Estienne Grossin (; also Grossim) was a French composer of the late

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

and early

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

eras, active in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. He was one of the first composers to write a partially

cyclic mass In Renaissance music, the cyclic mass was a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, in which each of the movements – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei – shared a common musical theme, commonly a cantus ...

, a form which was to become the predominant large-scale vehicle for musical expression later in the 15th century.

Life

He was originally from the

diocese of Sens The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sens and Auxerre (Latin: ''Archidioecesis Senonensis et Antissiodorensis''; French: ''Archidiocèse de Sens et Auxerre'') is a Latin Rite Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in France. The Archdiocese comp ...

. Only two records survive of his life, a mention in 1418 that he was a chaplain at the Parisian church of St. Merri, and the inclusion of his name as a clerk at Notre Dame in Paris. This source also gives his origin and mentions that he was a priest, but gives no date of birth. Stylistically, most of his music seems to have been written before about 1430.Wright, Grove

Music and influence

While he wrote both sacred and secular music, the sacred music predominates. Most significant among these compositions is a four-movement setting of the Ordinary of the

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

, including the

Kyrie Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek , vocative case of (''Kyrios''), is a common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, also called the Kyrie eleison ( ; ). In the Bible The prayer, "Kyrie, eleison," "Lord, have mercy" derives f ...

, Gloria,

Credo In Christian liturgy, the credo (; Latin for "I believe") is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed – or its shorter version, the Apostles' Creed – in the Mass, either as a prayer, a spoken text, or sung as Gregorian chant or other musical sett ...

, and

Sanctus The Sanctus ( la, Sanctus, "Holy") is a hymn in Christian liturgy. It may also be called the ''epinikios hymnos'' ( el, ἐπινίκιος ὕμνος, "Hymn of Victory") when referring to the Greek rendition. In Western Christianity, the ...

(there is no

Agnus Dei is the Latin name under which the " Lamb of God" is honoured within the Catholic Mass and other Christian liturgies descending from the Latin liturgical tradition. It is the name given to a specific prayer that occurs in these liturgies, and ...

in this particular set; it may have been lost). The movements are unified by a motto marked as ''trumpetta,'' although it is unclear whether this was an expression marking or an actual indication for performance on a

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

. Unification of a mass by ''

cantus firmus In music, a ''cantus firmus'' ("fixed melody") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is , although the corrupt form ''canti firmi'' (resulting from the grammatically incorrect tr ...

'' writing was not to occur for another decade at least, most likely in England: Grossin was one of the first, after

Johannes Ciconia Johannes Ciconia ( – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly ...

, to sense the need for musical unity in the several movements and accomplish it by use of a type of motto theme. Grossin also wrote single movements of masses, almost all for three voices (although one Agnus setting survives for four). One of his

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...

s, ''Imera dat hodierno'', was popular enough to be copied in at least six surviving sources. He also wrote two French

chanson A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic s ...

s which have survived, one of which is a '' rondeau.'' Some of his music survives in the ''

Trent Codices The Trent Codices are a collection of seven large music manuscripts compiled around the middle of the 15th century, currently kept in the northern Italian city of Trent. They contain mostly sacred vocal music composed between 1400 and 1475. Contain ...

,'' the largest source of music from the 15th century in Europe.

References

*Craig Wright: "Estienne Grossin", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 4, 2007)
(subscription access)
*

Gustave Reese Gustave Reese ( ; 29 November 1899 – 7 September 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications ''Music in the Middle Ages'' (1940) ...

, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954.

Notes

French classical composers French male classical composers 15th-century French composers {{France-composer-stub