Pierre Basin

Pierre Basin (* before 1435 in Bruges ; † April 19, 1497 ibid) was a Franco-Flemish singer . He came from a family of musicians from Bruges, the most important member of which was the singer and composer Adrien Basin .

biography

From 1455 to June 1460 he belonged to the private band of Marie d'Anjou , the wife of Charles VII . On June 23, 1460 he was employed as a singer at Saint-Donatien in Bruges , where he became acquainted with Gilles Joye . From August 13, 1465 to June 23, 1466, he was maître de chant , i.e. succentor . In 1467 he became a canon to Saint-Donatian. He kept this benefice until his death.

From 1467 to 1485, Pierre Basin was chaplain and chancellor of Charles the Bold . He sang in the court orchestra, initially in an unofficial position. On March 14, 1467, he and Antoine Busnoys received 8 livres to cover the costs they had incurred in moving the court from Ghent to Bruges. In September 1467 he became an official member of the court orchestra. After the Duke's death in 1477, his wife, Marie of Burgundy , took over the court orchestra. With Antoine Busnoys and Jean Cordier he attended the funeral of the Duchess in March 1482 and soon after left the Burgundian service. He returned to Bruges, where he performed various musical and administrative tasks at Saint-Donatian. In 1482, for example, he and Gilles Joye examined the audition of three applicants for the office of organist. In 1484/85 Pierre Basin lived in Ghent.

In early 1486 it became known that Pierre Basin was living with a concubine. In penance, he declared that he wanted to make a pilgrimage to Rome, wrote his will and donated money for an annual mass to be sung during the Virgilion of Saint Martin's Day (November 10th). He committed his brothers Jean and Adrien to enforce the foundation in the event of his death. But since he improved his way of life, the chapter only gave him to go on a pilgrimage to Aardenburg . But it stayed with the Foundation, and on November 10, 1486, the Missa de Sancto Martino was sung for the first time in the Saint-Martin Chapel , composed by none other than Jacob Obrecht , who had worked at Saint-Donatian since 1485.

In the following years Basin gave more money to his foundation, which on August 17, 1489 threw an annual pension of 7 livres. For this money, a polyphonic mass and 2 motets were sung on Saint Martin's day, and another mass, a polyphonic sequence and a Vespers motet on the day of Saint Martin's translation (July 4th) ; Moreover, processions took place on both feasts of the Holy. For the latter, Basin donated 4 livres a year in 1495.

From January 17, 1491 to March 14, 1491, Pierre, subsequently Jacob Obrecht , was succentor to Saint-Donatian. The chapter asked him to exercise the office of Hieronymus de Clibano , who had been appointed succentor on April 20, 1491, but did not take office until twenty months later.

Pierre Basin died on April 19, 1497. His only heir was his brother Adrien Basin.

literature

• Paula Higgins: "In hydraulis" Revisited: New Light on the Career of Antoine Busnois. In: Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 36-86 ( JSTOR 831694 )
• Reinhard Strohm: Music in late medieval Bruges. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1985, ISBN 0193163276 , p. 128
• Rob C. Wegman: Born for the muses: the life and masses of Jacob Obrecht. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1994, ISBN 0198163827 , p. 154 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).