Loyset Compère

Loyset Compère (c.1445–August 16, 1518) was a French composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italianate Renaissance style to France.

His exact place of birth is not known, but documents of the time assign him to a family from the province of Artois (in modern France), and suggest he may have been born in Hainaut (in modern Belgium). At least one source from Milan indicates he described himself as coming from Arras, also in Artois. Both the date and probable place of birth are extremely close to those of Josquin des Prez; indeed the area around the current French-Belgian border produced an astonishing number of excellent composers in the 15th and 16th centuries, composers whose fame spread throughout Europe. Often these composers are known as the Franco-Flemish, or as the Dutch School.

In the 1470s Compère worked in Milan at the chapel of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza. After the murder of the duke in 1476, he appears to have been "laid off" from the chapel, and may have returned to France at this time. Sometime during the next ten years began to work at the French court, and he accompanied Charles VIII on his invasion of Italy in 1494 (in what capacity is not known). He was in Rome in early 1495 during the occupation of the city by Charles and his army.

Next he had a series of church positions. By 1498 Compère was at Cambrai, and from 1500 to around 1504 he was at Douai; his final appointment was at a church in St Quentin. Throughout this time he seems to have been in part-time service to the French court, as evidenced by the many compositions that remain for official and ceremonial occasions. He died at St Quentin.

Unlike his contemporaries, Compère seems to have written few masses (at least very few survive). By temperament he seems to have been a miniaturist, and his most popular and numerous works were in the shorter forms of the day--primarily chansons and motets. Two stylistic trends are evident in his music: the style of the Burgundian School, which he obviously had learned in his early career before coming to Italy, and the current style of the lighter Italian composers, who were were writing frottolas (the light and popular predecessor to the madrigal). Compère had a gift for melody, and many of his chansons became popular; later composers used several as canti firmi for masses. Occasionally he seems to have given himself a formidable technical challenge and set out to solve it, such as writing quodlibets (Au travail suis, which combines no less than six different tunes written to the same text by different composers).

Compère wrote several works in a unique form, sometimes called a free motet, which combines some of the light elegance of the Italian popular song of the time with the contrapuntal technique of the Netherlanders. Some mix texts from different sources, for instance a rather paradoxical Sile fragor which combines a supplication to the Virgin Mary with a drinking song dedicated to Bacchus. His choice of secular texts tended towards the irreverent and suggestive.

His chansons are his most characteristic compositions, and many scholars of Renaissance music consider them to be his best work. They are for three or four voices, and are in three general categories: Italianate, light works for four a cappella voices, very much like frottolas, with text set syllabically and often homophonically, and having frequent cadences; three-voice works in the Burgundian style, rather like the music of Dufay; and three-voice "motet-chansons," which resemble the medieval motet more than anything else. In these works the lowest voice usually sings a slow-moving cantus firmus with a Latin text, while the upper voices sing more animated parts, in French.

Many of Compère's compositions were printed by Ottaviano Petrucci in Venice, and disseminated widely; obviously their availability contributed to their popularity. Compère was one of the first composers to benefit from the new technology of printing, which had a profound impact on the spread of the Franco-Flemish musical style throughout Europe.

Compère also wrote several settings of the Magnificat (the hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary, from the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke), as well as numerous short motets.

• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
• Article "Loyset Compère," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742