Gilles Mureau (c. 1450 – July 1512) was a French composer and singer of the Renaissance. He was active in central France, mainly Chartres

Chartres

Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...

, and was one of the composers listed by Eloy d'Amerval

Eloy d'Amerval

Eloy d'Amerval was a French composer, singer, choirmaster, and poet of the Renaissance. He spent most of his life in the Loire Valley of France...

 in his long 1508 poem Le livre de la deablerie as one of the great composers of the age, resident in Paradise

Heaven

Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...

 – even though he was still alive. While he probably wrote a substantial number of works, only four secular compositions survive.

Life

Nothing is known about his origin, but he first appears in the cathedral of Chartres as a boy singer in 1462. He became choirmaster of the boys in the Chartres choir school in 1469, which makes a birthdate of 1450 a fair approximation. In 1472 he became a canon. Between March and November 1483 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, being replaced in his duties at Chartres by the young Antoine Brumel

Antoine Brumel

Antoine Brumel was a French composer. He was one of the first renowned French members of the Franco-Flemish school of the Renaissance, and, after Josquin des Prez, was one of the most influential composers of his generation....

 (this is the earliest mention of this renowned composer). The following year Mureau made another pilgrimage, this one to Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...

.

Details of his subsequent career are spotty, and he may have remained in Chartres or the general area. He evidently knew many of the prominent composers in central France around the turn of the 16th century. Johannes Tinctoris

Johannes Tinctoris

Johannes Tinctoris was a Flemish composer and music theorist of the Renaissance. He is known to have studied in Orléans, and to have been master of the choir there; he also may have been director of choirboys at Chartres...

 and Johannes Ockeghem

Johannes Ockeghem

Johannes Ockeghem was the most famous composer of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most...

 are two he certainly knew personally, as the former was also associated with Chartres, and Ockeghem was at Tours

Tours

Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...

, the church of which was closely connected with Chartres. An obituary for Mureau is recorded in Chartres in July 1512.

Music

Only four pieces by Mureau survive, all rondeaux. They are found in various sources, including Petrucci's

Ottaviano Petrucci

Ottaviano Petrucci was an Italian printer. His Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, a collection of chansons printed in 1501, is commonly misidentified as the first book of sheet music printed from movable type. Actually that distinction belongs to the Roman printer Ulrich Han's Missale Romanum of 1476...

 famous Odhecaton

Harmonice Musices Odhecaton

The Harmonice Musices Odhecaton was an anthology of secular songs published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1501 in Venice...

. They are typical of the refined French secular music of the late 15th century, with balanced phrases, careful attention to melody and clear delineation of the text; some brief portions use imitation

Imitation (music)

In music, imitation is when a melody in a polyphonic texture is repeated shortly after its first appearance in a different voice, usually at a different pitch. The melody may vary through transposition, inversion, or otherwise, but retain its original character...

.