composed 'for his forme in proceading to bee Doctor'; no doubt this was his exercise for Cambridge University in 1504, the earliest English example known to us. The standard requirement for an early Tudor doctorate was the submission of a mass and antiphon, which were to be performed on the day of taking the degree (no antiphon of this type is known to have survived among Fayrfax's output).

Three of his works preserved in later sources (Aeterne laudis lilium,O quam glorificaand Lauda vivi Alpha et O) are known to have been composed as well as copied after c. 1500; probably a good number more are of similar date since, as we shall see in a moment, Fayrfax was very active musically in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. Aeterne laudis liliumis assumed from its words to be the antiphon in honour of the Virgin and St Elizabeth for which Queen Elizabeth of York paid Fayrfax twenty shillings at St Alban's in 1502: there is an obvious compliment to the Queen in the treatment of the name 'Elizabeth', because some voices sing this more than once despite the usual ban on verbal repetition, and because additional parts are specially introduced. Lauda vivi Alpha et Owas written in or after 1509 because it ends with a prayer for Henry VIIL

Fayrfax's surviving Masses, antiphons and Magnificats show that his reputation was well deserved. They are the work of an extremely thoughtful, discriminating composer who in particular achieved most subtle rhythmic effects very economically, and one who had little time for florid display. Even his scoring and textural schemes show restraint and economy: they are less obviously colourful than those of many Eton works, with for example no use of the gimel.

The decline in floridity is very important as one of the first marked signs of the sixteenth-century stylistic revolution. Crotchets are employed less, often much less, than before, and in particular the use of more than two or three in succession is now not common. Quavers, never frequent, appear scarcely at all, and triplet figures are virtually abandoned. There is even a tendency for minims to be used less freely and to attract syllables less often than in earlier music, even in sections with many syllables. All this might seem to imply just a total shift towards longer values and a quicker semibreve beat, but comparison of Fayrfax's notation as a whole with that of earlier men does not confirm this.

Mijn muziek (42)

2008-03-31T09:56:00.004+02:00

Het is haast onmogelijk meer informatie te geven dan dit weinige: William Corbronde (fl. 1480-1500) was also represented in the Eton Choirbook.

Mijn muziek (41)

2008-03-31T05:23:00.004+02:00

John Browne (fl c 1490) is first among the composers of the Eton Choirbook both in size of contribution and excellence of achievement. It is astonishing that work of such exceptional interest should be known to us only from the Eton Choirbook, even given the paucity of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century sources; works by Walter Lambe and Richard Davy are after all found elsewhere. Carols ascribed simply to 'Browne' are preserved in the early sixteenth-century Fayrfax Book (British Museum, Additional MS. 5465), but it is possible that they were composed by William Browne, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1503 to 1511.

Nothing is known for certain about Browne's life. A John Browne from Berkshire, born in 1425 and scholar successively of Eton and the sister College of King's, Cambridge in the 1440s, is almost certainly too old to be our man: for musical reasons we should expect Browne the composer to have been born at about the same time as Lambe, or a little later, rather than a quarter of a century earlier. Therefore it is extremely likely that the composer was the John Browne from Coventry elected scholar of Eton in July 1467 at exactly the same time as Lambe, and aged 14 in December of that year (which would make him just a year or two Lambe's junior). The John Browne (d. c. 1498) who was Rector of West Tilbury and canon of St Stephen's, Westminster had important legal and civil service connections and is almost certainly not the composer.

John Browne stands apart from the other Eton composers in his exceptionally varied choice of vocal forces - no two surviving works employ exactly the same - and in some predilection for very sombre texts. He stands apart from Lambe and the older composers in his greater liking for imitation and his somewhat less rigid handling of it (with for example more entries at intervals other than the unison or octave, notably at the fifth). Like Davy he is less inclined to use the old 'under-third' or 'Landini sixth' progression at a cadence (with leading-note falling by step before rising to its tonic) so beloved of John Dunstaple and Guillaume Dufay.

Mijn muziek (40)

2008-03-30T13:09:00.003+02:00

Robert Wylkynson (c. 1450 - 1515 or later) was at Eton from 1496 to 1515, first as parish clerk and then from 1500 as master of the choristers. His nine-part Salve regina and his Apostles' Creed are the last entries in the manuscript and possibly were copied by him. Wylkynson's work, like Cornysh's, has suffered severe losses, for only three of his eight works survive complete; but what remains shows Wylkynson to have been an extremely ambitious composer and a more than competent one. The Salve regina in the Eton Choirbook is the only work from our period in nine parts. To some degree it was probably intended to outdo Browne's eight-part O Maria salvatoris mater.

Heilige

2008-03-29T14:46:00.002+01:00

Gwynllyw, ook Woollos en Gundleus genoemd, was een Welshe koning en heilige uit de 6de eeuw.
Gwynllyw dong volgens de legende naar de hand van Gladys, de dochter van Brychan. Toen Brychan echter weigerde, ontvoerde Gwynllyw het meisje en begon hij met haar een gewelddadig bestaan. Hij werd de vader van Cadoc en deze kon Gwynllyw en Gladys er van overtuigen hun gewelddadig bestaan op te geven en hun religieuze roeping te volgen. Hij werd monnik in Newport in Monmouthshire. Op het einde van zijn leven werd hij kluizenaar in Wales. De Anglicaanse kathedraal in Newport is aan hem toegewijd. Hij wordt als heilige gevierd op 29 maart.

Mijn muziek (39)

2008-03-29T14:06:00.004+01:00

Walter Lambe was an English composer ( c. 1450 - after 1499). Of the three leading Eton choirbook composers, Walter Lambe's music has a little more in common with that of such older composers as Horwood and Banester than has Browne's or Davy's: there is often a very limited use of imitation, cadence practice is a little more old-fashioned, and once or twice there are very old-fashioned sonorities as at 'peperisti' in Nesciens mater with its prominent open fifths. Lambe's music is remarkable for showing several correspondences with that lesser tradition of the late fifteenth century.
A Walter Lambe from Salisbury, clearly the composer, was elected King's scholar at Eton in 1467; he was aged fifteen the year before, and so was born in 1450 or 1451. Lambe was installed as a clerk at St George's, Windsor in 1479, and held the post of master of the choristers jointly until 1480 and on his own from 1482 to 1484. He then probably sought further advancement elsewhere, because his name does not appear in the records again until 1492. After that year the records are very incomplete, but he was still a clerk in 1499-10.
Lambe's music shows an imagination and technical mastery exceeded only by Browne's. His achievement is very diverse; for example, he wrote the longest antiphon in the Eton choirbook, O Maria plena gratia, and one of the shortest, Nesciens mater. More important, his antiphons display opportunity for brilliant vocal display and imaginative counterpoint.

Mijn muziek (38)

2008-03-29T00:01:00.003+01:00

Henry Prentes (also spelt as Prentyce) (? - 1514), like Edmond Turges, is represented by one work in the Caius Choirbook, a Magnificat that is actually a reworking of Cornysh's setting in the same collection. Prentes joined the Chapel Royal by 1509, when he is listed last among the singingmen at the coronation of Henry VIII on June 24 (he was not present at the funeral of Henry VII in the previous month). He next appears at the funeral of Prince Henry on February 27, 1511. A 'Harry Prentes' is also mentioned in the churchwardens' accounts of St Mary-at-Hill, London, as a visiting singer of the church in 1510/11. However, Prentes appears to have been a parishioner (and resident) of Westminster. The register of the Fraternity of St Nicholas, which he joined in 1502, records his death in 1514, and the churchwardens' accounts of St Margaret's register the funeral of a Henry Prentes in the same year. There is no reference to Prentes in any of the surviving records of the Abbey for the period c.1500 to 1514, although his burial within the church of St Margaret testifies to his strong Westminster connections. It is possible that at some point in his career he was based at St Stephen's, but no contemporary records for this institution are extant.

Mijn muziek (37)

2008-03-28T23:57:00.004+01:00

Richard Mower (fl. ca. 1450 - 1470) was an English composer, represented in the
Ritson MS by a Beata Dei genitrix and a Regina coeli.

Mijn muziek (36)

2008-03-28T23:47:00.003+01:00

Henry Petyr (also spelt Petre, Peter) (fl. 1470?-1516?) is an English composer.
Became an Oxford BMus in 1516 after studying and practising music for thirty years. Represented in the Ritson MS by a Mass without Kyrie.

Mijn muziek (35)

2008-03-28T17:29:00.002+01:00

Edmund Sturges or Turges (1445 - 1501?) is now known from two settings of Gaude flore virginali in the Eton Choirbook, a very florid Magnificat in the Caius Choirbook, and presumably the Kyrie and Gloria ascribed to Sturges in the Ritson manuscript. A very great deal by him has been lost--three four-part Magnificats from Eton, and the eight six-part pieces listed in the 1529 King's College Inventory. The style of his music in Eton and Caius does not always argue very decidedly for an early date; but the three-part Ritson piece does have frequently crossing lower parts in the old-fashioned way.
Edmund Turges is the earliest composer in the Caius Choirbook, being represented by one work, a Magnificat, which is considered to be one of the most intricate and technically challenging works in the early tudor repertoire. He joined the Fraternity of St Nicholas (or the London Guild of Parish Clerks) in 1469. Of the other composers represnted in the Choirbook, Fayrfax and Prentes joined the Fraternity in 1502, Pasche in 1513, and Ludford in 1521. William Cornysh 'senior' joined in 1480.
No other biographical information on Turges has yet been unearthed, although his membership of the Guild indicates that he was working in or around London at this time. Roger Bowers has proposed that Turges's song From stormy wyndis may have been written around 1501, when Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon travelled to Ludlow shortly after their marriage, so the composer is likely to have died after this date.

U kunt hier luisteren naar wat maten van Turges’ muziek.

Mijn muziek (34)

2008-03-28T17:17:00.004+01:00

English composer Gilbert Banester (c. 1445 - 1487) was possibly born in London. He was Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal from 1478. He contributed a carol in florid style to the Fayrfax Manuscript, and wrote and produced pageants at Henry VII's court; his latin motets include one probably for Henry's wedding. He is represented in the Eton Choirbook.
Gilbert Banester's only work in the Eton Choirbook is the antiphon O Maria et Elizabeth. This is similar in many ways to Horwood's music, but a compact, consistently syllabic style is employed very much more widely because the text is exceptionally long. As in only two other Eton antiphons, the text is in prose; this choice of form is all the more remarkable since there are two poems ascribed to Banester, the Miracle of St Thomas (1467) and the first known version of Boccaccio in English (c. 1450). O Maria et Elizabeth is partly about the motherhood of the Virgin and of St Elizabeth, but ends with a prayer for king, church and people. The king's name is omitted, and unfortunately the three notes provided for it could fit 'Henricum', 'Edwardum', or even 'Ricardum'. In view of the allusions earlier to St Elizabeth, it is possible that the piece was composed for the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York on January 17, 1486. The tenor, in place of a regular cantus firmus, twice quotes the opening phrase from 'Benedicam te Domine', third antiphon at Lauds for the Sunday before the wedding, the first after the Octave of the Epiphany. But in spite of this it is perhaps possible that Banester's piece was written during Elizabeth's pregnancy, or after the birth of Prince Arthur in September 1486. Why should the king's name be omitted? Was the king in fact Edward (IV), whose order in the 1460s that the Eton treasures be handed over to his own St George's, Windsor could well have discouraged the scribe from perpetuating his name? The Elizabeth would then have been Edward's queen and Henry VII's mother-in-law, Elizabeth Wycleville. Banester after all appears in records as the 'king's servant' in 1471, received corrodies at two Abbeys from Edward, became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1475 and master of the choristers in 1478; he had ample reason to pray for Edward's success.

Mijn muziek (33)

2008-03-28T16:16:00.002+01:00

Thomas Pykke (also spelt as Packe) (15th century) was an English composer. Clerk at Eton from 1454 to 1461. Represented in the Ritson MS notably by two Masses, Rex summeand Gaudete in Domino,two five-part settings, of the antiphon 'Lumen ad revalationem' and of the words 'Te Dominum confitemur' from the Te Deum and a Gaude sancta Magdalena. Packe is not an outstanding composer, but some of his two-part writing compares quite favorably with that in the Eton Choirbook.

Mijn muziek (32)

2008-03-28T15:49:00.002+01:00

Nesbett (? - 1488?) is represented in the Eton Choirbook only by a Magnificat, one of the most attractive settings surviving. As in Horwood's Magnificat there is some quasi-canonic writing; this sounds decidedly archaic when compared with most of the Eton music.

Mijn muziek (31)

2008-03-28T15:35:00.002+01:00

Nothing at all is known of Hugh Kellyk (fl. late 15th century), but his five-part Magnificat and his cleverly managed seven-part Gaude flore virginali appear to be among the earlier pieces in the Eton Choirbook.

