Philippe Verdelot

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Philippe Verdelot , also: "Verdelotto", the additions "Deslouges" or "Des Loges" can be traced back to the place of residence (* between 1480 and 1485 probably in Les Loges in the municipality of Verdelot ; † probably between 1527 and 1532 in Florence ) a French composer .

Life

Although Verdelot was the most important composer of Italian madrigals before Arcadelt and one of the pioneers of his genre, very little is known about his life.

Born in northern France, he probably also spent his early years there. When exactly Verdelot went to Italy is unclear. It is possible that he stayed in Rome between 1510 and 1513, but that cannot be proven. A reference by a painting by Sebastiano del Piombo from 1511 has not yet been secured. The presence of Verdelot in Italy before 1520 remains hypothetical. The earliest established sources are copies of Verdelot's sacred music, which were made in northern Italy around 1520.

Verdelot went to Florence by 1520/1521 at the latest, everyone agrees. Because from March 1522 at the latest he was Maestro di capella at the baptistery of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore , and from April 1523 at the latest he held the same office at the cathedral itself. Verdelot had thus united the two most important church music offices in the city and presumably exercised them until mid-1527.

Verdelot probably did not survive the Florentine disaster years 1527–1530, because there are no works that are dated after 1530, and he was not involved in the music for the Florentine princely wedding in 1539, but instead Arcadelt, who was referred to as his successor.

In the 1530s he was by far the most published composer in Italy. Individual and collective prints of his works were published up until the 1540s, and reprints until the 1560s. In 1566 a commemorative edition of his first two madrigal books was published (by Cl. Merulo, Venice).

The fact that the tradition of madrigals began emphatically in the 1530s was due to the development of Italian music printing and the rapidly increasing popularity of the madrigal in society.

Create

Philippe Verdelot shaped the music history of his time primarily through his multitude of madrigals . He is even referred to as the "founder of the madrigal as a musical genre".

The texts that Verdelot in his madrigals set to music , content act almost all of unrequited love, but came from very different genres, such as the sonnet , the Canzone or the literary form of the madrigal . Only a relatively few texts came from Francesco Petrarca , which was rather unusual in Italy at the time. Verdelot also set many texts by contemporary poets such as Niccoló Machiavelli , Ludovico Martelli and Angelo Poliziano to music .

When composing, Verdelot organized the music according to the text so that sections in the text correspond to the sections in the music. Musically, this structure is particularly clear through cadences .

In creating melodies , Verdelot tried to imitate the natural melody of speech. That is why a voice often remains declamatory on just one or a few notes. Larger jumps within a phrase are very rare.

Musical uniformity plays a major role for Verdelot, but the content of the text is also important to him. Since the structure of the movement is often very simple, the musical means of text interpretation that later characterize the madrigal come into their own particularly well. However, Verdelot only uses these effects very specifically for individual words.

The compositional technique of Verdelot's early four-part madrigals is mostly more homophonic . An overarching structure is often created here by a means from the French chanson : the beginning is kept very strictly homophonic, the middle part is a bit more polyphonic and the final part homophonic again, with the last verse of the poem being repeated. The final cadence is built up over long sustained notes in one or more voices.

The five- or six-part madrigals, on the other hand, are more polyphonic. The voices imitate each other or form a kind of double choir . A structure can also be established here by moving to a more homophonic sentence style.

Verdelot's madrigals were so well known that they were still printed after his death. But not only his madrigals have an important meaning for the history of music, Verdelot's motets also form an extensive and varied work.

Works

(A clear assignment to Verdelot is not possible for many plants)

Spiritual: 1 Magnificat , 2 masses and over 50 motets

Secular: 4 French chansons and over 146 madrigals

grades

  • Norbert Böker-Heil (ed.): The motets by Philippe Verdelot . Frankfurt / Main 1967 (contains 3 motets for 4-5-part mixed choir in the appendix).

Discography

  • Verdelot, Philippe: "Philippe Verdelot. Madrigals for a Tudor King." Christopher Watson, Clare Wilkinson, David Skinner, Lynda Sayce, Mark Dobell, Robert Macdonald, Ruth Massey, Steven Harrold, Timothy Scott Whiteley, Will Unwin, David Skinner (lead), Obsidian Records. 2007.
  • Verdelot, Philippe: "A Renaissance Songbook. Philippe Verdelot: The Complete Madrigalbook from 1536." Catherine King, Charles Daniels, Jacob Heringman, Brian Shelley, Robert Macdonald, Linn Records (CODAEX Germany) 2001.
  • Verdelot, Philippe: "Crisóbal De Morales. Missa Si bona suscepimus." The Tallis Scholar, Peter Phillips, Gimell 2011, CDGIM 033.

literature

  • Thomas Schmidt-Beste:  Verdelot, Philippe. 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 , Sp. 1428–1437 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  • Harry Colin Slim, Stefano La Via: Verdelot, Philippe . In: Stanley Sadie, John Tyrrell (Eds.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . 2nd Edition. tape 26 . Oxford University Press, London 2001, ISBN 0-333-60800-3 , Sp. 427-434 .
  • Iain Fenlon, James Haar: The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century. Sources and Interpretation . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, ISBN 0-521-25228-8 .
  • Donald Lee Hersh: Philippe Verdelot and the Early Madrigal . University of California, Berkeley 1963.
  • Robert Eitner :  Verdelot, Philippe . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, p. 614 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Thomas Schmidt-Beste:  Verdelot, Philippe. 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 , Sp. 1428–1437 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  2. ↑ DNB 482202491
personal data
SURNAME Verdelot, Philippe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Renaissance composer
DATE OF BIRTH after 1480
PLACE OF BIRTH Les Loges, Verdelot , Seine-et-Marne department
DATE OF DEATH before 1562
Place of death uncertain: Florence