You, probably, have never heard the name Raymond Lull. Yet, in the barbaric medieval times of thirteen century lived a genius whose influence impacted different fields, from computer science to botany. I can not call him a Renaissance man, because he was so much more. I can’t call him just a polymath or encyclopedic mind either. In fact, Raymond Lull reminds me more of a hero from sci-fi movie that some director should definitely shoot in the near future.
It is funny to say, that in the first part of his life Raymond Lull was a troubadour. Just another young guy, singing songs about courtly love, filled with lust for women and pleasures. Yet, he was not just any troubadour hanging around the royal courts. Where should I start? He was the first in many things. He was a pioneer of computation theory. He, probably wrote a first European romantic novel and the first major work of Catalan language literature. His manuscripts discovered in 2001 show him to have anticipated by several centuries prominent work on elections theory. He was also a great philosopher and poet - and he made quite an impression on later philosophers, including Schopenhauer. And he was a tireless traveler, making sea voyages even at the very old age until the end of his life. You think, this is all, don’t you?
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]]>Some would call Hildegard of Bingen who lived in early medieval period a polymath or a Renaissance woman who was ahead of her time. But I would call her a true psychic, who also had unusual telepathic abilities. In the barbaric times of the eleventh century, seeking the answers, Popes of Rome, kings, queens, statesmen and clerics and even some canonized in future Catholic saints visited her just to hear her predictions and prophecies. Here is what I found during my research for a local web analytics company.
She was quite a popular figure of her times, like a big rock star, if we compare her to our modern times. All we have to say is that she was the only woman in Middle Ages who had her preaching tours! She was not just a visionary, she was also a famous composer, artist, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, activist of her times.
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Loyset Compere was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italian Renaissance style to France. Compere had a gift for melody, and many of his chansons became popular. Later composers even used several of them for masses. His chansons are his most characteristic compositions, and many scholars of Renaissance music consider them to be his best work.
Many of Compere's compositions were printed and disseminated widely. Their availability contributed to their popularity. Our company's chief Web Analyst told me that Compere was one of the first composers to benefit from the new technology of printing, which had a profound impact on the spread of the Franco-Flemish musical style throughout Europe.
He was probably born around 1445. His exact place of birth is not known, but documents of the time assign him to a family from the province of Artois in France, and suggest he may have been born in Hainaut. Some sources indicate that he described himself as coming from Arras, also in Artois. One can't help to notice, that the area around the current French-Belgian border produced an astonishing number of excellent composers in the 15th and 16th centuries, whose fame spread throughout Europe. Often they are known as the Franco-Flemish, or as the Dutch School.
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]]>Antoine Busnois was a French composer and poet of the early Renaissance Burgundian School. While also noted as a composer of sacred music, such as motets, he was one of the most renowned 15th-century composers of secular chansons.
We don’t know much about his life. He was probably born around 1430, in the vicinity of Bethune in the Pas de Calais. He may have been related to the aristocratic family of Busnois. He clearly received an excellent musical education. An aristocratic origin may explain his early association with the French royal court: references to him appear there, and in 1461 he was a chaplain at Tours. He was not entirely a man of peace. This is indicated by a petition for absolution he filed in Tours, in which he admitted to being part of a group that beat up a priest, “to the point of bloodshed”, not one but five times. While in a state of anathema he was foolhardy enough to celebrate mass, an act which got him excommunicated; however Pope Pius II pardoned him.
He moved from the cathedral to the collegiate church of St. Martin, also in Tours, where he became a subdeacon in 1465. Later in 1465 Busnois moved to Poitiers, where he not only became master of the choirboys, but managed to attract a flood of talented singers from the entire region; by this time his reputation as singing teacher, scholar, and composer seems to have spread widely. However he departed just as suddenly as he came, in 1466 and moved to Burgundy.
]]>Dunstable created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths. Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early Renaissance music. Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three incomplete but multi-section masses, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets, as well as twenty-seven separate settings of various liturgical texts, including.
He is believed to have written secular music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty. Yet, because so much of the surviving 15th century repertory of English carols is anonymous, and Dunstable is known to have written many, most scholars consider it highly likely that some of the anonymous carols from this time are actually by Dunstable.
Dunstable was probably the most influential English composer of all time, yet he remains an enigma: his complete works were not published until the quincentenary of his death in 1953, but even since then works have been added and subtracted from his oeuvre; we know very little of his life and nothing of his undoubted learning; we can only make an educated guess at most of the chronology of the small amount of music that has come down to us. And we understand little of his style - why he wrote as he did, what artistic or technical principles guided his composing, how his music was performed, or why it was so influential.
]]>In addition to his work as a composer, Dunstable had a contemporary reputation as an astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician. Some of his astrological works have survived in manuscript, possibly in his own hand.
He died on Christmas Eve 1453, as recorded in his epitaph, which was in the church of St Stephen Walbrook in London (until it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666). This was also his burial place. The epitaph - stating that he had "secret knowledge of the stars" - was reinstated in the church in 1904.
Very few manuscript sources of Dunstaple’s works survived in England, as is similarly the case for other 15th century composers. Even though England was a centre of musical activity, almost all of the music was destroyed between 1536 and 1540 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. As a result, most of Dunstaple’s work had to be recovered from continental sources. Since numerous copies of his works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame must have been widespread. He was praised by the French poet Martin Le Franc, who wrote in the massive verse-poem that Dunstable influenced other Renaissance composers. A few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist Tinctoris hailed him as the chief exponent, of the new art which had originated with the English.
]]>John Dunstable, born around 1390 in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, was an English composer of polyphonic music of the late medieval era and early Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early 15th century, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent. In our funeral home directory, we found very little about Dunstable. Nothing is known of his musical training and background. He was clearly a highly educated man, though there is no record of an association with either Oxford or Cambridge universities. He is widely held to have been in the royal service of Duke of Bedford, the fourth son of Henry IV and brother of Henry V. As such he may have stayed in France for some time, since the duke was Regent of France from 1423 to 1429, and then Governor of Normandy from 1429 to his death in 1435. He owned property in Normandy, and also in Cambridgeshire, Essex and London. After the death in 1437 of another patron, the Dowager Queen Joan, he evidently was in the service of Duke of Gloucester, the fifth son of Henry IV.
Unlike many composers of the time, he was probably not a cleric, though there are links with St. Albans Abbey; he was probably married, based on the record of women sharing his name in his parish, and he also owned a manor in Hertfordshire.
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