John Sheppard - 500 Years, 3. Responsories and Votive Antiphon
Sheppard’s music is frequently simply more difficult to sing than that of his contemporaries, often spanning a vast vocal range, with disjunct vocal lines and unexpected harmonic progressions common...
View ArticleAlessandro Coppini - 550 Years
Alessandro Coppini (Alexander Coppinus, ca. 1465 - 1527) was a Florentine composer, organist, and theologian and a Servite monk.His compositions, both in the frottola style and the polyphonic style of...
View ArticleMichael Cavendish - 450 Years; first of the composers born ± 1565
The next few posts will survey a diverse group of composers, all born in or around 1565. There will be a German priest (1) who was organist to the Fugger family early in his career, a musician from...
View ArticleRichard Davy - 550 Years
The Early Tudor period saw the expansion of polyphony in Latin church music, and the rise of the new musical foundations in England. ... the Eton Choir Books are a major source of period music. Some...
View ArticleVitslav - 750 Years
Vitslav (Wizlaw, 1265 or 1268 - 1325) was a Minnesinger of the Principality of Rugia, then under Danish vassalage and now part of Germany. The principality included the island of Rügen and the adjacent...
View ArticleBartolino da Padova - 650 Years
Bartolino da Padova (Magister Frater Bartolinus de Padua, ca.1365 - 1405) was a composer of the late Trecento, which is also known as the Italian Ars Nova. In its forms the Trecento was influenced...
View ArticleAlessandro Coppini - 550 Years
Alessandro Coppini (Alexander Coppinus, ca. 1465 - 1527) was a Florentine composer, organist, and theologian and a Servite monk.His compositions, both in the frottola style and the polyphonic style of...
View ArticleGregor Aichinger - 450 Years, 1. Early years and works.
Gregor Aichinger (1564 - 1628) was a German church composer active in Augsburg at the tail end of the city's Golden Age. His works combine the traditional style of the late German Renaissance with the...
View ArticleGregor Aichinger - 450 Years, 2. Catholic devotion and Marian works.
Aichinger in particular distinguishes himself by a warmth and tenderness of feeling bordering on mellowness, which is everywhere imbued with deep devotion. (1)Yet he had the best teachers (Orlande de...
View ArticleGregor Aichinger - 450 Years, 3. Second trip to Italy and back in Augsburg.
In December 1598 Gregor Aichinger (1564/65 - 1628) left his post as organist at St. Ulrich in Augsburg to go on a second trip to Italy (Dec. 1598 - 1601). The trip would further the unique combination...
View ArticleGeorge Kirbye - 450 Years
George Kirbye (ca. 1565 - 1634) was a composer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era active in Suffolk, England. He composed sacred music but is best known as one of the first composers of the English...
View ArticleDuarte Lobo - 450 Years
The second half of the sixteenth century in Portugal was a period of deepening crisis at all levels of life. ... One of the consequences of this change in the cultural life of the country was a growing...
View ArticleAscanio Mayone - 450 Years, 1. Life and vocal music.
Ascanio Mayone (Scanio Maione, Majone, ca. 1565/70 - 1627) was a Neapolitan harpist, organist, and composer who may have been related to other musicians of Jewish-Spanish origin active in Naples. (2)...
View ArticleAscanio Mayone - 450 Years, 2. Capricci per sonare (first and second book)
A familiarity with the music of Mayone and Trabaci -music of absolute artistic importance- is essential for an understanding of the works of the great Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643). (1)“Let him not...
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Ascanio Mayone - 450 Years, 3. Ensemble works and cimbalo cromatico
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata Maggiore, Naples (1)Royal Chapel, Naples (2)Ascanio Mayone (ca. 1565/70 - 1627) was an organist, harpist, and composer active in Naples. He worked at the Annunziata...
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Simone Molinaro - 450 Years
Doge's Palace in Genoa (1)San Lorenzo Cathedral (2)Moving from Naples and Ascanio Mayone we travel to Genoa and discover Simone Molinaro (ca. 1565/1570 - 1634/36), composer, teacher, editor, arranger,...
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Francis Pilkington - 450 Years, 1. Early life and early Lute Music
Chester Cathedral (1)Francis Pilkington (ca. 1565/1570 - 1638) was an English Church Man active at Chester Cathedral, first as a lay singer and later as an ordained priest. He was a lutenist and...
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Francis Pilkington - 450 Years, 2. Oxford Music degree and First Book of Airs
Lincoln College, Oxford (1)Francis Pilkington (ca. 1565/70 - 1638) hailed from a Lancashire family close to the Earls of Derby. His father and brother served Henry Stanley, the fourth earl. Henry's son...
View ArticleFrancis Pilkington - 450 Years, 3. Chester Cathedral, Madrigals, and sacred...
In 1602 Francis Pilkington (ca. 1565/70 - 1638), ex-chorister and B.Mus. Oxford, became a lay conduct or singing man at Chester Cathedral. In 1612 he was appointed Minor Canon. In both capacities he...
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Pedro Ruimonte - 450 Years
La Seo, Zaragoza (1)Pedro Ruimonte (Ruymonte, Rimonte, Raimonteo, Reymonte, etc., 1565 - 1627) was a Spanish composer who worked for a decade and a half at the Brussels Court of Albert and Isabella.We...
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