Guillaume Costeley

Guillaume Costeley

Guillaume Costeley (1530, possibly 1531 – January 28, 1606) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was the court organist to Charles IX of France and famous for his numerous "chansons", which were representative of the late development of the form; his work in this regard was part of the early development of the style known as musique mesurée. He was also one of very few 16th century French composers of music for keyboard. In addition, he was a founding member of the "Académie de Poésie et de Musique" along with poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf, and he was one of the earliest composers to experiment with microtonal composition.

Life

Costeley was born in Fontanges-en-Auvergne, coincidentally the same town as contemporary composer Antoine de Bertrand. Nothing is known of him prior to his arrival in Paris in or before 1554, at which time he met, and became acquainted with the music of, such diverse figures as Jean Maillard, Jacques Arcadelt, and Sandrin. It was through Sandrin, who had recently worked in Italy, that Costeley probably became interested in the latest trends in Italian scholarship, particularly the theories of Nicola Vicentino, some of which involved composition using microtones. Costeley's only microtonal composition, "Seigneur Dieu ta pitié", was apparently written at exactly the time that Sandrin was in Paris.

During the late 1550s Costeley rose in prominence in Parisian musical life, being published by Le Roy and Ballard in 1559. Since Le Roy was closely connected to the royal court through the family of Catherine de Clermont, who was to become the Countess of Retz, it is probable that his influence was significant in Costeley's rise. By 1560 Costeley had been appointed to the royal court, as organist, music teacher to the ten-year-old monarch, and composer of chansons for the royal chamber.

In 1570 he published "Musique de Guillaume Costeley", which contains almost all of his surviving works. In November of this same year King Henry III granted a charter for the formation of the Académie de poésie et de musique, of which Costeley was a founding member; there is, however, no evidence of any musical composition by Costeley between 1570 and his death in 1606. He was lauded by the group and took part in its activities (the king himself was probably a member, and attended some of their meetings, as did his successor Charles IX after 1574). Baïf himself, the founder of the Académie, wrote several poems in Costeley's honor.

However Costeley was no longer resident full-time at Paris. He had purchased a house in Evreux in Normandy, and married; the King only required him to be at court for the first three months of the year. Records of his property purchases indicate that he had become wealthy in service of the king. In 1581 he was made tax assessor at Evreux, and in 1592 his wife died and he married again. In 1597 he was named as an advisor to the king ("Conseiller du Roy"), and he seems to have remained in Evreux in semi-retirement until his death.

Music and influence

Costeley's surviving music amounts to about 100 chansons, as well as three motets and a fantasy for organ. Everything that he wrote can be dated to the period between 1554 and 1569. [Godt, Grove, vol. 4 p.825-6.]

His motets, his only known sacred works, are for four and five voices and show the influence of Jean Maillard. A connection between the two is assumed since they both set the same unusual text ("Domine salvum fac regem desiderium cordis ejus"), and their settings contain apparently deliberate similarities. [Godt, Grove, vol. 4 p.825-6.]

Costeley's chansons were by far the most famous part of his output, and they are in the Parisian chanson style of the time, with vivid word-painting, along with a tendency to think harmonically rather than polyphonically – as the age of purely polyphonic writing was coming to an end over most of Europe. The subject matter of the chansons is widely varied, as was true for most composers in the genre; some of the chansons are love songs, some are imitations of war or victory odes, and some are humorous or scatalogical. [Godt, Grove, vol. 4 p.825-6.]

A peculiarity of Costeley's style – and his notation – is that he specified the accidentals he wanted applied to his music with great care and precision, something which was unusual prior to the middle of the 16th century, but which began to occur thereafter. He was fond of unusual melodic intervals, such as the diminished third, and probably wanted to make sure they were performed correctly. Some of his chansons, for example the earthy "Grosse garce noire et tendre", use this interval prominently: in this work he uses it in an imitative passage. In other pieces he uses augmented intervals, including seconds, fourths, fifths, and sixths. [Godt, Grove, vol. 4 p. 826] Even more unusual than his use of previously prohibited intervals, however, is his pioneering use of microtones. The chanson "Seigneur Dieu ta pitié" of 1558 is saidweasel inline|date=August 2008 to have made use of 19 equal temperament.