Eton Choirbook

2008-03-28T15:32:00.003+01:00

The Eton Choirbook (Eton College MS. 178) is a richly illuminated manuscript collection of English sacred music composed during the late fifteenth century. It was one of very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive the Reformation, and originally contained music by 24 different composers; however, many of the pieces are damaged or incomplete. It is one of three large choirbooks surviving from early-Tudor England (the others are the Lambeth Choirbook and the Caius Choirbook).
The Choirbook was compiled between approximately 1500 and 1505 for use at Eton College; its present binding dates from the mid 16th century. 126 folios remain of the original 224, including the index. In the original, there were a total of 93 separate compositions; however only 64 remain either complete or in part. Some of the 24 composers are known only because of their inclusion in the Eton Choirbook. John Browne has the most compositions (10), followed by Richard Davy (9) and Walter Lambe (8).
Stylistically, the music contained in the Eton Choirbook shows three phases in the development of early Renaissance polyphony in England. The first phase is represented by the music of Richard Hygons, William Horwood and Gilbert Banester. Most of the music of this early phase is polyphonic but non-imitative, with contrast achieved by alternation of full five-voice texture with sections sung by fewer voices. The second phase, which includes music by John Browne, Richard Davy and Walter Lambe, uses imitation, cantus firmus techniques, and frequent cross-relations (a feature which was to become a distinctive sound in early Tudor polyphony). The final phase represented in the choirbook includes music by William Cornysh and Robert Fayrfax, composed around 1500. Points of imitation are frequent, cantus firmus techniques disappear, and in general the sound of the music is more Continental.
All of the compositions in the book are sacred vocal music in Latin. There are 9 settings of the Magnificat, 54 motets, and one setting of the Passion.

Mijn muziek (30)

2008-03-28T15:14:00.002+01:00

Richard Hygons (c. 1435 – c. 1509) was an English composer of the early Renaissance. While only two compositions of this late 15th century composer have survived, one of them, a five-voice setting of the Salve Regina Marian antiphon, has attracted interest from musicologists because of its close relationship to music being written at the same time on the continent, as well as its high level of workmanship.
Hygons seems to have spent his entire career at Wells Cathedral; at any rate, no records survive indicating his activities elsewhere. He is first mentioned in 1458 as a vicar-choral, and in 1460 he was ordained as an acolyte. Between 1461 and 1462 he was one of the five organists that the cathedral employed. A document dated 7 December 1479 gives more detail than any other about his duties: he was given a house to use, rent-free, near to the cathedral; he was given an annual salary of a little over 96 shillings; he was to teach all aspects of music to the choristers, and was expected to teach organ to anyone who had the talent. His required presence at certain masses, Vespers, and Matins was also given in detail.
In 1487 he received a substantial raise in annual salary, and became the principal organist of the cathedral. By 1507 his health was in decline, and he appointed a deputy (Richard Bramston) to help him carry out some of his duties. He was still alive in May 1508, when he hired another assistant, and he died at Wells, probably in 1509.
Only two compositions of Hygons are known to survive: a two-voice setting of the Gaude virgo mater Christi, which appears on a single surviving leaf of a choirbook from Wells Cathedral (the enormous majority of music from the 15th and early 16th centuries was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII), and the famous Salve Regina from the Eton Choirbook.
The Salve Regina is unique among English music of the period in that its cantus firmus, drawn from the melisma on the word "caput" in the Sarum antiphon Venit ad Petrum, is the same as that from three earlier Caput masses by composers from elsewhere: Jacob Obrecht, Johannes Ockeghem, and an anonymous composer once thought to be Guillaume Dufay. Recent research has suggested that this third mass was actually by an unknown Englishman working in the early 15th century, and is the original for the later three works. The Salve Regina, being based on a votive antiphon for Maundy Thursday, was probably intended for use on that day.
The difficulty, complexity, and craftsmanship shown in Hygon's Salve Regina has suggested that the musical standards at Wells Cathedral at the end of the 15th century were high, and matched those of musical centres across the Channel.

Mijn muziek (29)

2008-03-28T10:58:00.002+01:00

Sir William Hawte (sometimes spelled Haute or Haut) (fl. 1460-1470) was an English composer about whom little is known. He was knighted in 1465, and is represented in a number of manuscript choirbooks that survive to this day. A setting of the Benedicamus may be found in the Pepys Manuscript, and a number of his works, including a Stella coeli, exist in the Ritson Manuscript.

Heilige

2008-03-28T00:27:00.007+01:00

De heilige Gontram of Gunthram (rond 545 - Chalon-sur-Saône, 28 maart 592) was de tweede zoon van de Frankische koning Chlotarius I en een broer van de koningen Charibert I van Neustrië, Chilperic I van Soissons en Sigebert I van Austrasië. Gontram werd in 561 koning van Orléans, en in 567 koning van Bourgondië, Marseille en Arles.
Hij huwde Mercatrudis, maar scheidde van haar. Toen Mercatrudis ziek werd, doodde hij haar arts. Nadien bekeerde hij zich. Gontram was een bedreven diplomaat en steunde de kerk. De deemoedige Gontram was geliefd bij het volk, maar er zijn ook bloedige gewelddaden van deze heerser bekend.
Zijn naamdag is op 28 maart. Gontram is de patroonheilige van de uit de echt gescheidenen, de moordenaars en de bewakers.

Fitna? Onruststokerij.

2008-03-27T23:50:00.009+01:00

Een tamelijk slechte film, wees eerlijk: hier is ie dan, eindelijk, want we hebben er wel láng op gewacht. Een film waartegen een mens, moslim of niet, ook moeilijk kan gaan demonstreren. Waar is bijvoorbeeld Wilders’ bewering dat je de koran wel kunt samenvoegen tot een Donald Duck? Hij haalt maar vijf of zes beweringen uit de koran aan. Dat vind ik onbegrijpelijk. Als je iets tegen de islam hebt, zul je met meer moeten aankomen. Vijf of zes foute beweringen vind ik ook, binnen een paar minuten, in onze bijbel. Daar zijn ook allerlei vervelende gevolgen uit voortgekomen, gelukkig in jaren die al ver achter ons liggen.
Maar wat Wilders zegt, kan en mag gezegd worden. Wie daartegen is, is tegen onze democratie. Onrust stoken mag. Je mag ook, op elk moment van de dag, een NSB - pardon, een PVV oprichten.

Mijn muziek (28)

2008-03-27T22:39:00.002+01:00

John Hothby (Hocby, Octobi, Ottobi, Otteby) (b c1430; d Oct or Nov 1487). English theorist and composer. His father's name was William. Nothing is known of his early life, nor where and when he became a Carmelite friar and obtained the master's degree in sacred theology. He may be identical with the John Otteby, Carmelite friar of the Oxford convent, who was ordained subdeacon on 18 December 1451 in Northampton (Emden, p.1409; the belief that Hothby studied at Oxford in 1435 rests on a mistaken identification, p.969). Before settling in Lucca, where he was installed as chaplain of the altar of S Regolo at the Cathedral of S Martino in February 1467 with the obligation to teach plainchant and polyphony, he had, by his own account (Epistola), travelled in Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain (‘Britania magiore’) and Spain. In the Excitatio quaedam musice artis he refers to his fellow student at the University of Pavia, Johannes Gallicus (here called ‘Johannes Legiensis’); this may have been before Gallicus completed his treatise Ritus canendi, by 1464. A connection with Florence and acquaintance with Lorenzo de' Medici seems to be indicated by the letter Hothby wrote to him on 17 November 1469 on behalf of a friend (ed. Seay, 1956).
Hothby was much appreciated in Lucca, both at the church and by the city fathers, who augmented his salary beginning in 1469, lest he accept another offer and leave Lucca. In 1469 he was called a lector in sacred theology. In addition to music, he taught grammar and mathematics. His fame as a teacher may be the reason for his journey to England in March 1486, at the request of Henry VII. He died ‘in Brittania’ (if Brittany, then on the return trip to Lucca, where his post was held open for him for two years) in October or November 1487.
None of Hothby's treatises exists in definitive form; they survive in multiple versions, with different titles, in both Latin and Italian and sometimes a mixture of the two. Reacting to Bartolomé Ramos's criticisms in his Musica practica (1482), Hothby says that he had kept his works back 20 years, and Ramos can only have seen faulty versions made by his students (the often incomprehensible surviving copies support this statement). F-Pn lat.7369, copied by Frater Matheus de Testadraconibus in 1471 while studying with Hothby, may indicate his curriculum: it contains treatises by Johannes de Muris, Anonymous V, Hothby's treatise on proportions, the Dialogus ascribed to Odo, and Guido's Micrologus; several of these works are also found in other manuscripts containing Hothby's writings.
Five different versions of his teachings on notation are extant. These are concerned mainly with note shapes, ligatures and mensuration, with particular emphasis on proportions, the latter also treated in two other works. Hothby was a proponent of the system of notating proportions with a combination of signs and figures (modus cum tempore signs), demonstrated in his motet Ora pro nobis. The brief counterpoint treatises, after explaining consonances, demonstrate a form of improvised counterpoint related to the English practice of sights. The Tractatus de arte contrapuncti secundum venerabilem Priorem Johannem de Anglia, published by Reaney in two versions (CSM, xxvi, 1977, pp.25–42, 43–9), is probably not by Hothby, who was not a prior; it is based on the early 15th-century Ad avere alcuna notitia del contrapunto (I-Fl Redi 71, ff.24v–28v; ed. A. Seay, Quatuor tractatuli italici de contrapuncto, Colorado Springs, CO, 1977, pp.17–24). These rather sketchy treatises probably supplement lectures based primarily on Guido and Johannes de Muris.
Two treatises of a more speculative cast are the Italian Calliopea legale, all versions of which are ‘abbreviated’, and the related Latin Tractatus quarundam regularum artis musice, the most definitive of Hothby's works, which exists in several versions with different titles and a different ordering of material; the section on the division of the monochord is also found separately. The Calliopea is divided into four sections: hexachords and mutation, melodic movement (developed from Guido's Micrologus), rhythmic movement (including notation) and intervals. Idiosyncratic terminology (‘voce’ is not a hexachord syllable but letter; B is called ‘A del secondo ordine’; notes of the hexachord are divided into principe, comite and demostratore according to their function) masks the novelty of Hothby's views. Dividing the gamut into three orders (naturals, flats and sharps), he demonstrated hexachords embracing five sharps and five flats, making it possible to sing all six syllables on each degree of the gamut, using schiere promiscue (mixed hexachords). The Tractatus goes further in adding three more orders, the fourth ranged on the division between G and A, the fifth on the division between G and A (producing quarter-tones with the first three orders), and the sixth splitting the comma into two schismata. Although he states that the last three orders have not been used in practice, in a letter to an unnamed cleric (Epistola) he describes his own keyboard instrument as having red keys for quarter-tones. The Tractatus also includes an extended discussion of intervals and modes, based on Guido, Johannes Afflighemensis (identified with Pope John XXII, a common error) and Marchetto of Padua.
Three treatises were occasioned by Hothby's dispute with Ramos. In the Excitatio he takes issue with 14 passages in Ramos's Musica practica, especially his new division of the monochord and his rejection of Guidonian solmization. The Epistola, written in Italian to an acquaintance of Ramos's, defends his position on semitones and properties. The Dialogus takes up more points of disagreement (here Ramos is not named); it also has interesting sidelights on contemporary practice, naming a number of English musicians and a mass found in the Lucca choirbook (I-La 238), which was copied in Bruges and given to Lucca Cathedral by Giovanni Arnolfini before 1472.
Hothby is commonly considered a conservative, since his teachings are based firmly on Boethius, Guido and Johannes de Muris and he rejected the innovations of Ramos. But the Calliopea and its Latin analogues show that he tackled issues that were to have far-reaching consequences. His six orders anticipate Nicola Vicentino's L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (1555), both in theory and in practical application on the keyboard, though Hothby retains Pythagorean intonation. His proposal to resolve the octave species with the diapente and diatessaron reversed (resolutiones), suggesting hypothetical modes 9–12, anticipates Glareanus's Dodecachordon. If his idiosyncratic terminology was meant to mask his avant-garde notions, he largely succeeded.
Like many theorists, Hothby also composed. Only nine works remain, copied into the Faenza codex (I-FZc 117) in the early 1470s by a fellow Carmelite, Johannes Bonadies. Probably written before he came to Lucca (perhaps with the exception of Diva panthera; a panther appears in the Lucca city arms), they are mostly undistinguished. Tard'il mio cor, in ballade form, is attractive, and the more ambitious Amor is heavily influenced by Bedyngham's O rosa bella. The English idiom is noticeable.

Mijn muziek (27)

2008-03-27T21:04:00.003+01:00

William Horwood was an English polyphonic vocal composer in the late-medieval period (c.1430–1484). In 1470, he was a singer at Lincoln Cathedral, in 1476, he was a vicar choral at Lincoln, and from 1477 until 1484, he was the Cathedral choirmaster. He has three complete pieces and one incomplete piece in the Eton Choirbook, one incomplete piece in a York manuscript.
Horwood's "Magnificat secundi toni a 5" bears a strong resemblance to compositions of his near contemporary Josquin des Prez (c. 1440-1521), so much so that he might easily be mistaken for Josquin upon first audition. No mention is made of Horwood among the listing of Josquin's contemporaries in Grout[1]; neither is the Eton Choirbook mentioned in Grout.

