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O Magnum Mysterium
O magnum mysterium is a responsorial chant from the Matins of Christmas. Text The text is drawn from the Matins of Christmas in the Roman Breviary. ; Latin text: : O magnum mysterium, : et admirabile sacramentum, : ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, : iacentem in praesepio! : O beata virgo, cuius viscera : meruerunt portare : Dominum Christum. : Alleluia! ; English translation: : O great mystery, : and wonderful sacrament, : that animals should see the newborn Lord, : lying in a manger! : O blessed virgin, whose womb : was worthy to bear : the Lord Jesus Christ. : Alleluia! In the original responsorial chant, the first line of Ave Maria is also included: "Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum". History The image of the oxen and donkey next to the crib is found in Isaiah (Isa. 1.3) and is traditionally related to the nativity scene at the birth of Jesus in Luke 2. Luke (Lk 2.7) does not mention animals, but a manger. In the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pope Gregory VII
Pope Gregory VII (; 1015 – 25 May 1085), born Hildebrand of Sovana (), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 22 April 1073 to his death in 1085. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. One of the great reforming popes, he initiated the Gregorian Reform, and is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Emperor Henry IV to establish the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals. He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy during the years before he became pope. He was the first pope to introduce a policy of obligatory celibacy for the clergy, which had until then commonly married, and also attacked the practice of simony. During the power struggles between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, Empire, Gregory excommunicated Henry IV three times, and Henry appointed An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodie, songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite ''Trois mouvements perpétuels'' (1919), the ballet ''Les biches'' (1923), the ''Concert champêtre'' (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (Poulenc), Organ Concerto (1938), the opera ''Dialogues des Carmélites'' (1957), and the ''Gloria (Poulenc), Gloria'' (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra. As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. He studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Dismas Zelenka
Jan Dismas Zelenka (16 October 1679 – 23 December 1745), baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka was a Bohemian composer and musician of the Baroque period. His music is admired for its harmonic inventiveness and mastery of counterpoint. Zelenka was raised in Central Bohemia, educated in Prague and Vienna, and spent his professional life in Dresden. The greatest success during his career was the performance of the extensive composition '' Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis'' in the presence of the Emperor Charles VI, shortly after his coronation as king of Bohemia in 1723. Life Early life Zelenka was born in Louňovice pod Blaníkem, a market town southeast of Prague, in Bohemia. He was the eldest of eight children born to Marie Magdalena (née Hájek) and Jiří Zelenka. The middle name Dismas is probably his confirmation name. Zelenka's father Jiří was a schoolmaster and organist in Louňovice, and was likely his first music teacher. Nothing more is known with certainty ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tomás Luis De Victoria
Tomás Luis de Victoria (sometimes Italianised as ''da Vittoria''; ) was the most famous Spanish composer of the Renaissance. He stands with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlande de Lassus as among the principal composers of the late Renaissance, and was "admired above all for the intensity of some of his motets and of his Offices for the Dead and for Holy Week". His surviving ''oeuvre'', unlike that of his colleagues, is almost exclusively sacred and polyphonic vocal music, set to Latin texts. As a Catholic priest, as well as an accomplished organist and singer, his career spanned both Spain and Italy. However, he preferred the life of a composer to that of a performer. Life and career Family background and early years Tomás Luis de Victoria was born around 1548, most likely in Ávila, the main residence of his family at the time. Victoria’s birthplace has been the subject of debate, and remains unclear since his baptismal record has never been found. The town of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
O Magnum Mysterium (Palestrina)
''O magnum mysterium'' (1569) is a six-part motet by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, based on the responsorial chant of the same name, and was written for the celebration of Christmas. The piece is intended to express the joy and awe that was felt by the shepherds as they celebrated and worshiped the Christ-child in the manger on Christmas Eve. Palestrina took the text for this piece from the first half of the third and fourth Responsories of Matins on Christmas Day. The text has been set many times by numerous composers, such as Palestrina, Poulenc, Lauridsen, and Morales. History ''O magnum mysterium'' is a six-voice motet in the Aeolian mode in two musical parts. It was published in 1569 in Rome and formed a part of a collection of motets for five-, six- and seven voices, known as his ''Liber Primus Motettorum''. Palestrina wrote it for Christmas to express the joy and awe of the shepherds as they celebrated Christ’s birth. Palestrina wrote this motet during times when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. The