(b Haut-Wignes, by 1459; d St Quentin, 30 Oct 1522). French composer. He was appointed a singer and teacher in the collegiate church of Notre Dame, Nesle, in 1477 and maître de chapelle there in 1483. By 1500 he was maistre des enfans at Amiens Cathedral, and in 1502 had taken charge of the music in the collegiate church of St André, Grenoble. In 1502 he became associated with Louis XII's court, to which he remained attached for the rest of his life.
He is one of the most important motet composers of the early 16th century. Over 100 motets,c 15 masses and over 20 chansons by him survive, many published in his lifetime. Though he shared many of Josquin's techniques - paired imitation, canonic cantus firmi etc- it seems unlikely he was Josquin's pupil. His music is characterized by smooth, flowing melody and clear, sharply profiled motifs. He favoured full sonorities but kept textures clear by keeping the voice ranges separate. His motets are often built on a canon and show his dazzling contrapuntal skill, especially in those in which all the voices are canonic(e.g. Nesciens mater virgo virum). His masses span the transition from cantus firmus to the newer procedures of paraphrase and parody; his chansons (like his motets) display a variety of styles.
Genres: Choral Music, Miscellaneous Music, Vocal Music
Biography
Jean Mouton was one of the most important motet composers of the French Renaissance period.
He enters the historical record when, at the age of 18 or older, he was appointed a singer and also a teacher of religious subjects in the collegiate church of Notre Dame in Nesle in 1477. In 1483 he rose to the position of maître de chapelle there. The documents showing this also say that he was a priest, so his age was a minimum of 25.
There is a gap of over 15 years in his history, when he is noted as being maitre des enfin (or director of choir boys) at Amines Cathedral, and the author or organizer of the performance of a mystery play. It is considered likely that he earned his master's degree, perhaps in Paris, after leaving his position in Paris and before arriving in Amines.
In 1501, he became director of music in the collegiate church of St André in Grenoble. King Louis XII and his wife, Queen Anne of Brittany, visited Grenoble in June 1502. It appears that they took Mouton with them, for church records show that he left his position there without the permission of his chapter, and other records soon after that show he had joined Queen Anne's chapel some time during that decade. The Queen arranged in 1509 that Mouton would be appointed a canon at St. André in Grenoble, in absentia, meaning he got the income but did not have to do the work. (Such sinecures were not uncommon during this period.)
Mouton remained attached to the royal court for the rest of his life, remaining when François I took the throne. Whether the title existed or not, he filled the functions of an official court composer. He wrote both secular and sacred music for specific public and private royal functions, including royal weddings. For instance, his motet Inter natos mulierum is though to have been written to Queen Anne's order after she was cured of an illness in 1506 and attributed the cure to a relic of John the Baptist. He wrote a touching motet, Quis debit oculis, on the Queen's death in 1514.
Another, Missus et angelus Gabriel was composed for the arrival of Louis XII's new wife, Mary Tudor, in Paris in 1514. Whatever music he wrote on the occasion of Louis' death less than a year later is unknown, but he wrote Domine salvum fac regem for the coronation of François I in Reims in 1515, and celebrated that King's first notable military victory, at the Battle of Marignano in that same year, with Exalte Regina Galliae, even though the losers in that battle were the forces of Pope Leo X. When the Pope and the King met to conclude a peace treaty in December of that same eventful year, they were accompanied by their own respective musical establishments. On hearing Father Mouton's musicians and music, the Pope rewarded him by appointing him an apostolic notary.
Leo remained fond of Mouton's music. Some sources describe him as the Pope's favorite composer, and it is likely that he sent several Masses to the Pope.
Mouton's fame was widely spread, and he was among the first composers to have an entire volume of his music published. This was done by the pioneer of music printing, Petrucci, who issued a book of his Masses in 1515. Another important collection of his music is a compilation of his motets issued in 1555, several years after his death. This attention allows a large proportion of his works to survive, numbering over 100 motets, 15 masses, and more than 20 chansons. Another legacy of his stems from his having been the teacher of Adrian Willaert, who himself became a great teacher in the Franco-Netherlands style, which exerted great influence in Italian music of the high Renaissance. On the other hand, it is unlikely that Mouton was (as has been speculated) a pupil of Josquin.