Mijn muziek (26)

2008-03-27T18:54:00.004+01:00

William Cornysh the Younger (1465 – October 1523) was an English composer, dramatist, actor, and poet, and much more. In his only surviving poem, which was written in Fleet Prison, he claims that he has been convicted by false information and thus wrongly accused, though it is not known what the accusation was. He may not be the composer of the music found in the Eton Choirbook, which may alternatively be by his father, also named William Cornysh, who died c 1502. The younger Cornysh had a prestigious employment at court, as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal and placed in charge of the musical and dramatic entertainments at court and during important diplomatic events such as at the Field of the Cloth of Gold and visits to and from the courts of France and the Holy Roman Empire, which he fulfilled until his death.
The Eton Choirbook (complied c 1490 - 1502) contains several works by Cornysh: Salve Regina (found in several other sources as well), Stabat mater, Ave Maria mater Dei, Gaude virgo mater Christi, and a lost Gaude flore virginali. The Caius Choirbook (c 1518-20) contains a Magnificat. Other sources refer to lost works: three Masses, another Stabat mater, another Magnificat, Altissimi potentia, and Ad te purissima virgo. He also produced secular vocal music and the notable English sacred anthem Woefully arrayed. There is also an extended and somewhat erudite three-part instrumental work based on steps of the hexachord and its mutations, Fa la sol, and another untitled piece. These secular works are found in the so-called Fayrfax Book (copied in 1501).
If all the earlier sacred music is by the same Cornysh (junior) as the secular music then he was a composer of some breadth, although not without parallel. The works by "Browne" in the Fayrfax Book display a similar difference in style to those by the John Browne of the Eton Choirbook, but are probably the same composer nonetheless. The occurrence of Cornysh's Magnificat (in the same style as the Eton works) falls nearly two decades after the death of the older Cornysh, and thus is far more likely the work of the younger Cornysh, by then by far one of the country's most important musicians. Furthermore, the works by Cornysh in the Eton Choirbook seem to be amongst the most "modern" in that collection. While they do not pursue the simplifiying approach of Fayrfax (an almost exact contemporary of Cornysh junior, and fellow at Court and Chapel), and remain in a more old-fashioned florid melodic style, they adopt proto-madrigalian manners (for example in the setting of words like "clamorosa", "crucifige" and "debellandum" in the Stabat mater) and have a particularly developed sense of tonal movement (for example, in the Stabat mater, the closing "Amen" features deliberate use of F sharps as leading notes to give a sense of tonal cadence into G, or employing E flats at "Sathanam" to give a tonal cadence onto B flat, emphasizing the "strong" nature of the text at that moment, employing the bass-movement V-I), as well as adopting a more modern sense of the expressive apoggiatura in melodic shapes and in bringing out the stresses of the Latin by such devices (for example, again the Stabat mater, the use of apoggiaturas in the Bassus part to express "ContriSTANtem et doLENtem" in the first few measures, and again at "Contemplari doLENtem cum filio?"), and the use of purely rhetorical gestures (such as the exclamation "O" by full choir in the middle of the soloists' section starting the Stabat mater). It is not impossible to see in these mannerisms the work of a great dramatist.
The works of John Browne are given pride of place in the Eton manuscript. It seems that in the examples given above that Cornysh may have been emulating Browne (his own Stabat mater features a celebrated madrigalian setting of "crucifige", and his O Maria salvatoris Mater features the exclamation "En" (="Oh") in a similar way to Cornysh's interjection in his Stabat mater).
Thus it seems that the Eton Cornysh was writing after Browne, and this would place his work amongst the later ones of the Eton Choirbook: additionally the approaches do not seem to be those of an older man, being much more suggestive of a young and original composer. The traditional ascription of all the works to Cornysh junior is the one more generally accepted. However, the possibility that the Eton works are the works of a generation earlier remains, and has interesting implications if true.
The musicologist David Skinner, in the booklet to The Cardinall's Musick's CD Latin Church Music [1], puts forward the proposition that the pre-Reformation Latin church music (including the works in the Eton manuscript) was composed by the father, whilst the son is the composer of the pieces in English and the courtly songs.

Hier zijn een Magnificat, een ander Magnificat en het lied Adew, adew, my hart is lust.

Mijn muziek (25)

2008-03-27T14:59:00.003+01:00

John Treloff (Truluffe, Truelove) (? - 1473 or 74) was an English editor and composer. Canon of Probus, Cornwall, from 1448 through the 1460s and 1470s, but probably resided at Exeter. Represented in the Ritson MS by the collection of hymns and carols that forms the oldest part (two of the three three-part settings of Nasciens mater, are by him and he may have composed a third jointly with Smert).

Mijn muziek (24)

2008-03-27T14:38:00.004+01:00

Of the life and career of the English composer John Tuder nothing is known. His works survive in two manuscripts; one secular song is preserved in a copy made in 1501, and four liturgical pieces survive in a manuscript written during the 1470s. He flourished as a composer in the second half of the fifteenth century, therefore, and his composition of works for both ecclesiastical and secular environments indicates strongly that he was employed in aristocratic service as a singing-man of the chapel of the household of some prominent member of nobility. His setting appears to have been compiled by some member of the staff of Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the years around 1475. It is a small hand-book, not a performance manuscript but some musician‘s private collection of material of interest to him. It may well be associated in some way with Robert Wydow, who was a priest of one of the chantries in Canterbury Cathedral from 1474 to 1478, and who in the latter year became the first known recipient of the degree of Bachelor of Music from Oxford University. The Lamentations survive in a manuscript now at Magdalene College, Cambridge and is part of the famous collection of Samuel Pepys.

Hier is dat deel van het Pepys manuscript.

Mijn muziek (23)

2008-03-27T14:04:00.004+01:00

Walter Frye (d. 1474?) was an English composer of the early Renaissance.
Nothing certain is known about his life. He may have been a "Walter Cantor" at Ely Cathedral between 1443 and 1466, and he may have been the Walter Frye who joined the London Parish Clerks in 1456; he also may have been the Walter Frye who left a will at Canterbury in 1474.

Most of Frye's music survives in manuscripts from the continent, which has suggested to scholars that he spent much of his time there; however stylistically his music is closer to that of other English composers than to that of the Burgundian School, the most notable contemporary movement on the continent. A reason sometimes given for the survival of his music in continental sources is that the few remaining English 15th century manuscripts rarely mention the names of composers; therefore there may be a good deal of his music which is simply anonymous. Survival of music from the period in England is sparse because most of it was destroyed during the ransacking of the monasteries carried out between 1536 and 1540 by Henry VIII.
Frye wrote masses, motets and songs, including ballades and a single rondeau. All of his surviving music is vocal, and his best-known composition is an Ave Regina, a motet which occurs, unusually, in three contemporary paintings, even including notation. Some of his shorter pieces acquired an extraordinary fame in far-away areas, such as Italy, southern Germany, Bohemia and present-day Austria, including the rondeau Tout a par moy and the ballade So ys emprentid. These songs were often copied, rearranged and plagiarized, and appear in numerous collections in varied forms.
Frye's masses, however, were his most historically significant contribution, for they influenced the music of Obrecht and Busnois. Frye's style in his masses was typical of English music of the period, using full triadic sonorities, and sometimes isorhythmic techniques; he contrasted full-voiced textures with passages for only two voices, which became a characteristic sound of the polyphony of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Three masses have survived more or less complete: the Missa Flos Regalis (for four voices), Missa Nobilis et Pulchra (three voices), and the Missa Summe Trinitati (also for three voices).

Hier is het Ave regina caelorum van Frye.

Mijn muziek (22)

2008-03-27T13:22:00.003+01:00

John Plummer (c. 1410 – c. 1483) was an English composer who flourished during the reign of Henry VI of England.
Not many of Plummer's compositions survive - only the motets Anna mater matris Christi (Anne, mother of the mother of Christ) and Tota Pulchra Es (My Love is Wholly Beautiful) are widely available, recorded by the Hilliard Ensemble. A number of Plummer's compositions appear in the manuscript Brussels Biliothèque Royale MS 5557. During his own lifetime, knowledge and performance of his works spread at least as far as the present-day Czech Republic, where pieces such as Tota Pulchra Es were copied into the Codex Speciálník (c. 1500). These pieces are unaccompanied sacred vocal music written for use in the great royal and noble chapels of northern Europe.
Plummer was a member of the English Chapel Royal at least from 1438, and was also apparently the first to hold the office of Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal from 1444 to 1455. He left the royal household towards the end of his career and moved to St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where he was a verger. This post is likely to have supported him in his declining years.

Hier is de partituur van Tota pulchra es.

Mijn muziek (21)

2008-03-27T12:56:00.001+01:00

Byttering (also Bytering, Bytteryng, or Biteryng; possible first name Thomas) (fl. c. 1400 – 1420) was an English composer during the transitional period from Medieval to Renaissance styles. Five of his compositions have survived, all of them in the Old Hall Manuscript.
A possible identification of Byttering with a Thomas Byteryng has been made. Byteryng was a canon at Hastings Castle between 1405 and 1408, and was a rector somewhere in London in 1414. There is no information on the composer in the Old Hall Manuscript other than that his surname is attached to several pieces. Those pieces stand out from many of the works in the manuscript by their relatively advanced stylistic traits.
Byttering's music includes three mass fragments — two Glorias and a Credo — a motet based on Nesciens Mater, and a substantial three-voice, isorhythmic wedding motet, En Katerine solennia/Virginalis contio/Sponsus amat sponsum, his best-known work, which was almost certainly written for the wedding on June 2, 1420, of King Henry V and Catherine of Valois.
The four-voice Gloria, No. 18 in the Old Hall MS, is one of the most complex canons of the early 15th century, and represents what was probably the extreme of stylistic differentiation between English and continental practice. Canons in continental sources are extremely rare, but there are seven in the Old Hall MS, and Byttering's is the only one with the standard arrangement of the same tune in all four voices.

Mijn muziek (20)

2008-03-27T10:11:00.002+01:00

Roy Henry ("King" Henry) (fl. around 1410) was an English composer, almost certainly a king of England, probably Henry V, but also possibly Henry IV. His music, two compositions in all, appears in a position of prominence in the Old Hall Manuscript.
Musicologists have not been able to agree on which English monarch wrote the two mass movements which appear, at the head of their respective sections, in the Old Hall Manuscript. Henry V, who reigned from 1413 to 1422, was known to have cultivated music in his youth (even Shakespeare alludes to this). An early biography of Henry V states:
"...he was in his youth a diligent follower of idle practices, much given to instruments of music, and fired with the torches of Venus herself."
Henry IV, who reigned from 1399 to 1413, was already in his declining years during the period in which the music was most likely written, since stylistic evidence places it around 1410. In addition, there is somewhat less evidence of his being an accomplished musician than his son. Since the portion of the manuscript containing Roy Henry's music may have been compiled somewhat later, it is possible that Henry V was king while the scribe transcribed his music, hence would have been given the name "Roy" Henry, even though he had written it during the "dissolute" years of his youth. Alas for biographers, the music contains no reference to a Sir John Falstaff.
Recent research has shown that work on the Old Hall Manuscript probably ceased on the death of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, in 1421. Since Thomas was King Henry V's brother, and his chapel's musicians are now known to have included Leonel Power, and the manuscript itself passed to Henry V's chapel on the death of Thomas, the weight of evidence is beginning to favor Henry V as the identity of Roy Henry.
Roy Henry's music consists of two movements of the ordinary of the mass: a Gloria and a Sanctus, both for three voices, and written in a fairly low register. The music itself is skillfully written, and unusually for the time, no specific plainchant can be identified as a source; both pieces may be freely composed, or the underlying chant may be part of the enormous lost repertory of music from the early 15th century, hence unidentifiable (the vast majority of manuscripts of the time were destroyed in the 1530s during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries).

Mijn muziek (19)

2008-03-27T00:35:00.003+01:00

Leonel Power (1370 to 1385 – June 5, 1445) was an English composer of the late Medieval and early Renaissance eras. Along with John Dunstaple, he was one of the major figures in English music in the early 15th century.
A few details of his life are known with certainty, and some others are speculative. He was probably from Kent, and likely born between 1370 and 1385, based on stylistic evidence of his music as well as his probable age during his known appointments.
A suggestion that he was of Irish origin comes from W.H.G. Flood's 1905 A History of Irish Music, but this is usually discounted by modern scholars, since Flood is not known to have had any other sources on Power's life besides what is currently available.[1]
Prior to 1421 he was employed by Thomas, Duke of Clarence, as a clerk and as the instructor to the choristers. In 1423 he joined Christ Church, Canterbury, as a lay member; he probably served as a choirmaster there, and later served in the chapel of the Duke of Bedford.[2]
He died on 5 June 1445 and was buried on the next day; several notices of his death survive.
While Power's output was slightly less than Dunstaple's (only 40 existent piece considered as his work without dispute), his influence was similar. He is the composer best-represented in the Old Hall Manuscript, one of the only undamaged sources of English music from the early 15th century (most manuscripts were destroyed by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries). He was the one of the first person who started to connect ordinary movements, in the Old Hall Manuscript, it has stylitically similar four ordinary movements. Moreover, mass Alma Redemptoris mater has clear unity between inner movements, as title suggest, every movement based on the same named antiphon.
He wrote in a variety of styles, bridging the late medieval and early Renaissance eras.

2008-03-27T00:35:00.000+01:00

Engelse Renaissance-muziek

2008-03-26T21:19:00.004+01:00

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600. Defining the beginning of the era is difficult, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the 15th century. The process by which music acquired "Renaissance" characteristics was a gradual one, and musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s. In addition, the Italian humanist movement, rediscovering and reinterpreting the aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome, influenced the development of musical style during the period.
The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances: see interval). Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century: the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music – in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them.
The modal (as opposed to tonal) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths. This later developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality.
Principal liturgical forms which endured throughout the entire Renaissance period were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular forms (such as the madrigal) for their own designs.
Common sacred genres were the mass, the motet, the madrigale spirituale, and the laude.
During the period, secular music had an increasingly wide distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is irretrievably lost. Secular music included songs for one or many voices, forms such as the frottola, chanson and madrigal.
Secular vocal genres included the madrigal, the frottola, the caccia, the chanson in several forms (rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée), the canzonetta, the villancico, the villanella, the villotta, and the lute song. Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared.
Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorder or viol and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common genres were the toccata, the prelude, the ricercar, the canzona, and intabulation (intavolatura, intabulierung). Instrumental ensembles for dances might play a basse danse (or bassedanza), a pavane, a galliard, an allemande, or a courante.
Towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody, the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio are seen.
According to Margaret Bent (1998), "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness."
Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve. These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes.
Accidentals were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations (tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." See musica ficta. A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together musicians would avoid parallel octaves and fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians (Bent, 1998).
It is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about what accidentals were performed by the original practitioners.

