Antoine Brumel
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Antoine Brumel (around 1460 – around or after 1515) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance.
Little is known about his early life, but he was probably born west of Chartres, perhaps in the town of Brunelles, making him one of the first of the Netherlandish composers who was actually French. He sang at Notre-Dame de Chartres from 1483, and subsequently held posts at St Peter's in Geneva and Laon before becoming choirmaster to the boys at Notre-Dame de Paris from 1498 to 1500, and choirmaster to Alfonso I d'Este at Ferrara from 1506 (the great composer Jacob Obrecht had died there of the plague in the previous year). The chapel there was disbanded in 1510, after which nothing is known of Brumel's activities. However he is known to have written at least one work after this time (the Missa de beata virgine), and there is a mention in a treatise of Vincenzo Galilei that Brumel was one of a group of composers who met with Pope Leo X in 1513.
Brumel is best known for his masses, the most famous of which is the twelve-voice Missa Et ecce terrae motus. He also wrote numerous motets, chansons, and some instrumental music. His style evolved throughout his life, with his earlier works showing the irregular lines and rhythmic complexity of the Ockeghem generation, while the later ones used the smooth imitative polyphony of the Josquin style as well as the homophonic textures of the current Italian composers (for example Tromboncino, who was in Ferrara at the same time as Brumel). One peculiar feature of Brumel's style is that sometimes he uses very quick syllabic declamation in chordal writing, anticipating the madrigalian fashion of later in the 16th century. This appears sometimes in the "Credo" sections of his masses--logically, since that section has the longest text to set, and if set identically to the other sections to the mass can be disproportionately long.
Brumel's Missa pro defunctis for four voices, a late work, is notable for being the first Requiem to include a polyphonic setting of the Dies Irae.
After Josquin Desprez, Brumel is considered one of the greatest composers of his generation. During his life, Ottaviano Petrucci published a book of his masses, and a number of other composers wrote pieces commemorating him after his death. His impressive 12-voice Missa et ecce terrae motus survives from a part-book in Munich of 1570, long after his death, evidently used for performances by Lassus.
References and further reading
- Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
- Article "Antoine Brumel," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
External links
- Biography and discography (http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/brumel.html)da:Antoine Brumel