Nicolas Champion

Nicolas Champion dit Le Liégeois (* around 1475 in Liège ; † September 20, 1533 in Lier ) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer and cleric of the Renaissance .

Live and act

The composer's nickname "Le Liégeois" (The Liège) refers to his place of birth. His brother Jacobus (or Jacques) Champion was born around the same time in Liège, was also a singer, perhaps also a composer, and was often mistaken for Nicolas by music-historical research. A reference to the French Champion family , harpsichordists and composers of the 17th century, is suspected by some music researchers, but has not yet been proven.

Nicolas Champion probably received his first training in his hometown, but there is no information about his youth or training. The first evidence concerns his entry into the Grande Chapelle of the Burgundian - Habsburg court of Duke Philip the Fair in Mechelen and Brussels on November 13, 1501, before Philip's first trip with the court orchestra to Spain. In this ensemble he worked as a singer and chaplain until 1516. His employers were Philip the Fair, Johanna of Castile and Archduke Karl, the later Emperor Charles V. The court orchestra also served as an instrument of representation, so that Nicolas on the travels of the Dukes often came to countries with befriended or related rulers for several weeks or months. After Philip the Fair's extensive trip to Spain from the end of 1501 to the spring of 1502, there was a second trip to Spain from the end of 1505; After the Duke and his entourage stopped in Burgos for the summer in April 1506 , he fell seriously ill with fever in early summer and died here on September 25, 1506. The court orchestra dissolved, some of the members returned to Burgundy, others, so also Nicolas Champion, entered the service of the successor band of the widow, Joanna of Castile, who was particularly generous in terms of remuneration.

Johanna, nicknamed "the mad one", apparently couldn't get over the death of her husband Philipp even after a long time, organized a funeral procession around the castle every night for two years, at which the coffin with the corpse of Philip was carried the choir also had to sing requiems every night ; one of these singers was Nicolas Champion. Johanna's father, Archduke Ferdinand , finally ousted Johanna in August 1508 by locking her up in the fortress of Tordesillas . Their court chapel then also dissolved and Nicolas joined Charles V's chapel. Here he held a high rank and was paid very well, even if he did not reach the rank of Pierre de la Rue .

Through his good contacts and his services at court, he acquired a number of benefits in the cities of Bruges , Namur , Lens , Lier, Oostvoorne , Valenciennes , Geervliet and Brielle from 1508 to around 1520 . In 1516 he was appointed as a canon - Kantor in Lier successor to the late cantor de Nicolas Leesmeester , it still remained temporarily in the service of the court orchestra and traveled with her in 1523 as interim music director to Spain. In addition, he could have had a good relationship with Duke Friedrich the Wise of Saxony , because he wrote a five-part mass for his court music . The last order he received from the court of Charles V was to look for a new singing master and six new singers in 1524 after the death of the composer Nicole Carlier , possibly winning his brother Jacobus for the position of singing master. He later retired to the Church of St. Gummarus in Lier, died here on September 20, 1533 and was buried six days later in the same place. He also donated an annual memorial there .

meaning

Only a limited number of compositions by Nicolas Champion have survived, but they were widely used. With regard to these works, he was an extraordinarily capable composer who, according to his style, was on the transition from the late Burgundian tradition of Jacob Obrecht and Pierre de la Rues to the new trend of the " Josquin successor" of Nicolas Gombert , especially through his mass with several cantus firmi and the use of canonical notation. Like de la Rue, he made use of the richness of sound of the five- and six-part movement and made use of declamatory passages. The clear formal symmetry of Champion's works is reinforced by the cyclical recurrence and further development of musical material between sections of motets and between entire mass movements. These and other advanced techniques of melodic and contrapuntal development put him at the forefront of the music of his generation. His works, like those of other Franco-Flemish composers, later spread in Spanish and German sources. Since the first name is not noted in some compositions, it has not yet been clarified whether they should be ascribed to his brother. The music theorist and composer Adrianus Petit Coclico (1499–1562) valued a certain champion (no first name) in his Compendium musices (published in Nuremberg in 1552) and counted him together with Josquin, de la Rue, Gombert and Jean Courtois († before 1567) ) to the group of musici praestantissimi .

Works

Complete edition : Nicolas Champion, Collected Works, edited by Nors Sigurd Josephson, Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1973 (= Corpus mensurabilis musicae No. 60)

• measure up
  • Missa Ducis Saxsoniae “Sing ich niet wol, that's with leyt” to five voices; in one manuscript attributed to Nicolas Champion, in another anonymous
  • Missa supra “Maria Magdalena” with five voices; in one manuscript attributed to Nicolaus Campion , in another only Champion (without first name), in two others anonymous
  • Missa “Ales Regretz” with four voices; Attribution to Nicolaus Scompianus (?), Only alto and bass preserved
• Motets
  • “Beati omnes” for six voices
  • “Deus in audiutorium”; in one manuscript attributed to Ludwig Senfl , in another Nicolas Champion, in a third Josquin
• Chansons
  • “Still weet ick een schoen ioffrau” to four votes; two lute versions of this have also survived
• Works with dubious authorship
  • “De profundis clamavi” with four voices; also attributed to Josquin, but stylistic reasons and the attribution in an Austrian manuscript speak for Nicolas Champion as a composer

Literature (selection)

• G. van Doorslaer: Nicolas et Jacques Champion, dits Liégeois, chantres au début du XVI siècle , in: Mechlinia No. 8, 1930, pages 4-13
• H. Federhofer: Etats de la chapelle musicale de Charles-Quint (1528) et de Maximilien (1554) , in: Revue Belge de musicologie No. 4, 1950, page 24 and following
• NS Josephson: Some Remarks on the Music of Nicolas Champion , in Musica disciplina No. 29, 1975, pp. 149-163
• CJ Cyrus: Josquin in the Fishbowl , in: Early Music No. 28, Heft 1, 2000, page 147

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Nicolas Champion in the International Music Score Library Project
• Sheet music in the public domain by Nicolas Champion in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)

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. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , edited by Stanley Sadie, MacMillan, London 2001