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era," taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively; however it is worth remembering that these names are rather misleading: Shakespeare was not an especially famous writer in his own time, and the English Renaissance covers a period both before and after Elizabeth's reign.
Poets such as Edmund Spencer and John Milton produced works that demonstrated an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queen and the retelling of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost; playwrights, such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the English take on life, death, and history. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty, philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of a perfect society, pushing the limits of metacognition at that time. England came closer to reaching modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method.
The English Renaissance differs from the Italian Renaissance in several ways. First, the dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music, and the Visual arts were much less significant than in the Italian Renaissance. The English period began far later than the Italian, which is usually considered to begin with Dante, Petrarch and Giotto in the early 1300s, and was moving into Mannerism and the Baroque by the 1550s or earlier. In contrast, the English Renaissance can only be said to begin, shakily, in the 1520s, and continued until perhaps 1620.
The Italian and English Renaissances were similar in sharing a specific musical aesthetic. In the late 16th century Italy was the musical center of Europe, and one of the principal forms which emerged from that singular explosion of musical creativity was the madrigal. In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published in England the Musica transalpina—a collection of Italian madrigals "Englished"—an event which touched off a vogue of madrigal in England which was almost unmatched in the Renaissance in being an instantaneous adoption of an idea, from another country, adapted to local aesthetics. (In a delicious irony of history, a military invasion from a Catholic country—Spain—failed in that year, but a cultural invasion, from Italy, succeeded). English poetry was exactly at the right stage of development for this transplantation to occur, since forms such as the sonnet were uniquely adapted to setting as madrigals (indeed, the sonnet was already well-developed in Italy). Composers such as Thomas Morley, the only contemporary composer to set Shakespeare, and whose work survives, published collections of their own, roughly in the Italian manner but yet with a unique Englishness; many of the compositions of the English Madrigal School remain in the standard repertory in the 21st century.
The colossal polychoral productions of the Venetian School had been anticipated in the works of Thomas Tallis, and the Palestrina style from the Roman School had already been absorbed prior to the publication of Musical transalpina, in the music of masters such as William Byrd.
While the Classical revival led to a flourishing of Italian Renaissance architecture, architecture in Britain took a more eclectic approach. Elizabethan architecture retained many features of the Gothic, even while the occasional building such as the tomb in the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, or the French-influenced architecture of Scotland showed interest in the new style.
The notion of calling this period "The Renaissance" is a modern invention, having been popularized by the historian Jacob Burckhardt in the nineteenth century. The idea of the Renaissance has come under increased criticism by many cultural historians, and some have contended that the "English Renaissance" has no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the northern Italian artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello) who are closely identified with the Renaissance. Indeed, England had already experienced a flourishing of literature over 200 years before the time of Shakespeare when Geoffrey Chaucer was working. Chaucer's popularizing of English as a medium of literary composition rather than Latin was only 50 years after Dante had started using Italian for serious poetry. At the same time William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and John Gower were also writing in English. The Hundred Years' War and the subsequent civil war in England known as the Wars of the Roses probably hampered artistic endeavour until the relatively peaceful and stable reign of Elizabeth I allowed drama in particular to develop. Even during these war years, though, Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte D'Arthur, was a notable figure. For this reason, scholars find the singularity of the period called the English Renaissance questionable; C. S. Lewis, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge, famously remarked to a colleague that he had "discovered" that there was no English Renaissance, and that if there had been one, it had "no effect whatsoever"
Historians have also begun to consider the word "Renaissance" as an unnecessarily loaded word that implies an unambiguously positive "rebirth" from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages. Some historians have asked the question "a renaissance for whom?," pointing out, for example, that the status of women in society arguably declined during the Renaissance. Many historians and cultural historians now prefer to use the term "early modern" for this period, a neutral term that highlights the period as a transitional one that led to the modern world, but does not have any positive or negative connotations.
Other cultural historians have countered that, regardless of whether the name "renaissance" is apt, there was undeniably an artistic flowering in England under the Tudor monarchs, culminating in Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
The key literary figures in the English Renaissance are now generally considered to be the poet Edmund Spenser; the philosopher Francis Bacon; the poets and playwrights Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; and the poet John Milton. Sir Thomas More is often considered one of the earliest writers of the English Renaissance. Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, and William Byrd were the most notable English musicians of the time, and are often seen as being a part of the same artistic movement that inspired the above authors. Elizabeth herself, a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, wrote occasional poems like On Monsieur’s Departure at critical moments of her life

Mijn muziek (18)

2008-03-26T20:38:00.004+01:00

Hayne van Ghizeghem (c. 1445 – 1472 or possibly later; New Grove says he died between 1472 and 1497) was a Flemish composer of the early Renaissance Burgundian School. He was probably born in Gijzegem (near Ghent, in modern Belgium) and may have died at the Siege of Beauvais.
While many of his works have survived, little is known about his life. His musical talent must have been noticed early by Charles, Count of Charolais (later to become Charles the Bold) because there is a record of his being personally assigned to a teacher by him; in 1467 he is shown in the Burgundian employment records as being a singer. In addition, he was named along with Adrien Basin and Antoine Busnois as "chantre et valet de chambre" to Charles, indicating the special regard in which he was held.
In addition to serving as a singer and composer, he evidently served as a soldier as well, for there is a record of purchase of military equipment for him, prior to the campaign against Liège by Charles. Charles took his musicians along with him on his campaigns, because he loved music as much as war, and insisted on entertainment; however Hayne was the only one of his famous musicians known to be also outfitted as a soldier. He is known to have been at the Siege of Beauvais in 1472, where Charles was decisively repulsed by the French, and Hayne was long presumed by scholars to have been killed in that battle. However, recent research into his surviving compositions indicates that some may have been produced after 1472, especially because they seem to show stylistic development beyond the ones that can be definitively dated to 1472 or before. Current scholarship suggests he may have survived the siege, and gone to work at the court of France. That such a distinguished singer and composer worked for France's bitter rival would have been an offense easy to forgive, for Burgundian musicians of the time were highly prized.
Hayne is principally known as a composer of chansons, and most of these are rondeaux. Two in particular—Allez regrets, and De tous biens plaine—were so famous in late 15th century Europe that they appeared in 25 separate sources, many dating from before the invention of printing, and they were used as source material for many later compositions by other composers. Almost all of his works are for three voices; they are simple and clear in texture, in the typical manner of the Burgundian school; and the melodic voice is the highest.
Eleven pieces can be definitively attributed to Hayne, though numerous similar works classified as "anonymous" may actually be compositions of his.

Hier is een stukje muziek van Van Ghizeghem.

Mijn muziek (17)

2008-03-26T20:30:00.002+01:00

Adrien Basin (fl. 1457 – 1476; died after 1498) was a Franco-Flemish composer, singer, and diplomat of the Burgundian school of the early Renaissance. He was listed along with Antoine Busnois and Hayne van Ghizeghem as one of the personal singers to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
Little is known about his early life, and he first appears in the records as a singer to Isabella de Bourbon, who was the wife of Charles the Bold. Later he seems to have joined the personal chapel of Charles, when Charles became Duke. Unlike many of the musicians of the Burgundian court, who traveled along with Charles on his military exploits (who loved music as much as war, and enjoyed having musical entertainment during his military adventures), Basin seems to have remained in Bruges most of the time. After the death of Charles at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, Basin served the court as a diplomat, according to records from the 1480s. The last record of his life is dated to 1498, when he was named as heir to his brother Pierre.
All of Basin's surviving music is secular, although some of the anonymous music in the manuscripts of the time may be by him. Of his secular songs, one became immensely popular. Nos amys vous vous abusés was used by several later composers, including Tinctoris, as a source for mass settings, and numerous copies of the song have been found, some in collections as far away as Poland and Portugal. Before the advent of music printing at the beginning of the 16th century, such distribution is rare, and generally shows the popularity of a piece.
Dates of composition of Basin's songs are not known, but probably they were written during the period when he was a singer for Charles. If he wrote later music, either it has not survived, or has survived anonymously.

Mijn muziek (16)

2008-03-26T20:16:00.004+01:00

Robert Morton (c.1430 – after March 13, 1479) was an English composer of the early Renaissance, mostly active at the Burgundian court. He was highly regarded at the time. Only secular vocal music, all rondeaux for three voices, survive.
Little can be reconstructed with certainty about his life except where his activity intersects with the Burgundian court. He was born in England, but no details of his early life are known. From 1457 until 1476 he was a clerc or chappellain in the chapel choir, and unusually he never was promoted to a higher position. By 1460 he was a priest, since he was given that title Messire in chapel documents.
The long relatively peaceful period at the court under Philip the Good's reign ended with Philip's death in 1467, and under his successor Charles the Bold, the musical activities of the court were seriously disrupted; many of the singers and composers, including Hayne van Ghizeghem, took part in his many futile military campaigns. Morton must have known Hayne rather well, for an anonymous piece survives which describes the virtuosic singing and playing of the two of them together at Cambrai.
Payment records for Morton end in 1476, and it was long assumed that he died then; however more recent evidence from the Vatican archive shows that he was alive as late as 1479, since he resigned a Dutch parish then.
There is a possibility, never established or fully investigated, that he may be the same Robert Morton who became Bishop of Worcester, and who died in 1497. Evidence for this connection includes the complete lack of documentation for the bishop between 1456 and 1476, when Morton was active in the Burgundian court, and the presence of Cardinal John Morton, uncle of the future bishop, in Burgundy at exactly the time when Robert disappears from the payment rolls.
Given the almost complete elimination of 15th century music manuscripts in England, largely by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, it is not surprising that most of Morton's music survives in sources from the Continent, and if he was ever active as a musician in his native land, all trace is lost. Eight pieces survive, all rondeaux. One of the most famous of them is the earliest known setting of the tune l'homme arme, which was used by many early Renaissance composers as a cantus firmus for the Mass. This piece, a quodlibet, is probably datable to May 1464; it seems to have been written as a departure gift for another court composer, Simon le Breton.
Another of his rondeaux, Le souvenir de vous me tue, was exceedingly famous, and copies of this piece were widely disseminated in Europe.
All of Morton's surviving music is in French, not surprising since it all dates from his time in Burgundy. Melodically it is somewhat simpler than the music of his contemporaries such as Hayne or Antoine Busnois.
The music theorist and writer Johannes Tinctoris wrote glowingly of Morton, mentioning that he was "world-famous". Even though much of his music must have been lost—including any sacred music—he seems to have been influential on other composers at the court of Burgundy, and several of his compositions were used as source material for masses by later composers, including Josquin Desprez.

Works, attribution considered secure:
Cousine trop vous abusés (rondeau, 3vv)
Il sera pour vous conbatu/L'homme armé (quodlibet; rondeau, 3vv; in another source a fourth voice is added)
Le souvenir de vous me tue (rondeau, 3vv)
Mon bien ma joyeux (rondeau, 3vv)
N'aray je jamais mieulx que j'ay (rondeau, 3vv)
Paracheve ton entreprise (rondeau, 3vv)
Plus j'ay le monde (rondeau, 3vv)
Que pourroit plus faire une dame (rondeau, 3vv)
Doubtful:
C'est temps perdu
Elend du hast umbfangen mich (also known as Vive ma dame par amours)
Pues serviçio vos desplaze
Vien avante morte dolente

Mijn muziek (15)

2008-03-26T19:43:00.003+01:00

(Manuscript of Missa O Crux Lignum, a mass by Busnois. The date is not certain but probably mid 15th century.)

