Laurent Belissen (also ''Bellissen''; 8 August 1693 – 12 February 1762) was a French

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

composer. He was born in

Aix-en-Provence Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...

and may have been among the last students of

Guillaume Poitevin Guillaume Poitevin (2 October 1646 – 26 January 1706) was a French serpent player, maître de chapelle and composer. Biography Born in Boulbon near Tarascon, Poitevin was trained musically in the choir school of Avignon and then entered the c ...

, then ''maître de musique'' at the choir school of the

Aix Cathedral Aix Cathedral (french: Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur d'Aix-en-Provence) in Aix-en-Provence in southern France is a Roman Catholic church and the seat of the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and Arles. The cathedral is built on the site of the 1st-centur ...

. By 1722 Belissen settled in

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...

, where he succeeded

Antoine Blanchard Antoine Blanchard is the pseudonym under which the French painter Marcel Masson (15 November 1910 – 10 August 1988)Artnet painted his immensely popular Parisian street scenes. He was born in a small village near the banks of the Loire. Educat ...

as ''maître de musique'' of the Abbey of St. Victor, which was then rapidly declining in importance—but he also secured a position directing the city's Académie de Concerts. Belissen remained in Marseilles until his death. Much of Belissen's music is either lost or remains uncatalogued. His four ''grands motets'' adopt a style radically different from what contemporary

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

composers used: Belissen uses four voices instead of five, and his style successfully combines Italian and French traits. One

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 ...

survives incomplete, and at least two more are presumed lost, similarly to other ''grands motets'',

Magnificat The Magnificat (Latin for "

y soul Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or sevent ...

magnifies

he Lord He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

) is a canticle, also known as the Song of Mary, the Canticle of Mary and, in the Eastern Christianity, Byzantine tradition, the Ode of the Theotokos (). It is traditionally incorporated ...

settings, Lamentations, etc.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Belissen, Laurent Musicians from Aix-en-Provence French Baroque composers French composers of sacred music French male classical composers 1693 births 1762 deaths 18th-century classical composers 18th-century French composers 18th-century French male musicians 17th-century male musicians