While Mouton's music uses many of the techniques associated with Josquin's, his musical personality is entirely different. Josquin's temperament was fiery, while Mouton tended to write calming, meditative music with smooth, flowing polyphony.
For the most part, the music is written in longer notes of even pace, with a few shorter notes used mainly to add variety. In his religious music he seems not to have cared much whether the accents of the music matched that of the texts, and therefore the words are not easily understood. However, in his writing for political occasions, where the words were less familiar and much more important, he did take care that the music helped project them.
The description of this music might suggest that much of it suffered sameness or that it was so uniform that it becomes dull, but this is not generally the case. Within the music is the work of a brilliant contrapuntal thinker. His Nesciens mater virgo virum is a quadruple canon partly based on a plainchant. There are distinct periods in his music that mirror the age's general progress from reliance on a cantus firmus to newer devices such a parody and paraphrase. In later motets he used a repetitive structure that seems to anticipate the Baroque's ritornello technique.
In 1518, Duke Lorenzo de Medici or Urbino married Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. One of their wedding gifts was a collection called the Medici Codex, an elegant illuminated manuscript of music of the time, of which Mouton was probably editor-in-chief.
Once again, in 1520, Mouton was involved in a kind of musical contest attending a peace parley when François met King Henry VIII of England at the Field of the Cloth of Gold and both monarchs brought their musicians.
Toward the end of his life, Mouton received another beneficence, at St. Quentin, which is where he died and was buried. ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide
For the Acadian founder of Lafayette, Louisiana, see Jean Mouton (Acadian).
Jean Mouton (c. 1459 – October 30, 1522) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was famous both for his motets, which are among the most refined of the time, and for being the teacher of Adrian Willaert, one of the founders of the Venetian School.
He was born either in 1459 or earlier, but records of his early life, as is so often the case with Renaissance composers, are scanty. Most likely he was from the village of Holluigue (now Haut-Wignes), near Boulogne-sur-Mer. He probably began his first job, singer and teacher at the collegiate church in Nesle (southeast of Amiens) in 1477, and in 1483 was made maître de chapelle there. Sometime around this time he became a priest, and in 1500 he was in charge of choirboys at the cathedral in Amiens. In 1501 he was in Grenoble, teaching choirboys, but he left the next year, most likely entering the service of Queen Anne of Brittany, and in 1509 he was granted a position again in Grenoble which he could hold in absentia. Mouton was now the principal composer for the French court. For the remainder of his life he was employed by the French court in one capacity or another, often writing music for state occasions—weddings, coronations, papal elections, births and deaths.
Mouton composed a motet, Christus vincit, for the election of Leo X as pope in 1513. Leo evidently liked Mouton's music, for he rewarded him with an honorary title on the occasion of a motet he composed for the pope in 1515; the pope made this award during a meeting in Bologna between the French king and the pope after the Battle of Marignano. This trip to Italy was the first, and probably only trip that Mouton made outside of France.
Sometime between 1517 and 1522 the Swiss music theorist Heinrich Glarean met Jean Mouton, and praised him effusively; he wrote that "everyone had copies of his music." Glarean used several examples of Mouton's music in his influential treatise, the Dodecachordon.
Mouton may have been the editor of the illuminated manuscript known as the Medici Codex, one of the primary manuscript sources of the time, which was a wedding gift for Lorenzo de' Medici, who was Duke of Urbino.
It is considered to be very likely, but not proven, that Mouton was in charge of the elaborate musical festivities by the French at the meeting between François I and Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, based on the similarity to the similar festivities five years earlier after the Battle of Marignano.
Near the end of his life, Mouton moved to Saint-Quentin, where he may have been a canon, taking over for Loyset Compère who died in 1518. Mouton died in Saint-Quentin and is buried there.
Music and influence
Mouton was hugely influential both as a composer and as a teacher. Of his music, 9 Magnificat settings, 15 masses, 20 chansons, and over 100 motets survive; since he was a court composer for a king, the survival rate of his music is relatively high for the period, it being widely distributed, copied, and archived. In addition, the famous publisher Ottaviano Petrucci printed an entire volume of Mouton's masses (early in the history of music printing, most publications contained works by multiple composers).