Antoine Busnois (also Busnoys) (c. 1430 – November 6, 1492) 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. He was the leading figure of the late Burgundian school after the death of Guillaume Dufay.
While details of his early life are largely conjectural, he was probably from the vicinity of Béthune in the Pas de Calais, possibly from the hamlet of Busnes, to which his name seems to refer. He may have been related to the aristocratic family of Busnes; in particular, a Philippe de Busnes, canon of Notre-Dame in Lens, could have been a relative. He clearly received an excellent musical education, probably at a church choir school somewhere in northern or central France. An aristocratic origin may explain his early association with the French royal court: as early as the 1450s references to him appear there, and in 1461 he was a chaplain at Tours. That he was not entirely a man of peace is indicated by a petition for absolution he filed in Tours, dated February 28, 1461, 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.[1] 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 Ockeghem was treasurer at that institution, and the two composers seem to have known each other well. Later in 1465 Busnois moved to Poitiers, where he not only became "maîtrise" (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; no reason was given, but the former maîtrise was given his old job back. Busnois then 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 on June 15, since one of his motets — in hydraulis — contains a dedication indicating that he was still Count. Charles, on becoming Duke of Burgundy, quickly became known as Charles the Bold, for his fierce and sometimes reckless military ambitions (which indeed got him killed ten years later). In addition to his love of war, however, Charles loved music, and in his employ Busnois was appreciated and rewarded. Also in 1467 Busnois was listed along with Hayne van Ghizeghem and Adrien Basin as a "chantre et valet de chambre" to Charles.
In addition to his duties as a singer and a composer, Busnois accompanied the Duke on his military campaigns, as did Hayne van Ghizeghem. Busnois was at the siege of Neuss in Germany in 1475, and survived (or did not attend) 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 of St. Sauveur in Bruges. Throughout this time he was exceptionally well-known as a composer, and his music circulated widely.
The contemporary reputation of Busnois was immense; he was the probably the best-known musician in Europe between the time of Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem.
Busnois wrote sacred and secular music. Of his sacred music, two cantus firmus masses and eight motets survive (most likely many others are lost). He wrote several settings of the Marian antiphon Regina coeli. Stylistically, his music can be heard as a mid-point between the simplicity and homophonic textures of Dufay and Binchois, and the pervading imitation of Josquin and Gombert. He uses imitation skillfully but occasionally, writes smooth and singable melodic lines, and has a strong feeling for triadic sonorities, anticipating 16th-century practice.
According to Pietro Aron, Busnois may have been the composer of the famous tune L'homme armé, one of the most widely distributed melodies of the Renaissance, and the one more often used than any other as a cantus firmus for mass composition. Whether or not he wrote the first mass based on L'homme armé, his was by far the most influential; Obrecht's mass, for example, closely parallels the setting by Busnois, and even the mass by Dufay quotes from it directly. Busnois may even be the composer of a cycle of six masses all based on the same tune, found in Naples, based on stylistic comparison.
Busnois also wrote chansons, French secular songs, and these are the work on which his reputation mainly rests. Most are rondeaux, but they include some bergerettes as well; many of these compositions became popular songs, and some were perhaps based on popular songs, now lost. He probably wrote his own texts for almost every one. Some of his tunes were used as source material for cantus firmus mass composition more than a generation after he died, for instance Fortuna desperata (which was used both by Obrecht and Josquin). An unusual chanson is Terrible dame, which not only is an antiphonal dialogue, unique in the chanson literature, but has an Old French title which requires no specialized skill to translate.
While most of Busnois's secular songs are based on French texts, there are also at least two on Italian texts and one on a Flemish text. Most are for three voices, although there are a few for four.

Hier is een liedje.

Mijn muziek (14)

2008-03-26T19:14:00.003+01:00

Gilles Joye (1424 or 1425 – December 31, 1483) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. A member of the Burgundian school, he was known mainly for his secular songs which were in a lyrical and graceful style.
He may have come from Kortrijk, since an Oliver Joye, possibly his father, has been identified there in 1420. Gilles seems to have had an excellent musical education, probably at either Kortrijk or Bruges, where he was hired as a singer in 1449. Documents from the cathedral archives show that he was often in trouble: engaging in street brawls, frequenting brothels, refusing to take part in regular singing events, and in particular visiting a notorious prostitute of the town named "Rosabelle". In spite of these activities, he was made a priest, and became a canon at Cleves in 1453 and at St. Donatian in 1459.
Between 1454 and 1459 no record of his activities survives in the Low Countries; based on his composition of an Italian ballata on a poem by a contemporary Florentine, it has been suggested that he spent some time in Italy, as did so many other Franco-Flemish composers of his and succeeding generations. By 1459 he was back at St. Donatian in Bruges.
In 1462 he was hired as a singer by the Burgundian court chapel, a position he retained officially until 1471, although he had ceased to perform his duties in 1468. Between 1465 and 1473 he was also a rector at Delft. After 1471 he most likely returned to St. Donatian. He died in Bruges, and was buried in the church of St. Donatian.
A portrait of Joye has survived, possibly painted by Hans Memling in 1472. Currently it is in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
All of Joye's surviving music is vocal and secular, and for three voices only. Four of his works are rondeaux, in French (though the text for one rondeau is lost), and one is an Italian ballata, probably written between 1454 and 1459 when he may have been in Italy. Joye's songs are typical of the Burgundian secular music of the period; they are melodic, clear, and lyrical in style. One of them, Ce qu'on fait, is frankly obscene. No sacred music is known for certain to have been written by Joye, but two anonymous masses based on the contemporary lyric O rosa bella have been attributed to Joye for stylistic reasons; in addition, the similarity of O rosa bella to the name of his favorite prostitute, along with the general irreverent character evident in his life and other work, may support this hypothesis.
Joye is one of the composers mentioned in Guillaume Crétin's famous poem Déploration sur le trépas de Jean Ockeghem written on the death of Johannes Ockeghem in 1497; in it he is one of the angels welcoming Ockeghem into Heaven. The composers mentioned by Crétin have long been used as a list of those considered most famous in the late 15th century, thus indicating Joye's reputation, in spite of the small number of his works which have survived.

Works:
Ce qu'on fait a catimini (3 voices, rondeau, in French)
Mercy mon dueil je ne supplied (3 voices, rondeau, in French)
Non pas que je veuille penser (3 voices, rondeau, in French)
Textless rondeau, also for three voices
Poy ché crudel Fortuna et rio Distino (3 voices, ballata, in Italian).

Mijn muziek (13)

2008-03-26T16:14:00.003+01:00

Hugo de Lantins (fl. 1420 – 1430) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Medieval era and early Renaissance. He was active in Italy, especially Venice, and wrote both sacred and secular music; he may have been a relative of Arnold de Lantins, another composer active at the same time in the same area.
Little is known about his life, except that he was probably in Venice during the 1420s, for he wrote ceremonial music for Doge Francesco Foscari, and also his music appears in several collections from that city. Evidently he wrote music for the wedding of Cleofe Malatesta and Theodore Palaiologos, Prince of Sparta, in 1421, since precise topical details occur in the text to the music. He almost certainly was known to Dufay, since both composers wrote music for some of the same events, and Dufay mentioned him in the text to one of the compositions he wrote during his stay in Rimini with the Malatesta family (1420–1424).
Hugo's music is more forward looking than that of Arnold, making use of imitation, which was to become the prevailing musical device for the next hundred years and more; indeed, imitation is more prevalent in the music of Hugo de Lantins than in the music of any other composer of the early 15th century. Most of Hugo's music is for three voices, though occasionally he added a fourth.
Several sections of masses have survived, but none complete, as well as five motets, one of which is isorhythmic. In the secular music category he wrote many rondeaux, all in French, as well as some ballate in Italian (almost certainly for the royal wedding of the Malatesta family).

Mijn muziek (12)

2008-03-26T15:59:00.002+01:00

Arnold de Lantins (fl. 1420s, d. before July 2, 1432) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Medieval era and early Renaissance. He is one of a few composers who shows aspects of both medieval and Renaissance style, and was a contemporary of Dufay during that composer's sojourn in Italy.
Very little is known about his life, except for a few years in the 1420s to around 1430. It is presumed that he was from Flanders or adjacent areas. In the early 1420s he was probably in the service of the Malatesta family in either Rimini or Pesaro, since Dufay mentioned him in the text of a rondeau which was written between 1420 and 1424. Lantins was in Venice in 1428 and Rome in 1431, in the latter city as a singer in the papal chapel choir, along with Dufay. He was only in Rome six months; after that he disappears from history. Rome was entering a period of turmoil related to the Conciliar movement after the death in February 1431 of Pope Martin V; many musicians left at that time or shortly after, and Lantins may have been one of them.
It is not known for certain if Arnold de Lantins was a relative of Hugo de Lantins, a composer active at the same time, but since their works often appear together in collections and they seem to have been in the same geographical regions, it is not unlikely. (A sharp stylistic difference between the works of the two composers shows they can not be the same person.)
Arnold's music was held in high regard, and appears alongside that of Dufay, Gilles Binchois and Johannes Ciconia in contemporary manuscript collections. In particular, one motet — Tota pulchra es — is found in widely distributed sources; since this was before advent of printing technology, wide distribution of copies is taken as evidence of a composer's fame and popularity. Arnold wrote a complete mass, found in Bologna Q15 (all the movements are found in OX 213 although the last two movements are separated - only the first three movements are found in Bologna 2216), as well as several parts of a composite mass in Bologna Q15 augmenting movements written by Johannes Ciconia. Several other examples exist of composers adding movements to partial masses written by other composers, for example Zacara da Teramo, particularly in Bologna Q15. Musically Arnold's mass movements are fairly simple, using three voices, head motif technique, and avoiding imitative writing. Some of his other sacred music, such as his Marian motets, contain florid melodic writing and some use of imitation.
He also wrote secular music, including ballades and rondeaux, all of which are in French, as well as a few shorter sacred pieces. Some of them refer to specific events or specific people, but none of either have been conclusively identified.

Mijn muziek (11)

2008-03-26T15:52:00.002+01:00

Reginaldus Libert (Reginald; also Liebert) (fl. c. 1425 – 1435) was a French composer of the early Renaissance. He was a minor member of the Burgundian School, a contemporary of Guillaume Dufay, and one of the first to use fauxbourdon in a mass setting.
Little to nothing is known of his life. He may be the same as a Reginaldus who was employed at the cathedral in Cambrai as a singing teacher to the boys in 1424.
Four compositions by Libert have been identified. Two are rondeaux, which the popular type of French chanson at the time. Both rondeaux are for three voices with only the uppermost voice being supplied with a text (instruments were often used for the other parts, especially in the music of the Burgundians).[1]
His most famous composition is a complete setting of the mass, for three voices, which contains some of the earliest use of fauxbourdon.[2] An unusual feature of this mass is that it contains music not only for the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) but the Proper as well; in this regard it resembles the Missa Sancti Jacobi of Guillaume Dufay, which is often considered to be the earliest example of fauxbourdon to which the term was applied by the composer.[3] Libert's mass uses a plainsong source which permeates all the movements, and migrates from voice to voice.[4] Stylistically, this mass, as well as his other compositions, fit the period around 1430.
Libert also wrote a setting of the Kyrie for four voices. Both this Kyrie and the complete mass survive in the Trent Codices.[5]

Mijn muziek (10)

2008-03-26T15:26:00.002+01:00

Johannes Legrant (fl. c. 1420 – 1440) was a French or Burgundian composer of the early Renaissance.
Little is known for certain about his life, and as is common for composers of the early 15th century, there are problems of identification in the existing records. In 1423 and 1424, he may have been a vicar at St. Vincent in Soignes, a collegiate church with an active music establishment. Antwerp Cathedral's records mention a 'Heer Jan le Grant' as a singer there from 1441 to 1443, and this may also have been him.
All of Legrant's surviving music is vocal. His style is related to that of the early Burgundian School, and resembles some of the early work of Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois; influence may have gone either way. He wrote elegant melodic lines in the Burgundian manner, and used the secular forms which were typical of the Burgundians: the rondeau and the ballade. Imitation is also prominent in his work.[1]
In addition to his secular music – four rondeaux and a ballade – four sacred pieces have survived, including two settings of the Gloria of the mass, for two and three voices, and a three voice Credo.
It is not known if he is related to Guillaume Legrant, a slightly better-known contemporary of Johannes. The one ballade attributed to Johannes has also been suggested to be the work of Guillaume based on stylistic characteristics.[2]

Mijn muziek (9)

2008-03-26T15:09:00.003+01:00

Johannes Brassart (also Jean Brasart) (c. 1400 – before October 22, 1455) was a Burgundian composer of the early Renaissance. Of his output, only sacred vocal music has survived, and it typifies early 15th century practice.
He most likely was born in the town of Lowaige in the province of Limburg, though the date is only known approximately. From 1422 to 1431 he was at the church of St. Jean l'Evangéliste in Liège, where he was a succentor. In the mid 1420s he visited Rome, moving there in 1431, where he was employed in the papal chapel as a singer and probably as a composer as well; he was in the choir at the same time as composers Arnold de Lantins and Guillaume Dufay. During this period Brassart most likely composed the motet O flos fragrans, which was popular enough to appear in several manuscripts of the time, as well as Te dignitas presularis.
In 1432 Brassart went to Basle, where he was a singer at the Council chapel, and two years later Emperor Sigismund employed him as rector of the chapel, a post which he retained until 1443. In 1445 he moved to Liège, where he had a post at the collegiate church of St. Paul. A notice of October 22, 1455 of a supplication for his benefice there indicates he had recently died.
Survival of music from this age is spotty, and many sources of music from Liège were destroyed when Charles the Bold sacked the city in 1468. Nevertheless, some of Brassart's music has survived, including 11 motets, 8 introits, and many individual mass movements.
His music is typical of the early Burgundian style, using fauxbourdon techniques (frequent 6-3 parallelism in two voices singing above the principal melody part in the tenor voice), isorhythm, and the Burgundian under-third cadence. All of his surviving music is sacred, and includes mass movements, introits, and numerous motets; one of his pieces is on a German text, and almost certainly was written during his employment with the Imperial chapel. Often he used cantus firmus techniques, and frequently wrote with the melodic part in the top voice.
The introits are among the earliest known polyphonic settings of this section of the Proper of the Mass.
The mass movements, all for three voices, most often employ the fauxbourdon style, while the motets are typically isorhythmic. Many of the motets are for four voices. One of the distinguishing features of his motet style is the frequent use of an opening duet for two high voices, after which the remaining voices join in; this was to become a hallmark of the Burgundian style. His most famous motet, O flos fragrans, is modeled on a similar work by Dufay, and the two composers may have known each other well.

