Julien (Jean) Perrichon (6 November 1566 – c.1600) was a French composer and

lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can re ...

nist of the late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

. He was a lute player for

Henry IV of France Henry IV (french: Henri IV; 13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610), also known by the epithets Good King Henry or Henry the Great, was King of Navarre (as Henry III) from 1572 and King of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first monarc ...

and famous enough to be mentioned by

Marin Mersenne Marin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or ''le Père'' Mersenne; ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for ...

in ''Harmonie universelle'' (1636) as one of the finest musicians of the preceding age. He was born in Paris. His father, Jehan Perrichon, was a

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

and

shawm The shawm () is a conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods, after which it was gradually eclipsed by the ...

player, also for the royal court. As a child Jehan probably learned to play the lute from the king's renowned lutenist, Vaumesnil. Court records mention him as a student of the lute from 1576 to 1578, at which time he was likely studying with Jean de la Fontaine or Samuel de La Roche, who were then the king's lutenists. While Perrichon's life has not yet been the subject of a scholarly study, records indicate he was formally the ''

valet de chambre ''Valet de chambre'' (), or ''varlet de chambre'', was a court appointment introduced in the late Middle Ages, common from the 14th century onwards. Royal households had many persons appointed at any time. While some valets simply waited on ...

'' to Henry IV sometime before 1595, a position he likely retained until his early death around 1600; neither the details of his employment nor the circumstances of his death are yet known. All of Perrichon's surviving music is for lute. It includes dances in the prevailing styles, such as

courante The ''courante'', ''corrente'', ''coranto'' and ''corant'' are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era. In a Baroque dance suite an Italian or French courante is typically pai ...

galliard The ''galliard'' (; french: gaillarde; it, gagliarda) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance f ...

voltas Voltas Limited is an Indian multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Mumbai. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells products including air conditioners, air coolers, refrigerators, washing mac ...

, as well as preludes. Most of his music was published after his death, and it attained unusually wide distribution, appearing in Germany and England as well as his native France.

Michael Praetorius Michael Praetorius (probably 28 September 1571 – 15 February 1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms b ...

included his music in a collection in Germany, mentioning in prose his high quality as a composer.

John Dowland John Dowland (c. 1563 – buried 20 February 1626) was an English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep", " Come again", " Flow my tears", " I saw my Lady weepe" ...

included some of his music in an English collection, inadvertently attributing it to his father Jehan.

Media

Bibliography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Perrichon, Julien 1566 births 1600s deaths 16th-century classical composers Composers for lute Renaissance composers French lutenists French classical composers French male classical composers