Benedictus Appenzeller

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Benedictus Appenzeller (* around 1485 in Flanders ( Oudenaarde ?); † at the end of 1558 in or near Brussels ) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance .

The St. Michel et Gudule in Brussels - Appenzeller's last place of work

Live and act

Although his name has a clear echo of a Swiss canton , it is now considered certain that Appenzell was of Flemish descent, because two songs by him in Flemish demonstrate a close familiarity with this language and he has lived almost his entire life in Bruges , Brussels and 's-Hertogenbosch . No information is known about his exact year of birth, his place of birth and his early years. From 1517 he was on record for the first time as a singer at the Church of St. Jacob in Bruges and was promoted to the position of sangmeester there. However, he retained this position for a maximum of one year; for the years 1520 to 1536 there is no direct information about him. However, his activity during this period stems from the publication of chansons in the anthologies of Pierre Attaignant and Jacques Moderne . In 1536 he became a singer at the Habsburg court of the regent Maria of Hungary in Brussels and was promoted to head of the choirboys ( maître des enfants ) a year later after the previous post holder Jean Goessins had died.

Benedictus Appenzeller remained in the service of the regent Maria until the end of his career. In 1542 he calls himself Kapellmeister, although according to the official files of the court he never held this office, but possibly exercised it in practice. In the summer of 1545 he participated with his choirboys in the services of the Marian Brotherhood in 's-Hertogenbosch and accompanied his employer on a trip to Augsburg and Munich in 1551 . According to the brotherhood's records, Appenzeller was married to a woman named Liennaertken. When Emperor Charles V abdicated in 1556, Maria of Hungary also gave up her reign in Brussels and moved her residence, including the court and library, to Valladolid in Spain. Presumably for reasons of age, Benedictus stayed behind in Brussels and from December 28, 1555 until the end of 1558 he held the position of singing master at the Sainte-Gudule church. The composer's last contact with his former employer was a request for tax exemption and pension payments dated July 8, 1558, in which he describes himself as over seventy; from this his approximate year of birth is calculated. A few months later he died in or near Brussels.

meaning

The composer only marked many of his works with “Benedictus”, which is why there was long confusion with the contemporary German composer Benedictus Ducis . Only the musicologists Barclay Squire (1911/12) and D. Bartha (1930) were able to clearly prove two identities of composers, namely on the basis of the style, the composed genres and the tradition, also on the basis of the fact that Appenzell was a Catholic and Ducis Protestant. To a lesser extent there was also confusion with the Dutch organist Benedictus de Opitiis .

The main source for Appenzeller's secular works and his motets are the above-mentioned anthologies by Attaignant and Moderne , then the later collections by Tielman Susato and Pierre Phalèse as well as an individual print ( Antwerp 1542); his liturgical music is almost exclusively preserved in the choir books of the court of Mary of Hungary. He is one of the most important masters of the generation after Josquin Desprez ; however, the assumption that he could have been his student cannot be proven. The stylistic features of Appenzeller's music include the well-proportioned and rounded musical phrases , which are regarded as “typically Josquin” and which are closely aligned with the text, as well as imitations and vocal pairs. Such features were considered common at that time, but Appenzeller reached a special artistic height here. This art is particularly evident in his four-part sacred compositions; on the other hand, with his five- and six-part pieces he deliberately creates a full-vocal sound effect, with passages with a smaller number of voices being rare. A particularly typical characteristic of him is the frequent use of comparatively “archaic” composition techniques such as canons of proportion , “tense perfectum” and cantus firmus techniques . Appenzeller's chansons are stylistically somewhere between the homophonic Parisian chanson and the polyphonic Franco-Flemish type; they combine clear, text-related declamation and an equally clear phrase structure with an artful counterpoint .

