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| Latest update: | 09-10-2021 |
François Eustache du Caurroy
1549 - 1609
France
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| E. du Caurroy |
Eustache du Caurroy (04/02/1549 - 07/08/1609), a French composer, from Beauvais. He served the French royal house during the reigns of Charles IX, Henry III and Henry IV.
| Source: | Grove’s dictionary of music and musicians |
French composer, of good family. Singer, and later maître de chapelle, to the French kings from 1569, he won prizes at the Évreux composition contests in 1576 and 1583, and was one of those who cultivated the musique mesurée style in secular music. He-was one of the first French composers to use the double-choir style, and his Requiem continued to be sung at the funerals of the French kings until the eighteenth century. He also wrote instrumental music, including some forty fantasias in three to six parts, many based on French popular songs.
Missa pro defunctis
| Period: | High Renaissance |
| Composed in: | 1589c |
| Musical form: | mass |
| Text/libretto: | Latin mass |
| Duration: | 23'42'' |
| In memory of: | (probably) Henry III (1551-1589), king of France |
| Label(s): | Arion ARN 38570 |
| Astrée E 8660 | |
| Calliope CAL9295 | |
| Erato 45607-2 |
Du Caurroy's Missa pro defunctis for 5 voices mixed, is an extremely famous piece, and was performed at all the funerals for French kings for nearly two hundred years, earning it the apocryphal title "Mass for the funerals of the Kings of France."
Du Caurroy's work, which omits the sequence but includes settings of the gradual and its psalm verse (Psalm xxii.4), was sung at the funeral of Henri IV in 1610, and adopted thereafter for the obsequies of all French kings until 1774.
Early in the 17th century the Renaissance polyphonic style, in various modified forms, served for several decades as a principal medium for requiem composition. A fine example, in Palestrinian style, is G.F. Anerio's setting (published in 1614, and reprinted three times up to 1677), the introit of which reveals an elegant use of chant paraphrase. Similar in approach, but with more archaic cantus firmus treatment, are the expressive settings of two of Victoria's successors, Duarte Lobo (Officium defunctorum, 1603) and J.P. Pujol (requiem for four voices, before 1626). An important innovation, evident in a number of works, is the inclusion of an organ continuo part (with figured or unfigured bass), which allowed greater variations in texture and dynamics. Early examples include Aichinger's requiem (1615; D-As) and settings, from 1619, by Antonio Brunelli and Jean de Bournonville. In France, finely moulded part-writing, close in style to that of Lassus, is found in requiem settings by Eustache Du Caurroy (1606, ed. in Le pupitre, lxv, 1983) and Etienne Moulinié (1636, ed. D. Launay, Paris, 1952).
Du Caurroy's work, which omits the sequence but includes settings of the gradual and its psalm verse (Psalm xxii.4), was sung at the funeral of Henri IV in 1610, and adopted thereafter for the obsequies of all French kings until 1774.
Du Caurroy's work, which omits the sequence but includes settings of the gradual and its psalm verse (Psalm xxii.4), was sung at the funeral of Henri IV in 1610, and adopted thereafter for the obsequies of all French kings until 1774.
Early in the 17th century the Renaissance polyphonic style, in various modified forms, served for several decades as a principal medium for requiem composition. A fine example, in Palestrinian style, is G.F. Anerio's setting (published in 1614, and reprinted three times up to 1677), the introit of which reveals an elegant use of chant paraphrase. Similar in approach, but with more archaic cantus firmus treatment, are the expressive settings of two of Victoria's successors, Duarte Lobo (Officium defunctorum, 1603) and J.P. Pujol (requiem for four voices, before 1626). An important innovation, evident in a number of works, is the inclusion of an organ continuo part (with figured or unfigured bass), which allowed greater variations in texture and dynamics. Early examples include Aichinger's requiem (1615; D-As) and settings, from 1619, by Antonio Brunelli and Jean de Bournonville. In France, finely moulded part-writing, close in style to that of Lassus, is found in requiem settings by Eustache Du Caurroy (1606, ed. in Le pupitre, lxv, 1983) and Etienne Moulinié (1636, ed. D. Launay, Paris, 1952).
Du Caurroy's work, which omits the sequence but includes settings of the gradual and its psalm verse (Psalm xxii.4), was sung at the funeral of Henri IV in 1610, and adopted thereafter for the obsequies of all French kings until 1774.
| Author: | Steven Chang-Lin Yu |
| king Henry III (1551-1589) (most likely dedicatee) |
king Henry IV (1553–1610) |
king Louis XIII (1601–1643) |
king Louis XIV (1643-1715) |
| king Louis XV (1715-1774) |