Johannes Carmen

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Johannes Carmen (active from 1400 to 1420) was a French composer , music manuscript writer, and singer of the late Middle Ages.

Live and act

The dates of life of Johannes Carmen, i.e. his dates and place of birth and death, have so far remained unknown. Its identity and its significance in music history emerge from two documents from the beginning of the 15th century and from the traditional compositions. Certain references to his environment suggest that "Carmen" was a pseudonym; the first name "Johannes" appears only in a handwritten attribution. However, it must have had a widespread and enduring reputation. On February 11, 1403 he received a sum of money from the court in Burgundy in Paris and was referred to in this context as escriptvain et inlumineur (writer and illustrator). In the same year, also in Paris on December 20, he received two Paris francs from the conductor of the Burgundian court orchestra as escriptvain et noteur de chant for entering certain hymns and other newly made liturgical pieces in a music book of the ducal chapel (“au livre des notes de la chappelle […] certains himes, glorias et patrems nouvellement faiz ”). He is also said to have been cantor at the Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie church in Paris, but this has not yet been confirmed. In his most famous work Le Champion des Dames , written between 1440 and 1442, the writer and poet Martin Le Franc (around 1410–1461) places Johannes Carmen and Johannes Cesaris in the context of Jean Tapissier , who worked in Burgundy:

Tapissier, Carmen, Cesaris
N'a pas longtemps si bien chanterent
Qu'ilz esbahirent
Tout Paris
Et tous seulx qui les frequenterent
Corn onques jour ne deschanterent
En melodie de tel chois,
Ce m'ont dit que les hanterent
Que Guillaume du Fay et Binchois.

Here the poet reports that the three composers astonished Paris with their singing. Carmen's motet “Venite adoremus dominum / Salve sancta” complains that the church is divided in different ways and was thus apparently written before the end of the Great Schism at the Council of Constance in 1417 was brought about.

meaning

Three motets by Johannes Carmen have survived; they are all in isorhythmic form and all seem to be based on newly composed tenor melodies . “Pontifici decori speculi” is unusual because here the top two voices run continuously in a unison canon . The other two motets are supplemented with a solo tenor part from sources from the 15th century and can be traced back to a three-part version. The motets were published in the Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae (CMM) series in 1955.

Works

Edition: Early Fifteenth-Century Music I , edited by Gilbert Reaney, without location information 1955, pages 39-61 (= CMM No. 11, I)

  • Motet “Pontifici decori speculi” with four parts
  • Motet “Salve pater creator omnium” / “Felix et beata” with four voices
  • Motet “Venite adoremus dominum” / “Salve sancta eterna trinitas” with four voices

Literature (selection)

  • Craig Wright: Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364-1419 , Henryville 1979
  • GM Boone: Dufay's Early Chansons: Chronology and Style in the Manuscript Oxford, Bodleaian Library, Canonici misc. 213 , dissertation at Harvard University 1987 (University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor / Michigan 8800749)
  • Ch. L. Turner: The Isorhythmic Motet in Continental Europe approx. 1380–1450 , dissertation at Indiana University 1987
  • JM Allsen: Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet, 1400–1440 , dissertation at the University of Wisconsin, Madison 1992 (University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor / Michigan 923167)
  • Laurenz Lütteken: Guillaume Dufay and the isorhythmic motet , Hamburg / Eisenach 1993 (= writings on musicology from Münster, No. 4)

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ The music in past and present (MGG), person part Volume 4, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Basel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1114-4
  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 .
  3. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , edited by Stanley Sadie, 2nd Edition, Volume 5, McMillan Publishers, London 2001, ISBN 0-333-60800-3
personal data
SURNAME Carmen, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carmen, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French composer and singer of the late Middle Ages
DATE OF BIRTH before 1400
DATE OF DEATH after 1420