Cornelius Heyns

Cornelius Heyns (* before 1440; † 1485 in Bruges ) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer and cleric of the early Renaissance .

Live and act

The life of Cornelius Heyns is largely in the dark. There are speculations that he stayed in Florence in the late 1440s , where a "Cornelius" from Flanders worked, who then returned to his homeland in 1447. Documentary evidence is only evidence of the times when he worked in Bruges. There he can be traced back to the St. Donatian's Cathedral from October 25, 1447 (the cathedral was destroyed in the course of the French Revolution in 1799/1800). There are reports that Heyns, a friend of Gilles Joye , is said to have had a rather relaxed lifestyle like him. On January 7, 1452, he, Gilles Joye and others received a reprimand for their express refusal to assist the Succentor in singing motets on the eve of the Epiphany ; They wanted to protest against the decision of the chapter not to allow the traditional donkey festival in future.

On June 23, 1452 Heyns was appointed succentor. But he doesn't seem to have taken his duties very seriously. On the feast of Ascension Day he was absent from Vespers and was busy playing ball games. He was later accused of having spent his days in brothels several times, so that he was removed from office on June 22, 1454. There is no information about him for the next eight years. From 1463 he was again active as a succentor at St. Donatian in Bruges, until December 24, 1465. After that, his track is lost.

Work and meaning

Only one four-part mass by Cornelius Heyns , the Missa “Pour quelque paine”, has survived in three manuscripts. The composition is based on the tenor part of an anonymous three-part rondeau with the same text beginning and is of particular quality. She is extremely imaginative and idiosyncratic in handling the cantus firmus and ranks high among the mass compositions with secular models because she is one of the earliest examples of a progressive cantus firmus and parody technique .

Literature (selection)

• Bain Murray: New Light on Jacob Obrecht's Development. A Biographical Study , in: Musical Quarterly No. 43, 1957, pages 500-516
• Reinhard Strohm: Music in the Late Medieval Bruges , Clarendon, Oxford 1985, ISBN 0-19-316327-6
• Rob C. Wegman: New Data Concerning the Origins and Chronology of Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Manuscript 5557 , in: Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis No. 36, 1986, pp. 5-25
• Howard Mayer Brown: Music and Ritual at Charles the Bold's Court: The Function of Liturgical Music by Busnoys and His Contemporaries , in: P. Higgins (editor), Antoine Busnoys. Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music, Oxford 1999, pp. 54-70

swell

1. ↑ Laurenz Lütteken :  Heyns, Cornelius. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 8 (Gribenski - Hilverding). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2002, ISBN 3-7618-1118-7  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)