Hayne van Ghizeghem ( 1445 – 1476 to 1497) was a
Franco-Flemish
The designation Franco-Flemish School, also called Netherlandish School, Burgundian School, Low Countries School, Flemish School, Dutch School, or Northern School, refers, somewhat imprecisely, to the style of polyphonic vocal music composition or ...
composer of the 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 ...
Burgundian School
The Burgundian School was a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy. The school inaugurated the music of Burgundy.
The ...
.
While many of his works have survived, little is known about his life. He was probably born in
Gijzegem
Aalst (; french: Alost, ; Brabantian: ''Oilsjt'') is a city and municipality on the Dender River, northwest from Brussels in the Flemish province of East Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Aalst itself and the villages of Baardegem, ...
(near
Aalst, in modern
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
).
His musical talent must have been noticed early by Charles, Count of
Charolais (later to become
Charles the Bold
Charles I (Charles Martin; german: Karl Martin; nl, Karel Maarten; 10 November 1433 – 5 January 1477), nicknamed the Bold (German: ''der Kühne''; Dutch: ''de Stoute''; french: le Téméraire), was Duke of Burgundy from 1467 to 1477.
...
) because there is a record of his being personally assigned to a teacher by him; in 1467 he is shown in the Burgundian employment records as being a singer. In addition, he was named along with
Adrien Basin and
Antoine Busnois
Antoine Busnois (also Busnoys; – before 6 November 1492) was a French composer, singer and poet of early Renaissance music. Busnois and colleague Johannes Ockeghem were the leading European composers of the second half the 15th century, and ...
as "chantre et
valet de chambre
''Valet de chambre'' (), or ''varlet de chambre'', was a court appointment introduced in the late Middle Ages, common from the 14th century onwards. Royal households had many persons appointed at any time. While some valets simply waited on t ...
" to Charles, indicating the special regard in which he was held.
In addition to serving as a singer and composer, he evidently served as a soldier as well, for there is a record of purchase of military equipment for him, prior to the
campaign against Liège by Charles. Charles took his musicians along with him on his campaigns, because he loved music as much as war, and insisted on entertainment; however Hayne was the only one of his famous musicians known to be also outfitted as a soldier. He is known to have been at the
Siege of Beauvais in 1472, where Charles was decisively repulsed by the French, and Hayne was long presumed by scholars to have been killed in that battle. However, recent research into his surviving compositions indicates that some may have been produced after 1472, especially because they seem to show stylistic development beyond the ones that can be definitively dated to 1472 or before.
[Litterick, Grove online] Current scholarship suggests he may have survived the siege, and gone to work at the court of France. That such a distinguished singer and composer worked for France's bitter rival would have been an offense easy to forgive, for Burgundian musicians of the time were highly prized.
Hayne is principally known as a composer of
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, and most of these are
rondeaux. Two in particular—''
Allez regrets
"Allez regrets" is a chanson usually credited to Franco-Flemish composer Hayne van Ghizeghem. Together with the composer's " De tous biens plaine", this was one of the most famous chansons of the age, and was much used as a basis for variation an ...
'', and ''
De tous biens plaine
"De tous biens plaine" is a French chanson, usually credited to Hayne van Ghizeghem, who wrote a 3-part version, published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1501. Amongst other reworkings are a four-part version by Josquin and two 3-part versions by Alexan ...
''—were so famous in late 15th-century Europe that they appeared in 25 separate sources, many dating from before the invention of
printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
, and they were used as source material for many later compositions by other composers. Almost all of his works are for three voices; they are simple and clear in texture, in the typical manner of the Burgundian school; and the melodic voice is the highest.
Eleven pieces can be definitively attributed to Hayne, though numerous similar works classified as "anonymous" may actually be compositions of his. The entire collection has been edited and published in ''
Corpus mensurabilis musicae
The ''Corpus mensurabilis musicae'' (CMM) is a collected print edition of most of the sacred and secular vocal music of the late medieval and Renaissance period in western music history, with an emphasis on the central Franco-Flemish and Italian re ...
'', vol. lxxiv (1977), by B. Hudson.
Notes
References and further reading
* Louise Litterick: "Hayne van Ghizeghem", in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.
*
*
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.
* Clemens Goldberg: "Was zitiert Compere; Zitat, Topos, Zitat und Paraphrase in den Regrets-Chansons von Hayne van Ghizeghem und Loyset Compère, Bärenreiter 1996, p. 88-99
Download
External links
*
Editionof his chansons at Goldberg Stiftung
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghizeghem, Hayne van
1440s births
15th-century deaths
Belgian classical composers
Belgian male classical composers
Burgundian school composers
Flemish composers
15th-century Franco-Flemish composers
People from Aalst, Belgium
Renaissance composers