Compère, Loyset (EN)

Compère Loyset, *ca. 1450 Saint-Omer(?), †16 August 1518 Saint-Quentin, Franco-Flemish composer. One of the most typical representatives of the era of Josquin des Prés and his school. Biographical information about Compère is very scarce. It is likely (according to Jean Molinet’s chronicle, vol. 4, p. 293) that Compère’s family originated from Saint-Omer (Pas-de-Calais); it is also presumed that he received his early musical education in Saint-Quentin, singing in a boys’ choir. The first documented record concerns Compère’s stay in Milan; he appears in the account books under the nickname Aluyseto as a singer in the court chapel of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza from July 15, 1474, to December 3, 1475. During this time, Duke Sforza’s chapel included many prominent composers from northern countries (including Josquin des Prés, Gaspar van Weerbecke, Johannes Martini, and Alexander Agricola), whose works appeared alongside Compère’s compositions in the first Italian music prints published by O. Petrucci at the beginning of the 16th century. In the second half of 1486, Compère was listed among the royal singers in Paris as the chantre ordinaire of Charles VIII; in 1498 he was in Cambrai, and in 1500 in Douai. In the last years of his life, Compère was appointed canon at the collegiate church in Saint-Quentin, where he was buried in 1518. Both the text of the epitaph on his tombstone and numerous references by contemporary writers and theorists attest to the high esteem in which Compère was held during his lifetime. Gaffurius mentions him in his treatise Practica musicae (published in 1496, Book 3); Guillaume Crétin cites him, alongside Josquin des Prés, A. Brumel, and others, in his famous lament (Déploration) on the death of Ockeghem; Eloy d’Amerval includes him among the famous musicians of the time in Le livre de la deablerie (published in Paris in 1508), and F. Rabelais mentions Compère alongside the most famous composers of the era in the prologue to Book 4 of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Compère was friends with and collaborated with well-known poets and writers of the time, including Jean Molinet, Jean Lemaire de Belge, and Prince Jean II de Bourbon, drawing on their texts, especially in his songwriting. The most compelling evidence of Compère’s popularity as a composer is the widespread circulation of his works. This is confirmed by numerous surviving manuscripts and prints published up to 1549, mainly in France and Germany, as well as transcriptions of vocal works, particularly chansons and motets, for keyboard instruments. Compère is also listed among the most frequently performed composers of the early 16th century in Germany (Wittenberg) and Italy (Rome, Milan).

The most significant part of Compère’s oeuvre consists of chansons. These had already gained considerable popularity during the composer’s lifetime; O. Petrucci included more than a dozen of these works in Harmonica Musices Odhecaton (1501); he also included two pieces in the fourth book of frottolas: Che fa la ramacina and Scaramella…, which were the result of Compère’s work in Milan and differed from the typical frottolas of Italian composers in their more imitative treatment of the voices, characteristic of musicians from the North. The chanson provides the clearest example of the process of stylistic evolution also evident in other composers of the second half of the 15th century. Burgundian traditions reveal themselves in Compère’s works in three-voice songs (about 35 pieces), among which the formes fixes predominate; the composer most often used double texts in them, for example in the chanson Reyne du ciel – Regina coeli, where the superius and tenor, treated imitatively, highlight the text of a rondeau quatrain, while the countertenor repeats a five-note motif of the antiphon successively on the pitches ut, re, mi, fa using sequential technique. Whilst the use of canon techniques (e.g. in the chanson Un franc archer) and imitative techniques in the polytextual motet-like chansons links Compère to the era of Ockeghem and Obrecht, the influence of the Italian frottola, with its characteristic parlando style and the simplicity of its texts, which draw on folk traditions (Vestre bergeronette) open up the prospect of a chanson that was modern for its time, a style to which Josquin des Prés also paid homage in later years. Compère is one of the pioneers of a new type of polyphonic chanson, which reached its zenith in the Parisian chanson of the 1530s. Of lesser significance is Compère’s motet and mass output, mostly printed between 1502 and 1541.

As early as around 1470, Compère’s early motet Omnium bonorum plena was recorded in manuscripts; it takes the form of a prayer for musicians, among whom Compère listed G. Dufay first, followed by the masters of song – A. Busnois and Ph. Caron – and then Tinctoris, Ockeghem, Josquin des Prés, J. Molinet, J. Regis and others. This motet, based on Hayne’s song De tous biens pleine, set in the tenor, stylistically echoes the works of Dufay and Ockeghem. His most elaborate motet, Crux triumphans, is considered a masterpiece; it contains the Crucifige based on a series of rhyming verses drawn from the Passion. Petrucci included this motet in his publication Motetti de Passione (1503). Compère used some of the motets arranged in cycles corresponding to religious feasts as so-called substitute masses; this gave rise to, among others, the Missa Hodie nobis and the Missa Ave Domine Jesu Christe, preserved in the Milanese codices (Gafori Codices). In addition to the mass fragments published by Petrucci in 1505, his complete four-voice mass cycles have also survived: Missa L’homme armé and Missa Allez regretz.

Literature: O. Gombosi Ghizeghem und Compère, in: Festschrift for G. Adler, Vienna 1930; W. Stephan Die burgundisch-niederlandische Motette, «Heidelberger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft» VI, Kassel 1937; L. Finscher Die Messen und Motetten L. Compère, Göttingen 1954 (thesis); L. Finscher Loyset Compère, «Musicological Studies and Documents» XII, Rome 1964; Th.L. Noblitt The Ambrosian „Motetti missales” Repertory, “Musica Disciplina” XXII, 1968; A. Dunning Die Staatsmotette 1480–1555, Utrecht 1970; L. Lockwood Music at Ferrara in the Period of Ercole I d’Este, “Studi musicali” I, 1972; R. Sherr The Papal Chapel ca. 1492–1513 and Its Polyphonic Sources, thesis at Princeton University, 1975; M.E. Columbro The Chanson-Motet. A Remnant of the Courtly Love Tradition in the Renaissance, “Music and Man” I, 1975; M.B. Winn Some Texts for Chansons by Loyset Compère, “Musica Disciplina” XXXIII, 1979; G. Montagna Caron, Hayne, Compère. A Transmission Reassessment, “Early Music History” VII, 1987; F. Labatut Les messes “Se la face ay pale” de Dufay et “Allés regrets” de Compère. Recherche d’une unité de forme et d’écriture, “Analyse musicale” No. 8, 1987.