central representative of the Roman School, with Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria, Palestrina is considered the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe. Born in the town of Palestrina in the Papal States, Palestrina moved to Rome as a child and underwent musical studies there. In 1551, Pope Julius III appointed him '' maestro di cappella'' of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's Basilica. He left the post four years later, unable to continue as a layman under the papacy of Paul IV, and held similar positions at St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore in the following decade. Palestrina returned to the Cappella Giulia in 1571 and remained at St Peter's until his death in 1594. Primarily known for his masses and motets, which number over 105 and 250 respectively, Palestrina had a long-lasting influence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pedro De Cristo
Pedro de Cristo (1545/1550 – 12 December 1618) was a Portuguese composer of Renaissance music. He is one of the most important Portuguese polyphonists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Life Pedro de Cristo was born in Coimbra, and in 1571 entered the Augustinian monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra. While there, he studied under Francisco de Santa Maria, who was the current chapel master (''mestre de capela''). Pedro de Cristo succeeded Francisco de Santa Maria as chapel master before serving in the same role at the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon. Cristo was ordered to return to Santa Cruz in 1605. In 1615, he was allowed to return to São Vicente. He died in Coimbra in 1618. Music and Influence While at the Santa Cruz monastery, Pedro de Cristo likely studied under the chapel master Francisco de Santa Maria. This influence can be seen in Cristo's early music through his limited vocal range, syllabic text settings, and the combined use of cambiata and passing tone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacob Clemens Non Papa
Jacobus Clemens non Papa (also Jacques Clément or Jacob Clemens non Papa) ( – 1555 or 1556) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance based for most of his life in Flanders. He was a prolific composer in many of the current styles, and was especially famous for his polyphonic settings of the psalms in Dutch known as the '' Souterliedekens''. Grove Music Online, "Jacobus Clemens non Papa" Life Nothing is known of Clemens's early life, and even the details of the years of his artistic maturity are sketchy. He may have been born in Middelburg, Zeeland, though the evidence is contradictory; certainly he was from somewhere in modern Belgium or the Netherlands. The first unambiguous reference to him is from the late 1530s, when Pierre Attaingnant published a collection of his chansons in Paris. Between March 1544 and June 1545 he worked as ''succentor'' at the cathedral of Bruges, and shortly thereafter he began a business relationship with Tielman Susato, the publisher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Byrd
William Byrd (; 4 July 1623) was an English Renaissance composer. Considered among the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he had a profound influence on composers both from his native country and on the Continental Europe, Continent. He is often considered along with John Dunstaple and Henry Purcell as one of England's most important composers of early music. Byrd wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and Consort of instruments, consort music. He produced sacred music for Church of England, Anglican services, but during the 1570s became a Roman Catholic, and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life. Life Birth and background Richard Byrd of Ingatestone, Essex, the paternal grandfather of Thomas Byrd, probably moved to City of London, London in the 15th century. Thereafter succeeding generations of the Byrd family are described as gentlemen. Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including Renaissance art, art, Renaissance architecture, architecture, politics, Renaissance literature, literature, Renaissance exploration, exploration and Science in the Renaissance, science, the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the Italian Renaissance, rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term ''rinascita'' ("rebirth") first appeared in ''Lives of the Artists'' () by Giorgio Vasari, while the corresponding French word was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s. The Renaissance's intellectual basis was founded in its version of Renaiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas Gombert
Nicolas Gombert (c. 1495 – c. 1560)Atlas, p. 396 was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most famous and influential composers between Josquin des Prez and Palestrina, and best represents the fully developed, complex polyphonic style of this period in music history. Life Details of his early life are sketchy, but he was probably born around 1495 in southern Flanders, probably between Lille and Saint-Omer, possibly in the town of La Gorgue. German writer and music theorist Hermann Finck wrote that Gombert studied with Josquin; this would have been during the renowned composer's retirement in Condé-sur-l'Escaut, sometime between 1515 and 1521.Nugent/Jas, Grove online Gombert was employed by the emperor Charles V as a singer in his court chapel in 1526 and possibly as a composer as well. Most likely he was taken on while Charles was passing through Flanders, for the emperor traveled often, bringing his retinue with him, and picking up new members ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