The style of Mouton's music has superficial similarities to that of Josquin des Prez, using paired imitation, canonic techniques, and equal-voiced polyphonic writing: yet Mouton tends to write rhythmically and texturally uniform music compared to Josquin, with all the voices singing, and with relatively little textural contrast. Glarean characterized Mouton's melodic style with the phrase "his melody flows in a supple thread."
Around 1500, Mouton seems to have become more aware of chords and harmonic feeling, probably due to his encounter with Italian music. At any rate this was a period of transition between purely linear thinking in music, in which chords were incidental occurrences as a result of correct usage of intervals, and music in which the harmonic element was foremost (for example in lighter Italian forms such as the frottola, which are homophonic in texture and sometimes have frankly diatonic harmony).
Mouton was a fine musical craftsman throughout his life, highly regarded by his contemporaries and much in demand by his royal patrons. His music was reprinted and continued to attract other composers even later in the 16th century, especially two joyful Christmas motets he wrote, Noe, noe psallite noe, and Quaeramus cum pastoribus, which several later composers used as the basis for masses.
Works list
Masses and mass fragments
Missa "Alleluia"
Missa "Alma redemptoris mater"
Missa "Argentum et aurum (lost)"
Missa "Benedictus Dominus Deus"
Missa "Dictes moy toutes vos pensées"
Missa "Ecce quam bonum"
Missa "Lo serai je dire"
Missa "Faulte d'argent"
Missa "l'Homme armé"
Missa "Quem dicunt homines"
Missa "Regina mearum"
Missa "sans candence"
Missa sine nomine 1 (without a name)
Missa sine nomine 2 (without a name)
Missa "tu es Petrus"
Missa "Tua est potentia"
Missa "Verbum bonum"
Credo (fragment)
Motets (selected)
Antequam comedam suspiro
Ave Maria - virgo serena for five voices, in two parts.
Benedicam Dominum
Exalta Regina Galliae (written to celebrate the French victory at the battle of Marignano, September 13-14, 1515)
Missus est Gabriel
Nesciens mater for eight voices, a tour de force of canon writing, being a quadruple canon at an interval of the fifth, proceeding a space of two measures.
Non nobis Domine (written for the birth of the Princess Renée, October 25, 1510)
O Maria piissima; Quis dabit oculis nostris (on the death of Queen Anna, January 9, 1514)
Quaeramus cum pastoribus for four voices, in two parts.
Qui ne regrettroit le gentil Févin (Deploration on the death of Févin, 1511-1512)
References
Article "Jean Mouton," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
Heavenly Spheres, CBC Records, MVCD 1121, sung by Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal. Contains one motet by Mouton, Nesciens mater (for eight voices).
Flemish Masters, Virginia Arts Recordings, VA-04413, performed by Zephyrus. Includes Mouton's motet, Nesciens mater, the Obrecht Missa Sub tuum presidium, as well as motets by Willaert, Clemens non Papa, Ockeghem, Des Prez, and Gombert.
Josquin Desprez: Missa de Beata Virgine; Jean Mouton: Motets. Harmonia Mundi, HMU 907136, 1995. Performers: Theatre of Voices, directed by Paul Hillier. Includes 5 motets by Mouton, interwoven with the movements of Josquin's mass. By Mouton: (1) Nesciens Mater; (2) Ave Maria Virgo Serena; (3) Ave Sanctissima Maria; (4) O Maria Piissima; (5) Ave Maria Gemma Virginum.
Choral Works of Jean Mouton recorded by The Gentlemen of St John's. Includes Nesciens Mater, Salva nos, Domine, Sancti Dei omnes, Missa Dictes moy toutes vos pensées. Nesciens Mater (track 1) was awarded 2nd best Christmas track by Gramophone magazine (2007).
Vivat Rex!: Sacred Choral Music of Jean Mouton. Suspicious Cheese Lords, 2008, produced by Tina Chancey of Hesperus. Includes a full performance of the previously unrecorded Missa "Alma Redemptoris mater" and eight previously unrecorded Mouton motets.
