Acourt was a French

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

who flourished sometime during the first half of the 15th century. Only two chansons (in a style typical of c.1430) by the composer survive from a 15th-century manuscript, MS. Canon. Misc. 213, housed at the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...

. His best known work is the chanson ''Je demande ma bienvenue'' which was first published in

John Stainer Sir John Stainer (6 June 1840 – 31 March 1901) was an English composer and organist whose music, though seldom performed today (with the exception of ''The Crucifixion'', still heard at Passiontide in some churches of the Anglican Communi ...

's ''Early Bodleian music: Dufay and his contemporaries'' (Novello, 1898). Musicologist Elizabeth Randell Upton provides a thorough analysis of the chanson in ''Music and Performance in the Later Middle Ages'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

John S. Beckett John Stewart Beckett (5 February 1927 – 5 February 2007) was an Irish musician, composer and conductor; cousin of the famous writer and playwright Samuel Beckett. Youth and education John and his twin sister Ann were born in Sandymount ...

and Michael Morrow's ensemble

Musica Reservata In music history, ''musica reservata'' (also ''musica secreta'') is either a style or a performance practice in ''a cappella'' vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivit ...

recorded ''Je demande ma bienvenue'' on their LP ''Music from the Hundred Years War'' ( Philips Records, 1969). More recently the chanson has been included in concerts by the early music group Armonia Nova. Nothing is known about the life of Acourt. There is some speculation that Acourt may be another name for the French composer Johannes de Alte Curie Haucourt (

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

1390-after 1416). However, musicologist Reinhard Strohm says this theory is very unlikely as Acourt's chansons have little similarity to the surviving works by Haucourt.

References

External links

MS. Canon. Misc. 213
at the Bodleian Library. * information o
MS. Canon. Misc. 213
at th
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music
{{authority control Chanson composers French Renaissance composers French male classical composers