Hilaire Penet (born 1501?) was a French composer of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

, who worked for at least the earlier part of his life in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

Life and works

Unusually for a Renaissance composer, more is known of his earlier life than his later; indeed nothing at all is known of him after 1520. He was probably born in 1501, since his age is given as 14 in a document of 1515, and he was probably born near Poitiers. He served as a singer in the papal chapel from 1514, when he arrived there in the care of

Carpentras Carpentras (, formerly ; Provençal Occitan: ''Carpentràs'' in classical norm or ''Carpentras'' in Mistralian norm; la, Carpentoracte) is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. ...

, until 1520 when he left never to return. Since much of his music was published in the 1530s and later, he may have still been alive then and working elsewhere; presumably had he been still working in association with the papal chapel, there would be records of his employment. Penet is most famous as the composer of ''Descendit angelus Domini'', a four-voice motet which was used both by

Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pre ...

and

Costanzo Porta Costanzo Porta (1528 or 1529 – 19 May 1601) was an Italian composer of the Renaissance, and a representative of what is known today as the Venetian School. He was highly praised throughout his life both as a composer and a teacher, and had ...

as source material for

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 eleme ...

composition. The motet circulated widely in Europe and apparently was quite popular; Penet can be seen as a kind of Renaissance one-hit wonder on the strength and popularity of this refined, elegant composition. He also wrote two settings of the

Magnificat The Magnificat (Latin for " y soulmagnifies he Lord) is a canticle, also known as the Song of Mary, the Canticle of Mary and, in the Byzantine tradition, the Ode of the Theotokos (). It is traditionally incorporated into the liturgical servic ...

which have survived, another motet (''Virgo prudentissima''), as well as a handful of secular

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 so ...

s, all of which are settings of current popular tunes.

References and further reading

* Article "Hilaire Penet," 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.

Recording

* Pomerium, ''Musical Book of Hours.'' Archiv 289 457 . Contains the five-voice motet ''Virgo prudentissima'', published in 1534. {{DEFAULTSORT:Penet, Hilaire 1500s births French classical composers French male classical composers Renaissance composers Year of death missing