Jacobus Vide (French: ''Jacques Vide''; fl. 1405–1433) was a
Franco-Flemish composer of the transitional period between the
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...
period and early
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 sur ...
. He was an early member of the
Burgundian School, during the reigns of
John the Fearless and
Philip the Good.
The earliest mention of him is from the archives of the
Cathedral of Notre Dame in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, in 1405, where he was probably a choirboy (some uncertainty exists with regard to the name). In 1410 he held a position at the church of St Donatian in
Bruges, and around the same time he may have been a singer in the chapel of
Antipope John XXIII. His service to the
Burgundian court began sometime between then and 1423, when he was listed as a ''
valet de chambre'' for Philip the Good, and in 1426 he was given charge of instructing and caring for two choirboys. In 1428 he was promoted to the position of secretary to Philip the Good. No records of his activity after 1433 have yet been discovered.
All eight of his surviving works are
rondeaux, secular French songs which were a favorite of the Burgundians. They are somewhat unusual, in comparison to other music of the period, in their free use of
dissonance, and in addition are marked by frequent use of cross-rhythms. All of the characteristic cadences of the period – the
Landini cadence, the
Burgundian cadence, and the V–I cadence where the lowest voice jumps an octave to avoid parallel fifths – are common in Vide's music.
One of his more enigmatic songs is a three-voice rondeau, "Las, j'ay perdu mon espincel", in which the upper voices, the superius and the tenor, are fully written out, but the contratenor is left blank. Since the manuscript was carefully prepared, it is probable that the missing part was deliberate, and was a pun on the song text "j'ay perdu mon" (I lost my ...), in which case the singer, likely trained to improvise as well as sing from score, would have had to fill in by himself on the spot.
References and further reading
*
Gustave Reese, ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954.
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vide, Jacobus
15th-century Franco-Flemish composers
1430s deaths
Burgundian school composers
Arts in the court of Philip the Good
Year of birth unknown
French classical composers
French male classical composers
Medieval male composers