Gaspar van Weerbeke
Gaspar van Weerbeke (c.
1445 – after
1516) was a
Netherlandish composer of the
Renaissance. He was of the same generation as
Josquin Desprez, but unique in his blending of the contemporary
Italian style with the older
Burgundian style of
Dufay.
He was born somewhere in the diocese of
Tournai, evidently out of wedlock, and was educated at
Oudenaarde. While little is known of the first two decades of his life, he probably knew or studied with Johannes Regis, and he may have studied with
Ockeghem; in addition it is likely he knew Dufay at the Burgundian court of
Charles the Bold, since so much of his music follows in the model of the older composer. In
1471 he went to
Milan, where he joined the singers of the
Sforza chapel, which included
Johannes Martini,
Alexander Agricola, and
Loyset Compère.
In
1472 and
1473 he went back north to
Burgundy to find more singers for his Italian employer. Successful in his quest, he returned to Milan, and soon the Sforza chapel had one of the largest choirs in Europe. After the murder of Duke Sforza in
1476, however, the singers mostly disbanded. Weerbeke then joined the papal choir in
Rome under
Sixtus IV and
Innocent VIII, where he remained until
1489, at which time he returned to Milan.
For the next decade Weerbeke seems to have been associated with several courts, including Milan, the court of
Philip the Fair, and possibly the
Medici in
Florence. After
1500 he was again in Rome singing in the papal choir. The last years of his life are obscure; he may have returned to the region of his birth, for he received appointments for posts at both
Cambrai and
Tournai; and in addition there is a record of his possibly holding a post at a church in
Mainz in 1517.
Weerbeke combined the styles of the Italians with some of the older techniques of the Burgundians. He was almost alone among the
Franco-Flemish composers in avoiding the smooth, imitative
polyphonic style which was developing at the time, best exemplified by the music of Josquin Desprez.
He composed sacred music:
masses,
motets, motet cycles, a
Magnificat setting, and a setting of the
Lamentations, as well as a few secular
chansons; but the bulk of his work is sacred vocal music. Attribution of the chansons is controversial, and many scholars believe them to have been composed by composers such as Josquin, or
Jean Japart.
In style, much of his motet writing is
homophonic, incorporating some of the lightness of the contemporary Italian secular music. Most of his masses are based on chanson melodies, which are stated clearly in the tenor voice, and the other voices usually move in a simple, occasionally parallel manner, related to the manner of Dufay or the other Burgundians. Once in a while Weerbeke uses
imitation but never in the paired manner of Josquin or the pervasive manner of the later Franco-Flemish composers; his style of composition of masses is almost archaic in comparison to his contemporaries.
His music was much esteemed, especially in Italy, where it represented perhaps the popular aesthetic as opposed to the
contrapuntal, but foreign grandeur of most of the composers from the Low Countries.
* Article "Gaspar van Weerbeke", in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
* Gerhard Croll/Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, "Gaspar van Weerbeke," Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 8, 2005),
(subscription access)* Eric F. Fiedler, Die Messen des Gaspar van Weerbeke, Tutzing, 1997 ISBN 3795208882
*
Gustave Reese,
Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