Heilige

2008-03-26T10:28:00.002+01:00

Liudger (Zuilen bij Utrecht, 742 - bij Billerbeck, 26 maart 809) was een Nederlandse missionaris en rooms-katholieke bisschop. Later aangeduid als de 'apostel der Groningers' was hij een 8e eeuwse missionaris in het gebied der Friezen. Het grootste deel van de huidige provincie Groningen was toen Fries gebied. Hij voltooide het werk waarvan evangeliepredikers als Willibrord en Bonifatius de grondleggers zijn geweest.
Liudgers grootvader was een Friese edelman die naar Luik was gevlucht. Daar kwam hij in aanraking met het christendom en bekeerde zich tot dit geloof. Zijn zoon trouwde met een vrome christin en uit dit huwelijk werd Liudger geboren. Na een vooropleiding bij Gregorius van Utrecht stuurden zijn ouders hem naar York in Engeland. Daar stond de beroemdste school van West-Europa onder leiding van Alcuinus. Later kreeg deze geleerde van naam de hofschool van Karel de Grote onder zijn hoede.
In 777 begon Liudger zijn apostelwerk in Deventer. Van daaruit breidden zijn werkzaamheden zich uit naar het noorden, tot in de verste uithoeken van het Friese Zeerijk. Aan het eind van iedere zomer zeilde hij vanuit Stavoren naar Utrecht om daar tijdens de herfstmaanden les te geven aan de kloosterschool.
Zijn voorgangers, met name Bonifatius, hadden weinig succes geboekt in de noordelijke streken. Liudger had echter het grote voordeel dat hij de landstaal sprak. Ook had Karel de Grote in 783 Widukind verslagen, waardoor het gebied ten oosten van de Lauwers bij het Frankische rijk kwam. In 786 kreeg Liudger de opdracht Hugmerchi, Hunusga, Fivilga, Emisga, Federitga en het eiland Bant te kerstenen. Hierin zijn de Groninger gouwen en de Oostfriese gebieden Eemsgo en Federgo te herkennen. Het eiland Bant is verdwenen in het oostfriese wad.
Rond 700 reisde Willibrord naar het eiland Fositeland (het huidige Helgoland) om het eiland te kerstenen, wat niet lukte.[1] Circa 785 reisde vervolgens Liudger af naar dit eiland en vernielde daar alles wat met de verering van de god Fosite te maken had, bouwde er een kerk en kerstende het eiland inclusief de heidens heilige waterbron.[2][3]
In 796 stichtte Liudger een klooster in Werden, thans een stadsdeel van Essen, aan de Ruhr. Om van dit klooster een centrum van beschaving en geleerdheid te maken, gaf hij al zijn bezittingen aan het klooster. Ook in de streken die hij gekerstend heeft werden aan dit klooster zeer veel schenkingen gedaan. Nadien werd Liudger de eerste bisschop van Münster. Ook de Groninger gouwen hoorden bij dit diocees.
Een grote rol in Liudgers succes heeft volgens de levensbeschrijving door zijn oomzegger Altfridus zijn genezing van de blinde bard Bernlef gespeeld. Tijdens één van zijn reizen door het Groningerland ontmoette Liudger de blinde bard in Helwerd. Hij trachtte Bernlef tot het christendom te bekeren. Bernlef zou daarop tegen Liudger hebben gezegd: "Als uw God zo machtig is, toon mij dan een teken". De heilige legde daarop zijn handen op de ogen van de bard en sprak een gebed uit. Hierna kon de blinde weer zien.

Mijn muziek (8)

2008-03-25T23:58:00.004+01:00

Gilles Binchois, also known as Gilles de Binche or Gilles de Bins (c. 1400 – September 20, 1460), was a Franco-Flemish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian School, and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple, at least 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 from Mons, the son of Jean and Johanna de Binche, who may have been from the nearby town of Binche. His father was a councillor 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 Ste. Waudru in Mons. In 1423 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, and by the time of his motet Nove cantum melodie (1431) he was evidently a singer there, since the text of the motet itself lists all 19 singers.
He retired to Soignes, evidently with a substantial pension for his long years of excellent service to the Burgundian court.
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 appeared in copies decades after his death, 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; a greater contrast between Binchois and the extreme complexity of the ars subtilior of the previous century would be hard to imagine. Most of his secular songs are rondeaux, which became the most common song form during the century. Binchois, however, rarely wrote in strophic form, but instead shaped his melody independently of the verse's rhyme scheme.
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.

Een eigenaardig melodietje schreef Binchois, luistert u hier maar eens naar.

Mijn muziek (7)

2008-03-25T20:35:00.006+01:00

Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397? – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.
From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels. He was the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt.[1] 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; he studied with Rogier de Hesdin during the summer of 1409, and he was listed as a choirboy in the cathedral from 1409 to 1412. During those years he studied with Nicolas Malin, and the 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. Later that year he probably went to the Council of Konstanz, staying possibly until 1418, at which time he returned to Cambrai.
From November 1418 to 1420 he was a subdeacon at Cambrai Cathedral. In 1420 he left Cambrai again, this time going to 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 again 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. Cardinal Aleman was driven from Bologna by the rival Canedoli family in 1428, and Dufay also left at this time, going to Rome. He became a member of the Papal Choir, serving first Pope Martin V, and then after the death of Pope Martin in 1431, Pope Eugene IV. In 1434 he was appointed maistre de chappelle in Savoy, where he served Duke Amédée VIII; evidently he left Rome because of a crisis in the finances of the papal choir, and to escape the turbulence and uncertainty during the struggle between the papacy and the Council of Basel. 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 are not only geographically close, but the two 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, especially since Pope Eugene was deposed in 1439 by the Council and replaced by Duke Amédée of Savoy himself, as Pope (Antipope) Felix V. 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. While in Cambrai he collaborated with Nicolas Grenon on a complete revision of the liturgical musical collection of the cathedral, which included writing an extensive collection of polyphonic music for services. In addition to his musical work, he was active in the general administration of the cathedral. In 1444 his mother Marie died, and was buried in the cathedral; and 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 (Felix V) in 1449, his own former employer Duke Amédée VIII of Savoy, the struggle between different factions within the Church began to heal, and Dufay once again left Cambrai for points south. He went to Turin in 1450, shortly before the death of Duke Amédée, but returned to Cambrai later that year; and in 1452 he went back to Savoy yet again. 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 based on Se la face ay pale, as well as a letter to Lorenzo de'Medici, survive from this period: but as he was unable to find a satisfactory position for his retirement, he 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; in addition he received many visitors, including Busnois, Ockeghem, Tinctoris, and Loyset Compère, all of whom were decisive in the development of the polyphonic style of the next generation. During this period he probably wrote his mass based on L'homme armé, as well as the chanson on the same song; the latter composition may have been inspired by Philip the Good's call for a new crusade against the Turks, who had recently captured Constantinople. He also wrote a Requiem mass around 1460, which is lost.
After an illness of several weeks, Dufay died on November 27, 1474. He had requested that his motet Ave regina celorum be sung for him as he died, with pleas for mercy interpolated between verses of the antiphon, but time was insufficient for this to be arranged. 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 (it was being used to cover a well), and is now in a museum in Lille.

Dufay was among the most influential composers of the 15th century, and his music was copied, distributed and sung everywhere that polyphony had taken root. 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 several decades before the availability of music printing.
Dufay wrote in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon, and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades, virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for the lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any portion of his output. In his lifetime, Dufay wrote seven complete masses, 28 individual Mass movements, 15 settings of chant used in Mass Propers, three Magnificants, two Benidicamus Domino settings, 15 antiphon settings (6 are Marian antiphons), 27 hymns, 22 motets (13 are isorhythmic) and 87 chansons. Assigning works to Dufay based on alleged stylistic similarities has been a favorite pastime of musicologists for at least a hundred years, judging from the copious literature on the subject.
At the beginning of Dufay's career, the cyclic mass — the setting of all the sections of the Mass Ordinary by a single composer, unified by a common musical means, such as a cantus firmus — was in its infancy. By the end of his career, the cyclic mass had become the predominant and most substantial form of sacred music composition in Europe.
Dufay's first complete cyclic masses, the Missa sine nomine and the Missa S Jacobi, were written before 1440, and contain possibly the earliest use of fauxbourdon. In addition, most of Dufay's early mass composition used the "head motif" technique, i.e. the beginnings of sections shared a common, and easily identifiable, musical idea. However, by the 1450s, Dufay's masses were much influenced by the English style (for example, the music of John Dunstaple); his masses of this period mostly use cantus firmus technique, and also isorhythm, as in his motets. The archaic head motif technique he left behind. Still later in the period Dufay began to use a more seamless contrapuntal technique with occasional imitation, a style which foreshadowed the work of Obrecht and Ockeghem. One late mass, the Missa 'Ave regina' , based on a Marian antiphon setting of that name he wrote in 1463, uses all of the techniques Dufay used during his career, and may have been written as a deliberate summation.
Dufay's late masses are all tenor masses, i.e. the cantus firmus is in the tenor. While this style originated in England with composers such as Leonel Power and John Dunstaple, Dufay brought it to the continent.
Most of Dufay's motets were relatively early works, and he seems not to have written any during the last thirty years of his life. His motets were apparently not intended for liturgical use, but instead were written for specific occasions, sometimes considerably ceremonial ones. This gives biographers extremely valuable data, since many can be dated exactly.
In style they are isorhythmic, using a structural method which had been in use already for more than a hundred years; and in addition they are compositions of considerable complexity, with the isorhythm often occurring in all voices. Sometimes the sections of the motets themselves are carefully contrived to have a symbolic value, such as in the motet Nuper rosarum flores, written for the dedication of Brunelleschi's dome to the cathedral in Florence on 25 March 1436, in which the proportions of the sections exactly match the supposed proportions of Solomon's Temple. Dufay himself probably took part in this performance, and an eyewitness account attests to the presence of numerous string and wind players at the performance, who filled the chamber with their sounds during the impressive ceremony; likely they also accompanied the motet. Dufay evidently thought enough of his own motet to quote its coda at the end of the last isorhythmic motet he ever wrote, Fulgens iubar, in 1447.
Dufay also composed four laments on the fall of Constantinople (1453). Only one of these survives, (O tres piteulx/Omnes amici eius), written sometime between 1454 and 1457. While technically not classed as a motet, it has a similar texture and uses a cantus firmus.
Many of Dufay's compositions were simple settings of chant, obviously designed for liturgical use, likely as substitutes for the unadorned chant, and can be seen as chant harmonizations. Often the harmonization used a technique of parallel writing known as fauxbourdon.
Most of Dufay's secular songs follow the formes fixes (rondeau, ballade, and virelai), which dominated secular European music of the 14th and 15th centuries. He also wrote a handful of Italian ballata, almost certainly while he was in Italy. As is the case with his motets, many of the songs were written for specific occasions, and many are datable, thus supplying useful biographical information.
Most of his songs are for three voices, using a texture dominated by the highest voice; the other two voices, unsupplied with text, were likely played by instruments. Occasionally Dufay used four voices, but in a number of these songs the fourth voice was supplied by a later, usually anonymous, composer. Typically he used the rondeau form when writing love songs. His latest secular songs show influence from Busnois and Ockeghem, and the rhythmic and melodic differentiation between the voices is less; as in the work of other composers of the mid-15th century, he was beginning to tend towards the smooth polyphony which was to become the predominant style fifty years later.
A typical ballade is Resvellies vous et faites chiere lye, which was written in 1423 for the marriage of Carlo Malatesta and Vittoria di Lorenzo Colonna[2] (Carlo was a son of Malatesta dei Sonetti, Lord of Pesaro. Vittoria was the niece of Pope Martin V).[3] The musical form is aabC for each stanza, with C being the refrain. The musical setting emphasizes passages in the text which specifically refer to the couple being married.
Dufay was one of the last composers to make use of medieval techniques such as isorhythm [4], but one of the first to use the harmonies, phrasing and expressive melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance [5]. His compositions within the larger genres, masses, motets and chansons, are mostly similar to each other; his renown is largely due to what was perceived as his perfect control of the forms in which he worked, as well as his gift for memorable and singable melody. 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.
The Dutch towns of Amsterdam and Eindhoven, together with the small Scottish town of Linlithgow have streets named after Dufay.
The early music ensemble Dufay Collective is named for the composer.

Wie wil genieten van deze prachtige muziek, kan dat doen met dit Sanctus, met deze Mis voor St. Antonius van Padua (die uit 11 video’s in totaal bestaat), met dit Ave Maris Stella of met dit Vergene Bella.

Mijn muziek (6)

2008-03-25T14:09:00.004+01:00

Jacobus Vide (Jacques Vide) (fl. 1405 – 1433) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the transitional period between the medieval period and early Renaissance. He was an early member of the Burgundian School, during the reigns of John the Fearless and Philip the Good.
The earliest mention of him is from the archives of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, in 1405, where he was probably a choirboy (some uncertainty exists with regard to the name). In 1410 he held a position at the church of St Donatian in Bruges, and around the same time he may have been a singer in the chapel of Antipope John XXIII. His service to the Burgundian court began sometime between then and 1423, when he was listed as a valet de chambre for Philip the Good, and in 1426 he was given charge of instructing and caring for two choirboys. In 1428 he was promoted to the position of secretary to Philip the Good. No records of his activity after 1433 have yet been discovered.
All eight of his surviving works are rondeaux, secular French songs which were a favorite of the Burgundians. They are somewhat unusual, in comparison to other music of the period, in their free use of dissonance, and in addition are marked by frequent use of cross-rhythms. All of the characteristic cadences of the period — the Landini cadence, the Burgundian cadence, and the V-I cadence where the lowest voice jumps an octave to avoid parallel fifths — are common in Vide's music.
One of his more enigmatic songs is a three-voice rondeau, "Las, j'ay perdu mon espincel", in which the upper voices, the superius and the tenor, are fully written out, but the contratenor is left blank. Since the manuscript was carefully prepared, it is probable that the missing part was deliberate, and was a pun on the song text "j'ay perdu mon" (I lost my ...), in which case the singer, likely trained to improvise as well as sing from score, would have had to fill in by himself on the spot.