While he was a member of Jean-Antoine de Baïf's "Academie de musique et de poésie", few of his works show the influence of, or intent to contribute to, the newly-developed genre of "musique mesurée". Only two compositions in the collection entitled "Musique", published in 1570, show the metrical freedom which characterizes the style. [Godt, Grove, vol. 4 p. 826]

One instrumental composition by Costeley has survived, and that only in a reconstructed version from a manuscript prepared by a non-musician. It is a short fantasie for organ, and is considered significant because it is one of the only surviving bits of keyboard music from late 16th-century France, other than pieces transcribed from vocal originals. The repertory of French keyboard players from the time seems to not have been written down, and certainly remained unpublished. [Godt, Grove, vol. 4 p. 826]

References

*Irving Godt: "Guillaume Costeley." "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
*Irving Godt: "Guillaume Costeley", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed March 23, 2006), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)] (Note: as of July 2007, this article is identical to that in the 1980 edition of the New Grove.)
*Gustave Reese, "Music in the Renaissance". New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4

Notes

External links

*WIMA|idx=Costeley|name=Guillaume Costeley
* [http://www.hoasm.org/IVI/Costeley.html Guillaume Costeley]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Guillaume Costeley — Portrait paru dans La Musique en 1570. Guillaume Costeley, né vers 1530 probablement à Pont Audemer et mort le 1er février 1606 à Évreux est un musicien français de l …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Guillaume Costeley — Portrait von Guillaume Costeley im Alter von 39 Jahren Guillaume Costeley (* um 1531 in Pont Audemer, Normandie (?); † 1. Februar 1606 in Évreux) war ein französischer Organist und Komponist. Nach seiner Ausbildung, wahrscheinlich in Paris, war… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • COSTELEY (G.) — COSTELEY GUILLAUME (1531 env. 1606) Célèbre compositeur de chansons de la fin du XVIe siècle, Guillaume Costeley naît sans doute à Pont Audemer et exerce auprès de Charles IX les fonctions (qu’il conservera sous Henri III) d’organiste et de valet …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Guillaume de Chastillon, sieur de La Tour — (c. 1550 – Caen 24 mai 1610), est un compositeur normand actif à Caen à la fin du XVIe siècle. Sommaire 1 Biographie 2 Œuvres 3 Discographie 4 …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Costeley — Portrait von Guillaume Costeley im Alter von 39 Jahren Guillaume Costeley (* um 1531 in Pont Audemer, Normandie (?); † 1. Februar 1606 in Évreux) war ein französischer Organist und Komponist. Nach seiner Ausbildung, wahrscheinlich in Paris, war… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Guillaume — Infobox Given Name Revised name = Guillaume imagesize= caption= pronunciation= gender = Male meaning = region = origin = related names = William footnotes = Guillaume, French for William, may refer to:As a given nameA*Guillaume Amontons… …   Wikipedia

  • Costeley — (Guillaume) (v. 1531 1606) compositeur français: nombr. chansons …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Котле, Гийом — Гийом Котле фр. Guillaume Costeley …   Википедия

  • 19-EDO — Ein Neunzehnstufiges Tonsystem organisiert die musikalischen Tonhöhen in 19 verschiedenen Stufen pro Oktavraum. Sind diese Stufen gleich groß, spricht man von der gleichmäßigen Neunzehntönigen Stimmung, in der direkt benachbarte Töne einen… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Neunzehnstufiges Tonsystem — Ein Neunzehnstufiges Tonsystem organisiert die musikalischen Tonhöhen in 19 verschiedenen Stufen pro Oktavraum. Sind diese Stufen gleich groß, spricht man von der gleichmäßigen Neunzehntönigen Stimmung, in der direkt benachbarte Töne einen… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”