Johannes Ghiselin

Johannes Ghiselin alias Verbonnet (also Verbonetto, Barboneto) (* around 1455 in Picardy ; † between 1507 and 1511 probably in Flanders ) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance .

Live and act

In a payroll of the cathedral chapel in Florence , Ghiselin's name has the addition “da Piccardia”, which shows his origin. He himself occasionally added his other name "Verbonnet" to his name; a number of compositions have also come down to us under this name. This second name could refer to his place of birth; however, this has not yet been determined. Also, unlike many composers of his time, he does not seem to have been a cleric , with the result that information about his curriculum vitae, especially about his early years and his education, has remained little. From his chanson "Je l'ay empris", which quotes the motto of Charles the Bold (reign 1467–1477), a possible reference to the Burgundian court orchestra can be assumed. After he is listed in Guillaume Crétin's Déploration on the death of Johannes Ockeghem in 1497 (here called Jean Verbonnet ), it was also assumed that he could have belonged to his group of students.

The first direct records of Johannes Ghiselin, who at that time served in the court orchestra of Ferrara with the music-loving Duke Ercole I d'Este (reign 1471–1505), are only available for the year 1491 . In a letter dated July 10, 1491 from Reggio , Ghiselin, who must have belonged to the Duke's court for a number of years, addressed his employer with a request for a benefit in Rubiera for his little son: “... because I am married "If you would not be entitled to do so, I ask Your Excellency to deign to take care of my little son Hercules so that he can follow the path of virtue thanks to Your Highness". It is not known whether Ghiselin was successful with his petition. The instrumental composition "L'Alfonsina", with reference to the Duke's son Alfonso, and Isabella d'Este's sending of the composer to France in the same year to assign two young singers to the court orchestra speak for the composer's close ties to the court win. Shortly after his return, Ghiselin left Ferrara.

From October 1492 Ghiselin was a singer at the Baptistery of San Giovanni, at Sanctissima Annunziata and at the cathedral in Florence and was thus a colleague of Heinrich Isaac . With the dissolution of the ensemble in March 1493, he lost his position. After he could not repay existing debts to a certain Bonaventura di Mostro from Ferrara, he was imprisoned and was first released in April 1493 by the objection of Duke Ercole.

On the basis of circumstantial evidence, music historians conclude that the composer then turned to France and became a member of the royal court orchestra there. This results from his setting of the poem “Le cueur la suyt” by Octovien de Saint-Gelais , which he wrote for her in 1493 on the occasion of Margaret of Austria's forced return from Paris to Brussels . The mention of his name in Crétins Deploration together with other members of the French court orchestra also suggests this. In addition, Ghiselin and Alexander Agricola stayed together at the court of Alfonso II in Naples in February 1494 , whereby Agricola was demonstrably traveling from France. In a letter dated July 21, 1501, the Ferraras ambassador to the French court, de Cavalieri, named Ghiselin a singer of the French king. With this letter the ambassador also sent a composition by Ghiselin for Corpus Christi to Ferrara; this work has not survived. The composer's continued good relations with the court in Ferrara also meant that the Ferranes ambassador received further compositions in September of the same year, including one by Josquin Desprez , which was sent to Ferrara by letter of 25 September. When Josquin accepted the duke's offer to become maestro di cappella of the court orchestra in Ferrara a little later , Ghiselin was commissioned to accompany him from France to Ferrara; Both stopped at the house of the envoy Mantua in Lyon , who then wrote a letter on April 12, 1503, reporting on the splendid equipage with which the two composers traveled.

Because of these events, it is certain that Ghiselin and Josquin had a closer relationship and that Ghiselin had returned to the service of Ercole I from this time on. Since the publisher Ottaviano dei Petrucci also carried out the next print for Ghiselin's masses after an individual print for Josquin in 1503 - a special honor for a composer - Josquin's involvement in this decision is obvious. When Josquin left Ferrara in the spring of 1504 and Jacob Obrecht was won over for the post of maestro di cappella , it was probably Ghiselin again, based on letters, who accompanied Obrecht from the north to Ferrara in the autumn of 1504. But after the plague broke out in Ferrara in 1505 , Ghiselin finally left the court of the d'Este at the latest, while Obrecht stayed in Ferrara and died there. The last document on Ghiselin's vita from 1507 shows him on a payroll as a member of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe (Our Lady) brotherhood in Bergen op Zoom in Flanders, with the amount paid out indicating membership for at least one year. The Brotherhood's payrolls for the years 1508-1510 have been lost, and his name no longer appears on the 1511 list. Because no other works by him have appeared since 1505, it is concluded that Johannes Ghiselin died between 1507 and 1511.

meaning

The printing of five of his six traditional masses by the publisher Petrucci in 1503 indicates the contemporary fame of Ghiselin. The demonstrably close personal contact with Josquin also led to increased musical relationships between individual works by both composers, while in his earlier works a strong orientation towards the model of Johannes Ockeghem can be demonstrated. In the five printed masses an extraordinary variety of compositional methods can be found: extensive cantus firmus mass , extremely consistent execution of the hexachords , approaches to parody mass , efforts to achieve special tonality, inclusion of chorale quotations . Particularly in his late work, the mass “Ghy syt die Wertste”, where the principle of the parody mass comes to the fore over the cantus-firmus principle, a contrapuntal density is achieved in places that will only become the main stylistic characteristic of the following generation of composers.