Mijn muziek (5)

2008-03-25T11:14:00.004+01:00

Guillaume Legrant (Guillaume Lemacherier, Le Grant) (fl. 1405 – 1449) was a French composer of the early Renaissance, active in Flanders, Italy, and France. He was one of the first composers in writing polyphony to distinguish between passages for solo and multiple voices on each part.[1]
Nothing is known about his early life, but his real name (Lemacherier) suggests a French origin. His first appearance in church records is in 1405, when he was a singer at Bourges. In 1407 he became a chaplain there, and he remained in Bourges until 1410. The next eight years contain no record of his activities, but he was in Rome by October 1418, at which time he entered the papal chapel as a singer, at that time under Pope Martin V; he stayed there until 1421. While no musical activity of his has been documented in France, he had been given benefices there, in the diocese of Rouen. Since he kept at least one until 1449 he is presumed to have still been alive then.[2]
Legrant's music is collected in Volume 11 of the Corpus mensurabilis musicae. Seven pieces survive, of which three are sacred, and the rest secular. The sacred music includes two settings of the Credo of the Mass, and one setting of the Gloria; these are the pieces in which he makes a distinction between solo and full chorus in the polyphonic parts.[3]
All of his surviving secular works are in the form of the virelai, one of the formes fixes.[4] Most of the composers of the period wrote in another of formes fixes, the rondeau, but Legrant seems to have preferred the virelai, which had been set widely the century before. By 1420 few composers are known to have been writing virelais, suggesting that Legrant's compositions may predate 1420 (the virelai was to return to favor later in the 15th century, in the music of Antoine Busnois and Johannes Ockeghem).[5]
Works:
Virelais (all for three voices):
Pour l'amour de mon bel amy
Ma chiere mestresse et amye
Or avant, gentilz fillettes
La doulce flour (rendered in CMM as an instrumental piece)
Mass movements (all for three voices):
Gloria
Credo (I)
Credo (II)

Mijn muziek (4)

2008-03-25T10:53:00.001+01:00

Pierre Fontaine (c.1380 – c.1450) was a French composer of the transitional era between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and a member of the Burgundian School of composers. While he was well-known at the time, most of his music has probably been lost. All of his surviving music is secular, and all his compositions are chansons. He was born in Rouen and is presumed to have had his early musical training there. By 1403 he was a singer at the large and splendid chapel of Philip the Bold,[1] and after it was disbanded in 1404 he became a clerk at Ste. Chapelle in Bourges, where he served at least until 1407.
He was a singer at the court chapel of Burgundy when it was reconstituted, after a period of inactivity, by John the Fearless, the new Duke of Burgundy in 1415. When John died in 1419 Fontaine left the chapel and went to northern Italy, joining the singers in the chapel of Pope Martin V, where he probably remained through the early 1420s. Around the end of the decade he came back to Burgundy, where he sang in the chapel yet again, this time under Philip the Good, and where he remained at least until 1447. No record of his death survives, but a replacement for him was hired in 1451.[2]
Seven compositions by Fontaine survive, including six rondeaux and a ballade, two of the three types of chansons known as the formes fixes. All of Fontaine's pieces are for three voices.
These pieces contain some unusual features. J'ayme bien celui, a rondeau, includes the unusual direction "contra tenor trompette" for the lowest voice, indicating that it was to be performed on a slide trumpet, an instrument related to the trombone (by the late 15th century, this instrument had been named the sackbut). Not only is this a rare case of a specific instrument being required in an early 15th century composition, but the piece contains notes outside of the gamut, the range of pitches to which most music of the time was restricted: the part for "contra tenor trompette" goes down to D below the bass staff. It has been suggested that Fontaine may not have written this part, since it appears only in one of the sources in which the rondeau survives, the Escorial V.III.24 manuscript.[3]
Most of Fontaine's pieces are concise: a transcription of Pastourelle en un vergier in modern musical notation only consists of 11 bars.[4] The texture of his music is simple, with the melodic line on top, as is typical of secular Burgundian music of the period.

Works:
A son plaisir volentiers serviroye (rondeau)
De bien amer (rondeau)
J’ayme bien celui qui s'en va (contains the performance indication for slide trumpet in the lowest part) (rondeau)
Mon cuer pleure (rondeau)
Pastourelle en un vergier (ballade)
Pour vous tenir/Mon doulx amy
Sans faire de vous departie (a separate arrangement of this piece, using the tenor as a basse danse has survived in a manuscript from Brussels which belonged to Margarete of Austria, granddaughter of Charles the Bold).

Mijn muziek (3)

2008-03-25T00:24:00.007+01:00

John Dunstaple or Dunstable (c. 1390 – December 24, 1453) was an English composer of polyphonic music of the late medieval era and early Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early 15th century, a near-contemporary of Leonel Power, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent, especially in the developing style of the Burgundian School.
The spelling "Dunstaple" is generally to be preferred, since it occurs in more than twice as many musical attributions as that of "Dunstable". The few English musical sources are equally divided between "b" and "p"; however, the contemporary non-musical sources, including those with a claim to a direct association with the composer, spell his name with a "p."
Dunstaple was probably born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. His birth date is a conjecture based on his earliest surviving works (from around 1410-1420) which imply a birth date of around 1390. Many of the details of his life are conjectural. Nothing is known of his musical training and background. He was clearly a highly educated man, though there is no record of an association with either Oxford or Cambridge universities. He is widely held to have been in the royal service of John, Duke of Bedford, the fourth son of Henry IV and brother of Henry V. As such he may have stayed in France for some time, since the duke was Regent of France from 1423 to 1429, and then Governor of Normandy from 1429 to his death in 1435. He owned property in Normandy, and also in Cambridgeshire, Essex and London, according to tax records of 1436. After the death in 1437 of another patron, the Dowager Queen Joan, he evidently was in the service of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the fifth son of Henry IV.
Unlike many composers of the time, he was probably not a cleric, though there are links with St Albans Abbey (see below); he was probably married, based on the record of women sharing his name in his parish, and he also owned a manor in Hertfordshire.
In addition to his work as a composer, he had a contemporary reputation as an astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician (for example, a volume in the Bodleian Library, largely in the hand of William Worcester, acknowledges that certain information within it had been copied from Dunstaple's writings). Some of his astrological works have survived in manuscript, possibly in his own hand.
Dunstaple's connections with St Albans Abbey are at least twofold:
the abbot John Whethamstede is associated with the Duke of Gloucester, and Dunstaple's isorhythmic motet Albanus roseo rutilat, possibly with some of the Latin words adapted by Whethamstede from an older poem, was clearly written for St Albans, possibly for a visit to the abbey by the Duke of Bedford in 1426.
Whethamstede's plan for a magnificent library for the abbey in 1452-3 included a set of twelve stained glass windows devoted to the various branches of learning. Dunstaple is clearly, if indirectly, referred to in some of the verses the abbot composed for each window, not only music but also astronomy, medicine, and astrology.
He died on Christmas Eve 1453, as recorded in his epitaph, which was in the church of St Stephen Walbrook in London (until it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666). This was also his burial place. The epitaph - stating that he had "secret knowledge of the stars" - had been recorded in the early 17th century, and was reinstated in the church in 1904.
Dunstaple influence on the continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the Burgundian School: le contenance angloise ("the English countenance,") a term used by the poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames. Le France added that the style influenced Dufay and Binchois—high praise indeed.
Writing a few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist Tinctoris reaffirmed the powerful influence Dunstaple had, stressing the "new art" that Dunstaple had inspired. Tinctoris hailed Dunstaple as the fons et origo of the style, its "wellspring and origin."
The contenance angloise, while not defined by Martin le Franc, was probably a reference to Dunstaple's stylistic trait of using full triadic harmony, along with a liking for the interval of the third. Assuming that he had been on the continent with the Duke of Bedford, Dunstaple would have been introduced to French fauxbourdon; borrowing some of the sonorities, he created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths. Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early Renaissance music, and both Le Franc's and Tinctoris's comments suggest that many of these traits may have originated in England, taking root in the Burgundian School around the middle of the century.
Very few manuscript sources of Dunstaple's works survived in England, as is similarly the case for other 15th century composers. Even though England was a centre of musical activity, in some respects exceeding even the output of the continent, almost all of the music was destroyed between 1536 and 1540 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. As a result, most of Dunstaple’s work had to be recovered from continental sources (predominantly northern Italy and the southern Alps).
Because numerous copies of his works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame must have been widespread. Two problems face musicologists of the 15th century: first, determining which of the many surviving anonymous works were written by which composers and, second, unraveling conflicting attributions. This is made even more difficult for English composers such as Dunstaple: scribes in England frequently copied music without any ascription, rendering it immediately anonymous; and, while continental scribes were more assiduous in this regard, many works published in Dunstaple's name have other, potentially equally valid, attributions in different sources to other composers, including Binchois, John Benet, John Bedyngham, John Forest and, most frequently, Leonel Power.
Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three incomplete but multi-section masses, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets (including the famous one which combines the hymn Veni creator spiritus and the sequence Veni sancte spiritus, and Albanus roseo rutilat mentioned above), as well as twenty-seven separate settings of various liturgical texts, including three Magnificats and seven settings of Marian antiphons, such as Alma redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina misericordie.
Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as cantus firmus. A good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum.
He is believed to have written secular music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty: although the French-texted rondeau Puisque m’amour is attributed to Dunstaple in two sources and there is no reason to doubt his authorship, the ballade remained the more favoured form for English secular song at this time and there is limited opportunity for comparison with the rest of his output. The popular melody O rosa bella, once thought to be by Dunstaple, is now attributed to John Bedyngham (or Bedingham). Yet, because so much of the surviving 15th-century repertory of English carols is anonymous, and Dunstaple is known to have written many, most scholars consider it highly likely—for stylistic as well as statistical reasons—that some of the anonymous carols from this time are actually by Dunstaple.
Dunstaple was probably the most influential English composer of all time, yet he remains an enigma: his complete works were not published until the quincentenary of his death in 1953, but even since then works have been added and subtracted from his oeuvre; we know very little of his life and nothing of his undoubted learning; we can only make an educated guess at most of the chronology of the small amount of music that has come down to us; and we understand little of his style - why he wrote as he did, what artistic or technical principles guided his composing, how his music was performed, or why it was so influential.

Hoe mooi zijn muziek was, kunt u horen aan dit Sanctus. Het Hilliard Ensemble heeft ook nog het een en ander opgenomen. U kunt ook nog terecht op deze site.

Heilige

2008-03-25T00:02:00.002+01:00

Dismas is een heilige en staat bekend als de goede dief. Hij is één van de twee misdadigers die ieder aan een kant van Jezus Christus aan het kruis hingen. Volgens het Evangelie van Lucas had hij zich bekeerd aan het kruis en Jezus zou hem weer zien in het paradijs.
Dismas werd vroeger gebruikt om zondigen te bekeren. In de iconografie wordt hij meestal afgebeeld met Jezus, maar soms wordt hij ook alleen afgebeeld. Hij is enkel gekleed in een lendedoek en met touw aan het kruis gebonden. Soms hangt boven zijn hoofd een bordje met daarop Dismas Latro. Dit betekent Dismas Boef. Onder het kruis zit een slang (de duivel). Ook heeft hij een spreukband met daarop: Hodie mecum eris in paradiso (Vandaag zult gij met mij in het paradijs zijn). Dismas is de patroonheilige voor begrafenisondernemers, dieven en terdoodveroordeelden. Zijn feestdag valt op 25 maart.

Ik weet maar één iemand die ook Dismas heet: Jan Dismas Zelenka. Ongelukkige naamkeus.

Bourgondië en de Bourgondische School

2008-03-24T19:36:00.006+01:00

Burgundy: the "middle kingdom".
The marriage of the daughter of the Count of Flanders with the duke of Burgundy (Philip the Bold) in 1368 united two wealthy regions, which were however separated from each other..
The dukes decided to do something about it. Within less than a century they expanded their territories considerably. The "great duke of the West" (Philip the Good) added the regions in light green, most of present day Belgium and The Netherlands, and therefore also deserved the title of "Father of The Netherlands". He also ruled the red regions for the church. The last duke (Charles the Bold) succeeded, be it shortly, to link northern an southern regions by conquering Lorraine.
Charles the Bold died on the battlefield in Lorraine in 1477. His daughter, the beautiful Mary of Burgundy, decided to marry the German Emperor instead of the King of France. Few marriages had such an important effect on the course of history.

The Burgundian School is a term used to denote a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy. The school also included some English composers at the time when part of modern France was controlled by England.

The Burgundian School was the first phase of activity of the Franco-Flemish School, the central musical practice of the Renaissance in Europe.

