Jean Braconnier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean Braconnier ("Braconnier dit Lourdault") (d. just before January 22, 1512) was a French singer and composer of the Renaissance. Little of his music has survived, but he had a considerable reputation as a singer, and Guillaume Crétin wrote an elegy on his death.

The first record mentioning him is from the court of Duke René II of Lorraine in 1478, and he was still in the area in 1485, since payment records survive showing that he was employed as a singer in Nancy at the chapel of St. Georges between that year and 1506. However he occasionally left for travels. In 1496 he joined the chapel of Philip the Fair of Burgundy, and traveled to Spain in both 1501 and 1506 with Philip. In 1507 he joined the singers attached to King Louis XII of France, and went with them to Italy, where Louis was engaged in a military campaign, and he evidently remained with the French court for the rest of his life.^[1] The date of his death is inferred from the many documents which involve the disposition of his benefices, which were numerous: evidently he was well-liked by both the king and the ecclesiastical powers.

Guillaume Crétin's poem, which also serves as a lament for Antoine de Févin, who died around the same time, indicates his fame as a singer and composer. It also gives the source of his nickname: a chanson, probably by Loyset Compère, called Lourdault, lourdault ("clod, clod"). Only one of Braconnier's compositions has survived with a certain attribution: a chanson, Amours me trocte par la pancé, which is a skillful polyphonic composition in four parts.^[2] As with many of the minor composers of the time, many of his compositions may have survived either anonymously or misattributed.

[edit] References

Lewis Lockwood/John T. Brobeck: "Jean Braconnier", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed December 13, 2006), (subscription access)
Howard Mayer Brown, "Chanson". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304