In his motet work, Ghiselin shows himself to be a typical composer of the late 15th century with his preference for three-part music (only the few late works are for four-part), both in the sacred motets, especially the Mary motets, and in the secular pieces. Here, too, the effort to penetrate the motif and rationalize the typesetting can be seen. The composition "Dulces exuviae", a setting of Dido 's lament from Virgil' s Aeneid , inspired by the Virgil enthusiasm of Isabella d'Este , has a special position . Here the structure of the lines of verse is particularly clear and a haunting musical notation, finely balanced between homophony and polyphony, is used.

Works

Complete edition: Johannes Ghiselin - Verbonnet. Opera omnia , edited by Clytus Gottwald , without location information 1961–1968 (= Corpus mensurabilis musicae No. 23)

• Masses and Mass Fragments (all to four voices)
  • Missa "De les armes"
  • Missa "Ghy syt die Wertste boven al" (about its own chanson)
  • Missa "Gratieuse" (on a chanson by Antoine Busnoys )
  • Missa "Je nay dueul" (on a chanson by Alexander Agricola)
  • Missa "La belle se siet" (on a chanson by Guillaume Dufay )
  • Missa "N'arayge" (on a chanson by Robert Morton )
  • Missa "Joye me fuyt" (about a chanson by Antoine Busnoys, only Sanctus and Agnus Dei received)
  • Missa "Le renvoy" (about a chanson by Loyset Compère , only tenor and bass survived , not in the complete edition)
• Motets
  • Chanson motets
    • “Anima mea liquefacta est” (I) to three votes
    • "Favus distillans" for three voices (without text)
    • “Miserere, Domine” / “In patientia” to three voices
    • “O florens rosa” to three voices
  • Chorale arrangements
    • “Ad te suspiramus” to two votes
    • “Anima mea liquefacta est” (II) to four votes
    • “Maria virgo semper laetare” to four voices
    • “Salve Regina” to four voices
  • Tenor motets
    • "Inviolata, integra et casta" for four voices (Contrafactum "Inviolata intemerataque virginitas")
    • “Regina caeli laetare” with four voices
  • Free motets
    • “Ave Domina, sancta Maria” to four voices
    • "O gloriosa Domina" for four voices (Contrafactum "O sacrum mysterium")
    • "Tota scriptura" to three voices (Contrafactum of the "Pleni" of the Missa "Narayge")
• Secular compositions for singing voices
  • “A vous madame” to three voices
  • “De che te pasci amore” with three votes
  • "De tous biens playne" to three voices (Rondeau)
  • "Dulces exuviae" for four voices, (Text: Virgil, Aeneis IV, 651-654)
  • “Een frouwelic wesen” to three votes
  • "Fors seulement" to four voices (2 settings, rondeaux)
  • "Ghy syt die most valuable" to four votes
  • “Helas hic moet my liden” to three votes
  • "J'ayme bien mon amy" to three votes (Rondeau)
  • “Je l'ay empris” to three votes
  • "Je loe amours" to three voices (ballad)
  • “Je suis treffort” to three votes
  • “Las mi lares vous donc” to three votes
  • "Le cueur le syuit" to three voices (after 1493, text: Octovien de Saint-Gelais)
  • “Rendez le moy mon cueur” with three voices
  • “Se iay requis” to three voices
  • "Wet ghy wat mynder jonghen herten changed" to three votes
  • “Vostre a jamays” to three votes
• Instrumental music
  • “Carmen in sol” to three voices
  • "L'Alfonsina" to three voices (Ferrara, before 1491)
  • “La Spagna”, Bassedanse to four voices
• Doubtful works (for stylistic reasons)
  • “Da pacem” to three votes
  • Missa sine nomine to three voices ("Verbenet" attributed)

literature

• Robert Eitner:  Verbonet . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, p. 613.
• AP Coclico: Compendium musices , Nuremberg 1552, edited by MF Buzkofer, Kassel and others 1954 (= Documenta musicologica 1/9)
• Ms. D'Acconte: The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the Fifteenth Century. In: Journal of the American Musicological Society No. 14, 1961, pp. 307-358
• Clytus Gottwald: Johannes Ghiselin - Janne Verbonnet. Some Traces of His Life. In: Musica disciplina No. 15, 1961, pages 105-111
• Clytus Gottwald: Johannes Ghiselin - Johannes Verbonnet. Style-critical investigation into the problem of their identity Dissertation at the University of Frankfurt am Main 1961, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 1962, DNB 451628403
• M. Staehelin: Source studies on the work of Johannes Ghiselin-Verbonnet. In: Archives for Musicology No. 24, 1967, pages 120–132
• MB Winn: "Le Cueur la suyt". Chanson on a Text for Marguerite d'Autriche. Another Trace on the Life of Johannes Ghiselin-Verbonnet. In: Musica disciplina No. 32, 1978, pages 69-72
• H. Kümmerling: Dona nobis pacem. The revelation of the new heaven and the new earth in Agnus Dei settings by Josquins and Ghiselin Verbonnets. In: Fusa No. 11, 1983, pages 4-17
• Klaus Hortschansky: A motto composition for Charles the Bold. In: Festschrift for Martin Ruhnke , Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1986, pages 144–157
• R. Sherr: Questions Concerning Instrumental Ensemble Music in Sacred Contexts in the Early Sixteenth Century. In: Le Concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance, Paris 1995, pp. 145–156

Web links

• Works by and about Johannes Ghiselin in the catalog of the German National Library

swell

1. ^ Klaus Pietschmann:  Ghiselin alias Verbonnet, Johannes. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 16 (Strata - Villoteau). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2006, ISBN 3-7618-1136-5  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 8: Štich - Zylis-Gara. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1982, ISBN 3-451-18058-8 .