Mijn muziek (2)

2008-03-24T19:03:00.004+01:00

Nicolas Grenon (c. 1375 – October 17, 1456), was a French composer of the early Renaissance. He wrote in all the prevailing musical forms of the time, and was a rare case of a long-lived composer who learned his craft in the late 14th century but primarily practiced during the era during which the Renaissance styles were forming.
The earliest records of Grenon are from Paris, where he worked first in the Notre Dame Cathedral, and on the death of his brother moved to a job at the St Sépulchre as a canon. He rose in the ecclesiastical hierarchy at St Sépulchre, and then left Paris, moving first to Laon in 1403, and then Cambrai in 1408. In 1409 he took a post for the Duke of Berry as the "master of the boys", the music teacher and caretaker of the choirboys, at Bourges; and in 1412 he began his career with the Burgundian court of John the Fearless (Duke of Burgundy). In 1419 he returned to Cambrai, and from 1425 to 1427 worked in Rome as the master of the choirboys in the papal chapel under Pope Martin V.
He retired to Cambrai, where in the 1440s he worked with Guillaume Dufay on a complete revision of the polyphonic liturgical music of the cathedral. He died in Cambrai in 1456 after an unusually long life.
Grenon's music shows aspects of both medieval and early Renaissance practice. His secular music is the most up-to-date, and includes examples of each of the prevailing formes fixes, the ballade, the virelai, and the rondeau. The melody is always in the topmost voice, and all are for three voices.
The motets by Grenon are unusual in their use of strict isorhythmic technique, usually in all voices. In some aspects they are similar to motets of Dufay, except for the strictness of the isorhythmic principle. One is datable to 1414, since it praises the antipope John XXIII, and probably corresponds to the opening of the Council of Konstanz. Grenon also wrote masses, but none survive complete; only a fragment of a Gloria remains, not enough to establish his stylistic technique for this type of composition.

Ik houd me aanbevolen voor Grenon’s muziek: ik heb niets van hem kunnen vinden.

Mijn muziek (1)

2008-03-24T13:41:00.007+01:00

Mijn muzieksmaak is zich pas gaan vormen toen ik 26 jaar oud was, in 1979. In dat jaar kwam ik in contact met J.S. Bach en dat contact is nooit meer verdwenen. Mijn muzikale smaak heeft zich sindsdien wel uitgebreid. Die gaat terug tot de Bourgondische School, de Engelse virginalisten en bevat natuurlijk ook andere barokcomponisten. Een paar weken geleden heb ik Jan Dismas Zelenka (tijdgenoot van J.S. Bach) bijvoorbeeld ontdekt.
Verder dan het jaar 1775 strekt mijn kennis van en ook mijn liefde voor de muziek niet. Er zijn natuurlijk wel enkele jongere componisten te vinden, maar het houdt niet over. U krijgt dus, in tamelijk willekeurige volgorde, een reeks van componisten voorgeschoteld, eventueel met links naar YouTube-filmpjes. Elke dag één componist. Ik begin met Johannes Tapissier.

Johannes Tapissier (also Jean Tapissier, Jean de Noyers) (c.1370 – 1408 to 1410) was a French composer and teacher of the late Middle Ages, in the period transitional to the Renaissance style. He was one of the first members of the Burgundian School, the group of composers associated with the Dukes of Burgundy, and from which the Franco-Flemish style developed.
The first record of his life is from 1391, when he was hired as a "valet de chambre" and composer for the court of Philip the Bold.[1] He went with the duke on his travels, going to Avignon at least twice (1391, and again in 1395), where he doubtless encountered the composers and music of the Avignon repertory; Avignon then was the center of composition on the manneristic ars subtilior style. He was perhaps one of the contributors to the repertory,[2] but if he left any secular music, or any music in the complex, mannered style, it has either been lost or remains anonymous.
The anonymous Règles de la seconde rhétorique, written around 1400, lists Tapissier as being among the most famous French poets, singers, and composers of the time. Around the time this account was written, and into the first decade of the 15th century, Tapissier ran a singing school in Paris; records from the Burgundian court indicate that they sent boys there to learn to sing. The peak of development of the Burgundian court chapel was in 1404, before the death of Philip, when it surpassed in splendor the chapels of the antipope at Avignon and the king of France,[3], and many of Tapissier's students would have contributed to this development. Further court records show that his students "auditioned" for John the Fearless, the new Duke of Burgundy, in 1408, and they performed at services later that same year. Tapissier was dead by August 1410, but no further details on the circumstances have emerged.[4]
Tapissier is among the musicians mentioned by Martin le Franc in his long poem, Le Champion des dames:[5]
Tapissier, Carmen, Césaris
N'a pas longtemps si bien chanterrent
Qu'ilz esbahirent tout Paris
(Tapissier, Carmen, and Césaris,
Not long ago they did sing so well,
That they astonished all of Paris)
Only three pieces by Tapissier have survived: two mass movements (a Credo and a Sanctus), and an isorhythmic motet which laments the Western Schism which divided the Roman Catholic Church. Baude Cordier, one of the composers of the ars subtilior, wrote a Gloria which forms a probable pair with Tapissier's Credo
All of his compositions are for three voices. Although they are all sacred, they are stylistically more akin to the chansons of the time than to most other mass movements.

Ik houd me aanbevolen voor dat Motet voor de Paus en Tegenpaus, en voor dat Credo en Sanctus. Ik heb ze niet kunnen vinden.

Heilige

2008-03-23T12:45:00.001+01:00

Turibius de Mogrovejo (Mayorga de Campos, León (Spanje), 18 november 1538 - Santa (Peru), 23 maart 1606), eigenlijk Toribio Alfonso Mogrovejo was de tweede aartsbisschop van Lima en is een Rooms-Katholieke heilige.
Turibius was jurist en werd priester gewijd in 1578. Hij werd rechter van de Inquisitie in Granada en aartsbisschop van Lima in 1579. Mogrovejo stichtte het eerste seminarie op het westelijk halfrond en organiseerde de kerk in Peru. Hij ijverde voor de rechten van de inboorlingen tegen de Spaanse bezetters.
Mogrovejo werd heilig verklaard in 1726. Zijn naamdag is op 23 maart. Hij is patroon van Peru en van de Latijns-Amerikaanse bisschoppen.

Heilige

2008-03-22T13:29:00.003+01:00

Clemens August von Galen (Dinklage, 16 maart 1878 - Münster, 22 maart 1946) was een Duits kardinaal. Hij werd bisschop van Münster in 1933, vlak voor de benoeming van Adolf Hitler tot rijkskanselier. Wegens zijn verzet tegen de nazi's wordt hij ook wel De Leeuw van Münster genoemd.
Hij stamde uit een oud Duits adellijk geslacht: de zeventiende-eeuwse bisschop en krijgsheer Bernhard von Galen (bijgenaamd Bommen Berend) was een verre voorouder van hem.
Von Galen was een uitgesproken anti-communist en heeft zich openlijk verzet tegen de nazi's en hun zogeheten euthanasiepolitiek (T-4-euthanasieprogramma), waarbij duizenden daklozen, geesteszieken en gehandicapten om het leven werden gebracht.
In 1941 hield hij drie historische preken tegen de nazi's, die op dat ogenblik reeds 100.000 gehandicapten om het leven hadden gebracht. De tekst van zijn homilie van 3 augustus 1941 in de Lambertikirche in Münster werd later door Britse vliegtuigen boven Duitsland gedropt. Hierop volgde een strikt Gestapo-huisarrest dat tot april, 1945 (inmars der Engelsen) zou duren. Daardoor kon von Galen niet tegen de jodendeportaties preken, die eerst later begonnen. Alfred Rosenberg en Martin Bormann wilden de rebelse bisschop van Münster na een eventuele nazi-eindoverwinning aan het Oostfront op de Markt in Münster publiekelijk laten ophangen.
Na de inname van het platgebombardeerde Münster door de geallieerden, wilden Engelse en Amerikaanse journalisten allemaal interviews afnemen van de bisschop die de nationaalsocialistische staatsterreur getrotseerd had en zich publiekelijk tegen Hitler had uitgesproken. Von Galen was echter druk met het coördineren van hulp aan vluchtelingen en de herbouw van weeshuizen en kerken in het stadscentrum. Een Britse militair die voor MI5 werkte, kenmerkte Von Galen als een "doorgewinterde Duitse nationalist" (maar anti-nazi) die het karakter "van een eik" had. Zoals von Galen nazi-misdaden had aangevallen, zo viel hij nu ook de behandeling van Duitse burgers door de geallieerden (incl. Sovjets en Polen) aan. Hij beschuldigde de geallieerden (niet alleen Sovjet-Russen, maar ook Polen en Engelsen) vanwege de reeds begonnen systematische verdrijving van Duitse burgers uit Silezië, Oost-Pruisen, Danzig en Pommeren ervan bewuste etnische zuivering na te streven; de catastrofale voedselvoorziening in de westelijke bezettingszones weet hij aan de "Anglo-Amerikanen" die de Duitse bevolking door een hongersnood zouden willen breken.
Begin 1946 reisde hij naar Rome om er door Paus Pius XII tot kardinaal gewijd te worden. Hij werd in Münster als held ingehaald; vele Duitsers zagen in deze benoeming een begin van herwonnen nationaal zelfrespect. Minder dan een week na thuiskomst stierf hij op 22 maart 1946, op 68-jarige leeftijd.
Zijn zaligverklaringsproces werd in 1955 gestart en in november 2004 met positief gevolg afgesloten. Op 9 oktober 2005 werd hij door de Portugese kardinaal José Saraiva Martins, de Prefect van de Congregatie voor de Zalig- en Heiligverklaringen, in de Sint-Pietersbasiliek in Rome zalig verklaard. Zijn gedenkdag valt op 22 maart.

Heilige

2008-03-21T12:01:00.001+01:00

Nicolaas van Flüe (Sachseln, 1417 - Ranft, 21 maart 1487), geboren als Nikolaus Löwenbrugger, is een Zwitsers heilige. Tijdens zijn leven was hij boer, raadsheer en rechter. Hij was getrouwd met Dorothee Wyss, samen kregen zij tien kinderen (vijf zonen en vijf dochters).
Nicolaas van Flüe was erg gelovig. Reeds als kind kreeg hij visioenen, die in de loop der jaren kreeg steeds frequenter en heftiger werden. In 1467 vertrekt hij naar Bazel waar hij wil leven als kluizenaar. Onderweg krijgt hij echter een visioen, dat hem ertoe aanzet om terug te gaan naar de Ranft-vallei, ongeveer een uur lopen van het huis van zijn gezin. In eerste instantie woont hij daar in een hut gemaakt van takken en bladeren, maar in 1469 bouwen de lokale autoriteiten een cel en een kapel voor hem, die gewijd wordt aan Thomas, Bisschop van Ascalon. Daar woont hij, als broeder Klaus, tot aan zijn dood in 1487. Gedurende die tijd (ruim 20 jaren) zou hij niet gegeten en gedronken hebben, met uitzondering van de dagelijkse eucharistie. Tijdens zijn kluizenaarschap wordt hij bezocht door vooraanstaande personen uit heel Europa, die hem om advies vragen. In 1480 vraagt Henry Imgrund, pastoor van Stans, hem om advies in een dreigende oorlog tussen de Zwitserse confederaties; met zijn advies wordt de oorlog voorkomen.
Nicolaas van Flüe is de eerste patroon van Zwitserland. In 1669 wordt hij zaligverklaard door paus Clemens IX, en in 1947 wordt hij door paus Pius XII heilig verklaard. Zijn graf en kapel behoren tot de belangrijkste bedevaartsoorden in Zwitserland.

Hugo Claus dood

2008-03-20T00:07:00.004+01:00

Hugo Claus is dood, maar Het Verdriet van België kun je godzijdank nog blijven lezen. Zijn Oostakkerse gedichten ook.

Hij had een mooie, zelfgekozen dood. Hij wilde niet, zoals Gerard Reve, de kelk helemaal leeg drinken.

Het Vlaamse parlement stond op, en hield een minuut stilte.

Premier Verhofstad is nog even naar het huis van Claus geweest om van zijn mededogen blijk te geven.

Waar is de Nederlandse premier wanneer er een groot schrijver overlijdt? Wanneer Karel van het Reve, W.F. Hermans, Gerard Reve, Jan Wolkers overlijdt?

Hulde aan de Vlamingen. Die weten hoe het behoort.

Heilige

2008-03-18T23:02:00.002+01:00

Eduard de Martelaar (Engels: Edward the Martyr) (circa 962 -18 maart 978/979) volgde in 975 zijn vader Edgar op als koning van Engeland, maar werd na een paar jaar al vermoord. Eduard werd beschouwd als een goed christen en werd in 1001 heiligverklaard.
Zijn koningschap werd betwist door een groep mensen onder leiding van zijn stiefmoeder, koningin Elfrida. Zij wilde dat haar zoon en Eduards halfbroer Ethelred II koning zou worden. Eduard had echter meer steun, ook van St.-Dunstan en de Witan (koninklijk adviesorgaan van hooggeplaatsen uit de samenleving). Een paar jaar later bezocht hij Elfrida en Ethelred in Corfle Castle. Daar bood Elfrida hem een glas mede aan en terwijl hij dit dronk werd hij in de rug gestoken. Ethelred was pas tien jaar oud en was dus niet rechtstreeks bij de moord betrokken.
In 1001 werd Eduard heilig verklaard. Zijn feestdag is op 18 maart. Men haalde zijn stoffelijk overschot uit zijn graf en plaatste het in een reliekschrijn in Shaftesbury Abbey. Onder koning Hendrik VIII (16e eeuw) werden veel kloosters gesloten en heilige plaatsen verwoest, maar Eduards overblijfselen werden verborgen. In 1931 vond ene Mr. Wilson-Claridge de relikwieën bij een archeologische opgraving. De osteoloog Dr. T.E.A. Stowell bevestigde dat het inderdaad om Eduard de Martelaar ging. Wilson-Claridge schonk de relikwieën aan de Russisch Orthodoxe kerk buiten Rusland. Deze plaatste ze in een kerk in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking (Surrey). De kerk heet nu St. Edward the Martyr Orthodox Church.