Matthaeus Pipelare ( – ) was a Netherlandish composer, choir director, and possibly wind instrument player of the Renaissance. He was from Louvain, and spent part of his early life in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

. Unlike many of his contemporaries, many of whom traveled to Italy, Spain or elsewhere, he seems never to have left the Low Countries. In spring 1498 he became the choir director at the

Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady The Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady (Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap) was a religious confraternity founded in 1318 in 's-Hertogenbosch to promote the veneration of the Mother of God. The brotherhood was organized around a carved woo ...

's-Hertogenbosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a city and municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 157,486. It is the capital of the province of North Brabant and its fourth largest by population. The city is south of th ...

, a position he held until 1500. From his name it is presumed that either he or perhaps his father was a wind player, for example a town piper. Pipelare's style was wide-ranging; he wrote in almost all of the vocal forms current in his day: masses, motets, secular songs in all the local languages. No instrumental music has survived. In mood his music ranged from light secular songs to sombre

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 related to those of Pierre de La Rue, an almost exact contemporary. He wrote 11 complete masses which have survived to modern times (although many of the manuscripts were destroyed in the Second World War), as well as 10

s, and 8 chansons; the chansons are both in

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

and Dutch. One of the masses is a four-voice cantus firmus setting of

L'homme armé "L'homme armé" (French for "the armed man") is a secular song from the Late Middle Ages, of the Burgundian School. According to Allan W. Atlas, "the tune circulated in both the Mixolydian mode and Dorian mode (transposed to G)." It was the most p ...

, a style which was already old-fashioned by the time he was writing; the tune moves from voice to voice, but is usually in the tenor. His ''Missa Fors seulement'' is based on his own chanson, which he used as the cantus firmus. ''Memorare Mater Christi'' is a seven-part motet on the sorrows of the Virgin Mary; each of the seven voices represents a different ''dolor''. The third of the seven voices even quotes the contemporary Spanish villancico "Nunca fué pena mayor" (never was there a greater pain) by Juan de Urrede. Sequential writing and

syncopated In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...

rhythms are characteristic of his music.

Discography

*Matthaeus Pipelare: Missa L'homme armé; Chansons; Motets", Huelgas Ensemble ( Paul Van Nevel), Sony *Matthaeus Pipelare: Paradise Regained - Masses, The Sound and the Fury, Fra Bernardo (2014)

References

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

External links

Matthaeus Pipelare's ''Fors seulement'' (II) Chanson, and its Related Motet and Mass Performance Editions and Commentary
(George H. Black, Jr.; doctoral dissertation, Louisiana State University) * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pipelare, Matthaeus 1450s births 1510s deaths Flemish composers Renaissance composers Musicians from Leuven 15th-century Franco-Flemish composers 16th-century Franco-Flemish composers