Carpentras (ca. 1470 – June 14, 1548) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composer of the Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

. He was famous during his lifetime, and was especially notable for his settings of the Lamentations

Lamentations (music)

The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet have been set by various composers.-England:Thomas Tallis made two famous sets of the Lamentations. Scored for five voices , they show a sophisticated use of imitation, and are noted for their expressiveness. The settings are of the first two lessons for...

 which remained in the repertory of the Papal Choir throughout the 16th century. In addition, he was probably the most prominent Avignon

Avignon

Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...

 musician since the time of the ars subtilior

Ars subtilior

Ars subtilior is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory...

 at the end of the 14th century.

Life

He was born in the town of Carpentras

Carpentras

Carpentras is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It stands on the banks of the Auzon...

, but nothing else is known about his early life. Sometime before 1505, he took ecclesiastical orders, since when he was hired in the Avignon chapel in that year he was called "clericus." He spent most of his life alternately in Avignon and Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

Evidently he was acquainted with Avignon bishop Giuliano della Rovere, for when the bishop became Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II , nicknamed "The Fearsome Pope" and "The Warrior Pope" , born Giuliano della Rovere, was Pope from 1503 to 1513...

 Carpentras went with him to Rome, where he sang in the papal chapel; he was listed in a roll of the singers there in 1508. However after a few years he left the chapel to work at the court of Louis XII of France

Louis XII of France

Louis proved to be a popular king. At the end of his reign the crown deficit was no greater than it had been when he succeeded Charles VIII in 1498, despite several expensive military campaigns in Italy. His fiscal reforms of 1504 and 1508 tightened and improved procedures for the collection of taxes...

, though little is known about him at this time; clearly he was composing large quantities of secular music, some of it quite irreverent, for when he returned to Rome in 1513 he specifically promised to stop writing it. He became master of the papal chapel in 1514, now under the Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...

, who was an enthusiastic patron of music and the arts. When Leo X died in 1521, Carpentras fled Rome for Avignon; the new pope Adrian VI

Pope Adrian VI

Pope Adrian VI , born Adriaan Florenszoon Boeyens, served as Pope from 9 January 1522 until his death some 18 months later...

 was uninterested in music, if not actively hostile, and many musicians gave him a "walking ovation."

When Adrian VI died in 1523, the new pope, Clement VII

Pope Clement VII

Clement VII , born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was Pope from 1523 to 1534.-Early life:...

, was again a fine patron of the arts, and Carpentras returned to Rome. While there he was surprised to discover his own music still being sung but in bastardized versions; as a result he carefully copied over some of his music, such as the pictured setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and presented this collection to Clement VII as the "true" or "corrected" version. However, he did not stay in Rome, and after only two years he departed for Avignon, this time for good.

In 1526 he became afflicted with tinnitus

Tinnitus

Tinnitus |ringing]]") is the perception of sound within the human ear in the absence of corresponding external sound.Tinnitus is not a disease, but a symptom that can result from a wide range of underlying causes: abnormally loud sounds in the ear canal for even the briefest period , ear...

, a condition which terrified him, and which he described as a continuous hissing in his head. Apparently it was at this time that he withdrew from practical music-making and instead decided to devote himself to publishing his entire output of sacred music, an immense undertaking, and the earliest recorded such attempt in music history. The publication was troublesome; one of the printers failed to align the notes to staves correctly, and the entire process ended in arbitration at one point: however eventually, in the mid 1530s, he was able to issue four large collections of his music. Two of the volumes he dedicated to Pope Clement VII, and the other two to Cardinal Ippolito de'Medici.

He seems to have held several ecclesiastical positions in Avignon in the last two decades of his life, including the deanship of St. Agricole, and he died in that town in 1548.

Works

Carpentras composed several mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

es, numerous settings of the Magnificat

Magnificat

The Magnificat — also known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary — is a canticle frequently sung liturgically in Christian church services. It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn...

, psalm settings, hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

s, motet

Motet

In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...

s, and secular songs, as well as many settings of the Lamentations, which were his most famous work both during his lifetime and until 1587 when Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

 was commissioned by the Counter-Reformation

Counter-Reformation

The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...

 church to replace them. Stylistically, his music is typical of the generation after Josquin, smoothly polyphonic with pervasive imitation

Imitation (music)

In music, imitation is when a melody in a polyphonic texture is repeated shortly after its first appearance in a different voice, usually at a different pitch. The melody may vary through transposition, inversion, or otherwise, but retain its original character...

. Carpentras alternates points of imitation with homophonic sections, especially in his settings of the Lamentations.

External links