Jacob Obrecht (1457/1458 – late July, 1505) was a Dutch composer of the Renaissance. He was a best known composer of masses in Europe in the late 15th century, only existence eclipsed by Josquin Desprez after his death, & additionally wrote numbers of motets and songs.

Life

He was innate around either 1457 or 1458, the single boy of Gent city trumpeter Willem Obrecht and Lijsbette Gheeraerts. His mother died within 1460 at a age of Xx. His portrait, painted around 1496, gives his age when 38, establishing his birthdate.

Details of his early education come thin, however he in all likelihood learned to play a trumpet, like his father, & inside thus doing learned a art of counterpoint and improvisation over the cantus firmus. Virtually all probably he knew Antoine Busnois at a Burgundian court; at any rate he for sure knew his music, since his earliest mass shows close stylistic parallels by having the older composer.

Obrecht seems to will have the succession of short appointments, numbers of of which ended within to a lesser degree idealistic circumstances. At least twice he was withwithin pain for fiscal irregularities, extrthe belike from either careless clerking than anything else, & there exists 1 interesting record of his covering the shortage in his accounts by a donation of his compositions to his employer. Throughout a time, though as an employee he can st& been undesirable, he was held in the greatest respect two by his patrons and per composers world health organization were his peers. Tinctoris, who was writing within Naples, singles him out in the shortlist of the master composers of the day—all a thomas more important because he was lone Xxv at the instance Tinctoris manufactured his names, & on the other side of Europe.

When virtually all of Obrecht's appointments were inside Flanders or the Netherlands, he processed at least deuce trips to Italy, once in 1487 at the invitation of Duke Ercole I d'Este of Ferrara, and again in 1505. Duke Ercole got heard Obrecht's music, which is known to keep around circulated around Italy between 1484 and 1487, and said that he appreciated it above a music of tons more contemporary composers; consequently he invited Obrecht to Ferrara for sestet months around 1487.

Within 1504 Obrecht once again attend Ferrara, however on a demise of the Duke at the beginning of the next season he became unemployed. Witharound what capacity he stayed in Ferrara is unknown, however he died in the eruption of plague there upright prior to August One, 1505.

Works

Obrecht wrote principally sacred music: masses and motets, though a few lay chansons have survived.

Stylistically, Obrecht occurs as fascinating lesson of the contrapuntal extravagance of the late 15th century. He commonly utilizes the cantus firmus technique for his masses, however utilizes the astounding kind of constructive equipment within transforming elementary source poop into multi-movement mass compositions. Every now & again he requires his source lesson and divides it higher into short phrases; occasionally he utilizes retrograded versions of complete melodies, or melodic bits; one time he possibly extracts a component notes & orders a children by value, yearn to short, constructing fresh melodic lesson from either the reordered sequences of notes. He prefers episodic structures,where both division of the operate utilizes different motivic material: clearly to Obrecht there could not become as well lot kind. His procedures indicate the startling counterpoint to the function of the next generation, e.g. Josquin, who favorite unity & simplicity of approach.

For his source poop he clearly favorite a popular chansons of the day. When it might seem unknown to a modern attender that the composer would build the sacred composition in the area of bits of lay, potentially profane popular songs, this procedure was neither considered improper nor possibly particularly irreverent at the period (e.g., there is a mass by Mouton—''Missa faulte d'argent'' ["the problem with money"]—according to Josquin's chanson of the equivalent title where the human wakes higher within bed by having the fancy woman, realizing painfully that he doesn't own plenty money to pay her).

Though he was famous within his period, Obrecht experienced little influence in subsequent generations: virtually all belike he only went away from fashion. A superabundant cleverness seen around his works is an interesting parallel to the contemporary style of painting, shown virtually all famously by Hieronymus Bosch (also born around 1450).

Sources and further reading

Article "Jacob Obrecht," in The Just released Grove Lexicon of Music & Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. Xx vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742 Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. Future York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304 ''A Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Eighth ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. Just released York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 002872416X Rob C. Wegman, Born for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht''. Oxford, Clarendon Click, 1994. ISBN 0-19-816382-7

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