Antonius Divitis

Antonius Divitis (de Rycke, de Rijke, de Ryke, le Riche) (* between 1470 and 1475 in Leuven ; † around 1526) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer and cleric of the Renaissance .

Live and act

The date of the birth of Antonius Divitis could not yet be determined by music historians. From the capitular files of his first known position one can infer that his real name was Antonius de Rycke ; from this the French form le Riche is derived, or Latinized Divitis ("of the rich"). The latter form appears exclusively on his music manuscripts. It is believed that he received his education in Bruges . On June 13th 1501 he was accepted as a singer and cleric at St. Donatian in the same city and there on June 30th as a master of choirboys ( Zangmeester) appointed. A little later, on July 12th, he also took over the position of succentor (choirmaster) as the successor to Alain de Groote. He was ordained a priest on December 15 of the same year and celebrated his first mass on April 3 of the following year .

Divitis gave up this position in March 1504 for unknown reasons and moved to Zeeland ; shortly afterwards he went to Mechelen , where he was appointed choirmaster and master of choirboys at St. Rumbold's Church on April 4th. Financial problems that haunted him in Bruges and Zeeland probably prompted him to leave this position only a year later and go to the court orchestra of the Duchy of Burgundy .

This institution at the court of Philip the Beautiful was certainly one of the most respected musical institutions of the time. Divitis was here from October 1505 colleague of Pierre de la Rue , Alexander Agricola and Marbrianus de Orto . In 1506 Philip the Fair moved the entire chapel to Spain, but died there on September 25th of that year. Like many of his colleagues, Divitis remained in the service of the regent Johanna until 1508; the information is then missing for the next two years. In the supplica registers of the papal curia , Divitis is mentioned in May 1510 as a singer in the chapel of the French Queen Anne de Bretagne , where Jean Mouton , Claude de Sermisy and Jean Richafort were also employed at that time . After the death of Queen Anne in 1514, the chapel went to King Louis XII. about who died in 1515. Divitis remained in this position even under his successor Franz I. In the motet “Mater floreat florescat” by Pierre Moulu , possibly composed on the occasion of Queen Claudia's entry in 1517, Divitis is mentioned in the text as “Divitis felix”.

After King Franz was captured after his defeat at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 against Emperor Charles V , his court was drastically reduced and the composer disappeared from the payroll. From this year onwards, Divitis' track will be completely lost. The widespread distribution of his works in Italy in no way suggests a stay in Italy, because compositions from the environment of the French court orchestra (Mouton, Richafort, de Sermisy, Moulu) were generally very popular south of the Alps. However, there is a Requiem composition in the so-called “Occo Codex” , which was copied in the Burgundian writing workshop of Petrus Alamire , with the heading “Antonius divitis pie memorie”. It is true that this is a misspelling because the same piece is titled "Antonius de fevin pie memorie" in two earlier manuscripts by Alamire; but the scribe who made this mistake apparently knew that Divitis was also dead by this time.

meaning

Similar to many other Franco-Flemish composers of his time and his predecessors, the artistic rank and charm of Antonius Divitis' music lies primarily in the creative processing of existing melodic material (e.g. by Johannes Ockeghem or Josquin ). The motet “Ista est speciosa” is built around a cantus firmus triple canon ; his Magnificat scoring and the motet “Gloria laus et honor” are cantus firmus paraphrases of the highest contrapuntal level. The historically and artistically most significant part of his oeuvre , however, are the three existing mass settings , early representatives of the parody mass based on the forerunner works by Ockeghem, Obrecht and Josquin. This began in the first decades of the 16th century with the composers at the French court; here, not a unison cantus firmus, but a complete four-part movement was used as a template.

The technical mastery of Antonius Divitis, his non-ostentatious but always clear text setting and the rich imagination in dealing with existing musical material put him on a par with the other Franco-Flemish composers of his generation (Mouton, Richafort, de Sermisy).

Works

All vocal music; Complete edition: Antonius Divitis. Collected Works , 1 volume, edited by BA Nugent, Madison 1993 (= Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance No. 94), with complete references.

• Trade fairs and trade fair fragments
  • Missa "Gaude Barbara" for four voices (based on a motet by Jean Mouton)
  • Missa "Quem dicunt homines" for four voices (based on a motet by Jean Richafort)
  • Missa super "Si dedero" with four voices (based on the song motet by Alexander Agricola or Johannes Ghiselin )
  • Credo to six votes
  • “Pleni sunt coeli” with three votes
• Magnificat (all to four votes)
  • Magnificat secundi toni
  • Magnificat octavi toni
• Motets, as far as complete
  • “Gloria, laus et honor” to five votes
  • “Ista est speciosa” to five votes
  • “O desolatorum consolator” to four voices
  • “Per lignum salvi facti sumus” with five votes
  • Salve regina (“Adieu mes amours”) to five voices
  • "Semper eris pauper", counterfactor of the plenary from the Missa "Si dedero"
• Fragments of motets
  • "Ave Maria gemma" for three voices (incomplete, only tenor and bass detected)
  • "Da pacem Domine", number of votes unknown (only old preserved)
  • "Si ambulavero" for three voices (incomplete, only tenor and bass detected)
• Chanson
  • "Fors seulement" to five voices (alto = soprano from Ockeghem's chanson of the same name)
• Doubtful works and incorrect attributions
  • Missa "Dictes moy" (partly anonymous, partly attributed to Divitis or Antoine de Févin ; by Antoine de Févin)
  • Missa pro fidelibus defunctis (Requiem), (attributed to Divitis or Févin; by Antoine de Févin)
  • Missa "Vos qui in turribus" (in the table of contents "Divitis" corrected to "Gascone"; by Mathieu Gascongne )
  • Magnificat quinti toni (attributed to Divitis and Jean Richafort; authorship not decided)

Literature (selection)

• H. Prunières: La musique de la chambre et l'écurie sous le règne de François I ^er . In: L'Année musicale No. 1, 1912, pages 215-251
• G. van Dorslaer: Antonius Divitis. In: Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis No. 13, 1929, pages 1-16
• The same: La Chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau. In: Revue belge d'archeologie et d'histoire d'art No. 4, 1934, pages 21–57 and 139–165
• KE Roediger: The sacred music manuscripts of the Jena University Library , 2 volumes, Jena 1935
• L. Lockwood: A View of the Early Sixteenth-Century Parody Mass. In: Commemorative publication for Queens College Twenty-fifth Anniversary, New York 1964, pp. 53–77
• BA Nugent: The Life and Works of Antonius Divitis , dissertation at North Texas State University, Denton 1970
• B. Huys: An Unknown Alamire-Choirbook ("Occo Codex") Recently Acquired by the Royal Library of Belgium. In: Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis No. 24, 1974, pages 1-19
• MK Duggan: Queen Joanna and her Musicians. In: Musica disciplina No. 30, 1976, pp. 73-95
• R. Sherr: The Membership of the Chapels of Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne in the Years Preceding their Deaths. In: Journal of Musicology No. 6, 1988, pp. 60-82
• BA Nugent: Foreword to the Complete Edition (1993), see works
• Ph. Canguilhem: Aux origines de la messe parody: Le cas d'Antoine Divitis. In: Revue de musicologie No. 82, 1996, pages 307-314

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Antonius Divitis in the International Music Score Library Project
• Sheet music in the public domain by Antonius Divitis in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
• Works by and about Antonius Divitis in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Music in Past and Present (MGG), Person Part Volume 5, Bärenreiter Verlag Kassel and Basel 2001, ISBN 3-7618-1115-2
2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 2: C - Elmendorff. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1979, ISBN 3-451-18052-9 .