Works

  • measure up
    • Missa “Ad placitum” with four voices
    • Missa “Benedictus dominus meus” with four to six voices
    • Missa [“Ick had een boelken uutverkoren”] with four to eight voices
    • Missa “Pardonne moy” with four to six voices
    • Missa “Vous larez” with four voices
    • Missa “Hodie beata virgo” with five to six voices
    • Missa de Requiem for four to five voices
    • Missa [paschalis] to six voices
  • Magnificat compositions
    • Magnificat primi toni (I)
    • Magnificat primi toni (II)
    • Magnificat primi et sexti toni
    • Magnificat secundi toni (I)
    • Magnificat secundi toni (II)
    • Magnificat secundi toni (III)
    • Magnificat tertii toni
    • Magnificat quarti toni
    • Magnificat octavi toni
    • Magnificat "Sicut erat in principio"
  • Motets (some with the place and year of publication of the first edition)
    • “Aperi domine oculos” with five votes; six-part version by Jacobus Clemens non Papa
    • "Aspice domine quia facta" with five votes (Antwerp 1555)
    • “Ave maris stella” to six voices
    • “Ave regina caelorum” (I) for four voices
    • "Ave regina caelorum" (II) for four voices (Antwerp 1547)
    • "Ave verum corpus" for five voices (Antwerp 1557)
    • "Beati omnes qui timent" for four voices ( Lyon 1532)
    • "Benedic domine domum istam" (Augsburg 1545)
    • "Benedictus dominus deus meus" to four voices (Lyon 1539)
    • “Christ passus est pro nobis” with six votes
    • "Cor mundum crea in me" for five voices (Antwerp 1557)
    • "Corde et animo Christe canamus" with five voices (Augsburg 1545)
    • “Da pacem domine” to four votes
    • "Doleo super te Jesu" to four votes ( Nuremberg 1540)
    • "Et nunc domine" for three voices ( Löwen 1560)
    • "Foelix es regno Francisce" for four voices (Lyon 1539)
    • "In illo tempore dixit Iesus" for four voices (Antwerp 1554)
    • "Jesu Christe verbum patris" with five votes (Nuremberg 1538)
    • “Mater digna dei” with six votes
    • "Musae Iovis ter maximi" for four voices (Antwerp 1545)
    • "O decus nostrum" for five voices (Lyon 1542)
    • "Oramus te rex gloriae" for five voices (Antwerp 1557)
    • “Oratio ad Maria: Inviolata integra” for four voices
    • “Peccantem me quotidiae” to four voices
    • "Peccantem me quotidiae et non penitentem" to four voices (Augsburg 1545)
    • "Plangite Pierides" to five voices (Lyon 1538)
    • “Quam pulchra es anima mea” to six voices
    • “Salve regina vita dulcedo” with five voices
    • "Sancta Maria succurre miseris", double canon with four voices (Nuremberg 1567)
    • "Super flumina Babiloni" for five voices (Antwerp 1546)
    • "Surge aquilo et veni auster" to five votes (Löwen 1553)
  • Motets with unsecured Appenzeller authorship
    • “Clama ne cesses” with four voices (Antwerp 1547), partly Appenzeller, partly attributed to Cornelius Canis
    • "Da pacem domine" with five voices, partly Appenzeller (Löwen 1555), partly (with a 6th voice) attributed to François de Layolle (Lyon 1538)
    • "Domini est terra" with four voices, partly Appenzeller, partly attributed to Josquin (Antwerp 1542), partly anonymous (Nuremberg 1537)
    • "O magnum mysterium" with four voices, partly attributed to Appenzeller, partly anonymous (Antwerp 1547)
    • "Quam pulchra es anima mea" with five voices, partly Appenzeller (Antwerp 1546), partly attributed to Thomas Crécquillon (Löwen 1554)
    • "Verbum caro factum est" with five voices, partly Appenzeller (Antwerp 1546), partly attributed to Josquin (Nuremberg 1549)
  • Chansons (some with the place and year of publication of the first edition)
    • "Arousez vo vi vo violette" for five voices (Antwerp 1544)
    • "Au fond d'enfer voire" for four voices (Paris 1530)
    • “Buvons ma comere” with three votes
    • “De moy n'aurez aucun allegement” with four votes
    • "Een Venus dierken" to four votes (Frankfurt am Main 1535)
    • "Fors vous n'entens jamais" for five voices (Antwerp 1545)
    • “Humble se tient” to four voices
    • "Je ne me puis tenir d'aymer" with five votes (Antwerp 1544)
    • "Je ne scay pas comment" to six votes (Nuremberg 1540)
    • "Je pers espoir voyant le cueur" with five voices (Antwerp 1545)
    • "Mins Rankins bruin oghen" to five votes (Nuremberg 1540)
    • "Paine et travail" for six voices (Antwerp 1545)
    • "Par trop aymer j'ay cuidé" for four voices (Paris 1533)
    • “Qui l'ara la gentille brunette” to four votes
    • "Si je me plains hellas" with five voices (Antwerp 1545)
    • “Si je n'estois malheureux” to four votes
    • “Tant voeuilles vostre amant” to four votes
    • "Tous les plaisirs que la terre" with six voices (Nuremberg 1540)
    • "Ung deux trois hurons de villaige" for four voices (Antwerp 1544)
    • 23 further pieces with four voices in Des Chansons a quattre parties, composez by M. Benedictus: M. de la Chapelle de Madame la Regente, Douagiere de Honguerie etc. […] (Antwerp 1542)
  • Chansons with uncertain authorship
    • “Je m'y levay par un matin” with five voices, partly attributed to Appenzeller (Paris 1572), partly to Philippe Verdelot (Paris 1560), partly anonymous
    • “La rousée du mois de may” with five voices, partly attributed to Appenzeller (Nuremberg 1540), partly to Jean Mouton (Antwerp 1542), partly anonymous
    • "Pleusist a dieu quy crea" with five voices, partly attributed to Appenzeller (Antwerp 1545), partly to Jean Courtois († before 1567)
  • Instrumental music
    • Pavane for instruments

Literature (selection)

  • W. Barclay Squire: Who was "Benedictus"? In: Anthologies of the International Music Society No. 13, 1911/12, pages 264–271
  • D. Bartha: Benedictus Ducis and Appenzeller , Wolfenbüttel / Berlin 1930
  • Glenda Goss Thompson: Benedictus Appenzeller. Maitre de la chapelle to Mary of Hungary , dissertation at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 1975
  • The same: Archival Accounts of Appenzeller, the Brussels Benedictus. In: Revue belge de musicologie No. 32–33, 1978–1979, pages 51–70
  • Benedictus Appenzeller: Chansons , with an introduction by Glenda Goss Thompson, Monumenta Musical Neerlandica Volume 14, Vereniging voor nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, Amsterdam 1982
  • Glenda Goss Thompson: Music in the Court Records of Mary of Hungary. In: Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis No. 34, 1984, pages 132-173
  • E. Jas: "Tafelmuziek" by Maria van Hongarije. In: Musica antiqua No. 10, 1993, page 22 and following
  • E. Jas: Another Mass by Benedictus Appenzeller. In: Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis No. 44, 1994, pages 99-114

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ The music in past and present (MGG), person part volume 1, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Basel 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1111-X
  2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 1: A - Byzantine chant. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1978, ISBN 3-451-18051-0 .
  3. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , edited by Stanley Sadie, 2nd Edition, McMillan, London 2001, ISBN 0-333-60800-3
personal data
SURNAME Appenzeller, Benedictus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Appezelders, Benedictus; Appescelders, Benedictus; Appelschelders, Benedictus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance
DATE OF BIRTH around 1485
PLACE OF BIRTH Flanders
DATE OF DEATH 1558
Place of death Brussels or near Brussels