Gilles Joye

Portrait of Gilles Joye by Hans Memling, around 1472

Gilles Joye (* 1424/25 in the Diocese of Tournai ; † December 31, 1483 in Bruges ) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer , poet and cleric of the early Renaissance .

Live and act

The approximate date of birth of Gilles Joye can be found in the inscription on the original frame of a portrait of himself from 1472, where “ETATIS SVE 47” (his age 47) is noted. He was probably the son of Oliver Joye, who owned a house in Courtrai around 1420 . There is no information about Gilles' education. He was first mentioned on May 16, 1449 as a singer at St. Donatian in Bruges. He would remain associated with this cathedral throughout his life. Several of the younger Gilles Joye's malpractices are noted in the chapter files. An entry dated March 15, 1451 says that he and his friends Johannes Band and Jacobus Tayaert read ridiculous verses at his colleagues during mass on one of the past Christmas days. On August 19, 1451, he received a warning about participating in a street fight; on the following September 27th because of an exchange of words with the schoolmaster, whom he had called a "confabulando ... ut iret in locum suum". On January 7, 1452, the cathedral chapter reprimanded the singers Joye, Tayaert, Leonis and the composer Cornelius Heyns for their express refusal to assist the Succentor with the motet singing 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.

From 1453 to 1460 Joye was canon at the collegiate church Mariae Himmelfahrt in Kleve , where the dukes Adolf I (term of office 1417–1448) and Johann I (term of office 1448–1481) ruled; these maintained close relationships with the family members of Duke Philip the Good from Burgundy (term of office 1419–1467). It is not known whether Joye's work in Kleve was linked to residence obligations. When he applied again as a choirboy at St. Donatian in Bruges on November 27, 1454 , he was advised that he had to improve his way of life first and also learn to keep his tongue under control (“abstinere ab ablocutionibus quibus habundare consuevit “); Above all, however, he had to part with his concubine , who lived with him and was known to the people as "Rosabelle" ("vocatam in vulgo Rosabelle").

On September 16, 1459 Joye got the office of canon to St. Donatian in Bruges and on November 3, 1460 the office of chaplain to Saint-Basil, a branch church of St. Donatian. From September 1462 he was a member of the court orchestra of Philip the Good of Burgundy as a singer, first as clerc , then as chapelain . This time must have been decisive for his musical perfection. After Philip's successor, Duke Charles the Bold, took over the chapel in 1467, he worked here alongside such important composers as Hayne van Ghizeghem , Robert Morton and Antoine Busnoys until 1468. He then had to take a break due to illness, but officially stayed Member of the chapel until 1470/71.

Even during his membership in the Burgundian court orchestra, Joye performed duties as a cleric and musician at various churches. From 1465 to 1473 he was pastor ( pastor parochialis ) at the Church of Saint-Hippolyte in Delft (today Oude kerk ). He also served several times at St. Donatian as a musical expert, e. B. in the entrance exams of prospective choirboys. As a canon of Saint-Johannes-van-der-Coutre, he donated large sums of money for the choirboys in 1470 and, as a master fabrice , gave a considerable amount for copying polyphonic music between 1467 and 1469. In 1468 he worked as administrator of the ducal foundations and acquired two precious graduals for them from the bookseller Jean de Clerc, but still owed him the purchase price until 1481/82. In 1482 Joye and the singer Pierre Basin attended the audition of three applicants for the post of organist at Saint-Donatian, which Eustacius de Paris finally got.

Gilles Joye was evidently a well-known personality within the Burgundian court culture, and he perceived himself as significant. This is indicated by the portrait from 1472, which is attributed to Hans Memling as the author. The painting was originally the right panel of a diptych , the left side of which showed the Mother of God with the child and has not survived. Joye is not portrayed here as a musician, but as a worshiper; He wears two gold rings on his left hand, one showing Joye's coat of arms and the other a blue stone. Gilles Joye died on New Year's Eve of 1483 and received a handsome burial despite the difficulties encountered in paying off his debts. A drawing of his epitaph in Bruges has survived. It is also mentioned in the deploration on the death of Johannes Ockeghem , which the poet Guillaume Crétin (~ 1465–1525) wrote in 1497.

meaning

Two of his traditional compositions are contained in the Laborde chanson collection, which comes from the Loire Valley. The remaining pieces can be found in manuscripts that were written in Trento , Ferrara , Bologna , Naples and Florence between around 1460 and 1493, although there is no evidence whatsoever of a connection between the composer and Italy. Because of their style, the named pieces come from Joye's earlier period around 1460. In their style they stand between the chansons of Gilles Binchois and the works of Antoine Busnoys with their large-scale opening imitations and show a declamatory-melodic style with frequent tone repetitions .

In addition to the secular compositions mentioned, two other masses have survived, in which the authorship of Gilles Joye is assumed. These three-part masses on "O rosa bella" from the Trientine Codices 88 and 90 are anonymous, but show a stylistic relationship to the textless Rondeau and the Italian Ballata by Gilles Joye. Because of this fact and because of the allusion to the name "Rosabelle", Joye's authorship of the masses is very likely in the opinion of the musicologist Reinhard Strohm , but needs to be reinforced.

Works

• “Ce qu'on fait a catimini”, rondeau with three voices, before 1475/76
• “J'ay bien nouri” to three votes, attribution questionable, probably by Jean Japart
• "Mercy, mon dueil, je te supplie", Rondeau with three votes, before 1475/76
• “Non pas que je veuille penser”, rondeau with three voices, before 1475/76
• “Poy ché crudel Fortuna et rio Distino”, ballata for three voices, text by Rosello Roselli, before 1460
• Textless sentence with three voices from the Trent Codex 90, fol. 295, before 1460

Literature (selection)

• J. Marix: Les Musiciens de la Cour de Bourgogne au XVe siècle , Paris 1937
• The same: Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la Cour de Bougogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420−1467) , Strasbourg 1939
• F. van Molle: Identification d'un portrait de Gilles Joye attribué à Memlinc , Brussels 1960 (= Les Primitifs Flamands, Series 3: Contributions à l'étude des Primitifs Flamands)
• DP Oosterbaan: De Oude Kerk te Delft gedurende de Middeleeuwen , edited by G. van Schravendijk-Berlage, The Hague 1973
• Land at the center of the powers. The Duchies of Kleve and Berg , Kleve 1984, page 225b
• Cl. Goldberg: The Chansonnier Laborde. Studies on the intertextuality of a 15th century song manuscript , Frankfurt am Main and others 1997 (= sources and studies on the history of music from antiquity to the present no.36)
• David Fallows: A Catalog of Polyphonic Songs, 1415-1480 , Oxford 1999

Web links

• Works by and about Gilles Joye in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gilles Joye in the Dutch online encyclopedia ENCYCLO.NL

swell

1. ^ The Music in Past and Present (MGG), Person Part Volume 9, Bärenreiter Verlag Kassel and Basel 2003, ISBN 3-7618-1119-5
2. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., London 1980, ISBN 1-56159-174-2