Jean de Latre

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A Flemish chanson by Petit Jean De Latre, taken from the anthology Dat ierste boeck vanden Niewe Duytsche Liedekens published by Jacob Baethen (Maastricht, 1554) 45 bedden Petit Jean De Latre.jpg
A Flemish chanson by Petit Jean De Latre, taken from the anthology Dat ierste boeck vanden Niewe Duytsche Liedekens published by Jacob Baethen (Maastricht, 1554)

Petit Jean De Latre (c. 1505 or 1510 – 31 August 1569) or Joannes de Latre (his surname is also recorded as Delattre, Delatre, De Lattre and Laetrius) was a Flemish Renaissance composer and choirmaster who worked in Liège and Utrecht. [1] [2] He is no longer believed to be same person as Claude Petit Jehan who died in 1589. [3]

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is vocal and instrumental music written and performed in Europe during the Renaissance era. Consensus among music historians has been to start the era around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and to close it around 1600, with the beginning of the Baroque period, therefore commencing the musical Renaissance about a hundred years after the beginning of the Renaissance as it is understood in other disciplines. As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprises; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular, the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school, whose greatest master was Josquin des Prez.

Liège Municipality in French Community, Belgium

Liège is a major Walloon city and municipality and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège.

Utrecht City and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands

Utrecht is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and in the very centre of mainland Netherlands, and had a population of 345,080 in 2017.

Contents

Life

The earliest record of his employment is for 1538 to 1539 when he was maître de chant at church of St John the Evangelist in Liège. Subsequently De Latre was employed at St Martin, Liège. From about 1550 he was also chapel master to George of Austria, Prince-Bishop of Liège (1544–1557), to whom De Latre dedicated his first volume of secular songs or chansons of 1552. [4]

George of Austria Roman Catholic bishop

George of Austria, was Prince-bishop of Liège from 1544 to 1557.

A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specializing in chansons is known as a "chanteur" (male) or "chanteuse" (female); a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.

During his time in Liège notable pupils included Gerard de Villers and Johannes Mangon. [1] [5]

Johannes Mangon was a Francophone Belgian composer. He was selected while a boy in Liége to join the choir at the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, that is to say Aachen in modern Germany. He rose to become maître de chapelle. Among his surviving works are 20 masses. He died of the plague in 1578 and was succeeded by Lambertus de Monte and then Michael Wilhelm.

Saint-Martin, Liege 20110722 stmartin45.jpg
Saint-Martin, Liège

After George of Austria's death in 1557 De Latre continued to work at St Martin, but in 1563 took up a post for a short period in Amersfoort (within the province of Utrecht). Around this time the former rector of the Latin school in Amersfoort, Johannes Oridryus, together with Albertus Buysius, undertook the publication of a collection De Latre's chansons, Cantionum musicarum, in Düsseldorf. De Latre returned to Liège as succentor at St Martin, but was dismissed for debt in 1564. [1]

Amersfoort City and municipality in Utrecht, Netherlands

Amersfoort[ˈaːmərsfoːrt](listen) is a city and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands. In August 2017, the municipality had a population of 155,089, making it the second-largest of the province and fifteenth-largest of the country. Amersfoort is also one of the largest Dutch railway junctions with its three stations—Amersfoort, Schothorst and Vathorst—due to its location on two of the Netherlands' main east to west and north to south railway lines. The city was used during the 1928 Summer Olympics as a venue for the modern pentathlon events. Amersfoort marked its 750th anniversary as a city in 2009.

Utrecht (province) Province of the Netherlands

Utrecht is a province of the Netherlands. It is located in the centre of the country, bordering the Eemmeer in the north-east, the province of Gelderland in the east and south-east, the province of South Holland in the west and south-west and the province of North Holland in the north-west and north. With an area of approximately 1,400 square kilometres (540 sq mi), it is the smallest of the twelve Dutch provinces. Apart from its eponymous capital, major cities in the province are Amersfoort, Houten, Nieuwegein, Veenendaal, IJsselstein and Zeist.

The succentor ("under-singer") is the assistant to the precentor, typically in an ancient cathedral foundation, helping with the preparation and conduct of the liturgy including psalms, preces and responses. In English cathedrals today, the priest responsible for liturgy and music is usually the precentor, but some cathedrals, such as St Paul's, Southwark Cathedral, and Durham, retain a succentor as well. Lichfield used the title "subchanter". Westminster Abbey also retains the tradition; Brecon Cathedral has only a succentor, and no precentor. The succentor is normally a minor canon.

By 1565 De Latre was employed at the Janskerk in Utrecht where he is described as a Magister and Cantor. He may later have been employed at the Buurkerk there. He was buried at the Buurkerk in Utrecht in 1569, where his epitaph described him as a musici excellentissimi. [1]

The best attested of his works are his published chansons and the set of Lamentations, which was published in 1554 in Maastricht by the Flemish printer Jacob Baethen. The work entitled Lamentationes aliquot Jeremiae was dedicated to Anton of Schauenburg, at that time the dean of the Saint Servatius chapter in Maastricht, and later archbishop of Cologne. [6] In addition a number of works survive in manuscript, but some may be by other composers.

Anton of Schauenburg was Archbishop-Elector of Cologne from 1557 to 1558.

Cologne Place in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Cologne is the largest city of Germany's most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and its 1 million+ (2016) inhabitants make it the fourth most populous city in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. The largest city on the Rhine, it is also the most populous city both of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region, which is Germany's largest and one of Europe's major metropolitan areas, and of the Rhineland. Centred on the left bank of the Rhine, Cologne is about 45 kilometres (28 mi) southeast of North Rhine-Westphalia's capital of Düsseldorf and 25 kilometres (16 mi) northwest of Bonn. It is the largest city in the Central Franconian and Ripuarian dialect areas.

Works

Recordings

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 J. Quitin and H. Vanhulst, New Grove
  2. ↑ H Vanhulst, Revue belge de musicologie, vol. 47
  3. ↑ F. Lesure, Petit Jehan de Lattre (1969) cited by J. Quitin and H. Vanhulst, New Grove
  4. ↑ Music fragments and manuscripts in the Low Countries ed. Eugeen Schreurs, Henri Vanhulst, 1997 - 510
  5. ↑ J. Quitin, Revue belge de musicologie vol. 47, 1993 "A propos de trois musiciens liégeois du 16e siècle: Petit Jean de Latre, Johannes Mangon et Mathieu de Sayve"
  6. 1 2 Ben J.P. Salemans, Jacob Bathen, printer, publisher and bookseller in Louvain, Maastricht and Düsseldorf c. 1545 to c. 1557, in: Quaerendo, Volume 19. Issue 1-2

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References

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