Guillaume Costeley
Encyclopedia
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
. He was the court organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
to Charles IX of France
Charles IX of France
Charles IX was King of France, ruling from 1560 until his death. His reign was dominated by the Wars of Religion. He is best known as king at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.-Childhood:...
and famous for his numerous chanson
Chanson
A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specialising in chansons is known as a "chanteur" or "chanteuse" ; a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.-Chanson de geste:The...
s, which were representative of the late development of the form; his work in this regard was part of the early development of the style known as musique mesurée
Musique mesurée
Musique mesurée, or Musique mesurée à l'antique, was a style of vocal musical composition in France in the late 16th century. In musique mesurée, longer syllables in the French language were set to longer note values, and shorter syllables to shorter, in a homophonic texture but in a situation of...
. He was also one of very few 16th century French composers of music for keyboard. In addition, he was a founding member of the Académie de Poésie et de Musique
Académie de Poésie et de Musique
The Académie de Poésie et de Musique, later re-named the Académie du Palais, was the first Academy in France. It was founded in 1570 under the auspices of Charles IX of France by the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf and the musician Joachim Thibault de Courville....
along with poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean Antoine de Baïf was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.-Life:He was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice...
, and he was one of the earliest composers to experiment with microtonal
Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...
composition.
Life
Costeley was born in Fontanges-en-Auvergne, coincidentally the same town as contemporary composer Antoine de BertrandAntoine de Bertrand
Antoine de Bertrand was a French composer of the Renaissance. Early in his life he was a prolific composer of secular chansons, and late in his life he wrote hymns and canticles, under the influence of the Jesuits...
. Nothing is known of him prior to his arrival in Paris in or before 1554, at which time he met, and became acquainted with the music of, such diverse figures as Jean Maillard
Jean Maillard
Jean Maillard was a French composer of the Renaissance.While little is known with certainty about his life, he may have been associated with the French royal court, since he wrote at least one motet for them. Most likely he lived and worked in Paris, based on evidence of his print editions, which...
, Jacques Arcadelt
Jacques Arcadelt
Jacques Arcadelt was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in both Italy and France, and principally known as a composer of secular vocal music...
, and Sandrin
Sandrin
Sandrin was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was a prolific composer of chansons in the middle of the 16th century, some of which were extremely popular and widely distributed.-Life:...
. It was through Sandrin, who had recently worked in Italy, that Costeley probably became interested in the latest trends in Italian scholarship, particularly the theories of Nicola Vicentino
Nicola Vicentino
Nicola Vicentino was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most visionary musicians of the age, inventing, among other things, a microtonal keyboard, and devising a practical system of chromatic writing two hundred years before the rise of equal...
, some of which involved composition using microtones. Costeley's only microtonal composition, Seigneur Dieu ta pitié, was apparently written at exactly the time that Sandrin was in Paris.
During the late 1550s Costeley rose in prominence in Parisian musical life, being published by Le Roy
Adrian Le Roy
Adrian Le Roy was an influential French music publisher, lutenist, guitarist, composer and music educator.-Life:Le Roy was born in the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer in northern France to a wealthy family...
and Ballard in 1559. Since Le Roy was closely connected to the royal court through the family of Catherine de Clermont, who was to become the Countess of Retz, it is probable that his influence was significant in Costeley's rise. By 1560 Costeley had been appointed to the royal court, as organist, music teacher to the ten-year-old monarch, and composer of chansons for the royal chamber.
In 1570 he published Musique de Guillaume Costeley, which contains almost all of his surviving works. In November of this same year King Henry III
Henry III of France
Henry III was King of France from 1574 to 1589. As Henry of Valois, he was the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the dual titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.-Childhood:Henry was born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau,...
granted a charter for the formation of the Académie de poésie et de musique
Académie de Poésie et de Musique
The Académie de Poésie et de Musique, later re-named the Académie du Palais, was the first Academy in France. It was founded in 1570 under the auspices of Charles IX of France by the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf and the musician Joachim Thibault de Courville....
, of which Costeley was a founding member; there is, however, no evidence of any musical composition by Costeley between 1570 and his death in 1606. He was lauded by the group and took part in its activities (the king himself was probably a member, and attended some of their meetings, as did his successor Charles IX
Charles IX of France
Charles IX was King of France, ruling from 1560 until his death. His reign was dominated by the Wars of Religion. He is best known as king at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.-Childhood:...
after 1574). Baïf
Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean Antoine de Baïf was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.-Life:He was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice...
himself, the founder of the Académie, wrote several poems in Costeley's honor.
However Costeley was no longer resident full-time at Paris. He had purchased a house in Evreux
Évreux
Évreux is a commune in the Eure department, of which it is the capital, in Haute Normandie in northern France.-History:In late Antiquity, the town, attested in the fourth century CE, was named Mediolanum Aulercorum, "the central town of the Aulerci", the Gallic tribe then inhabiting the area...
in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
, and married; the King only required him to be at court for the first three months of the year. Records of his property purchases indicate that he had become wealthy in service of the king. In 1581 he was made tax assessor at Evreux, and in 1592 his wife died and he married again. In 1597 he was named as an advisor to the king ("Conseiller du Roy"), and he seems to have remained in Evreux in semi-retirement until his death.
Music and influence
Costeley's surviving music amounts to about 100 chansonChanson
A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song, usually polyphonic and secular. A singer specialising in chansons is known as a "chanteur" or "chanteuse" ; a collection of chansons, especially from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, is also known as a chansonnier.-Chanson de geste:The...
s, as well as three motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s and a fantasy for organ. Everything that he wrote can be dated to the period between 1554 and 1569.
His motets, his only known sacred works, are for four and five voices and show the influence of Jean Maillard
Jean Maillard
Jean Maillard was a French composer of the Renaissance.While little is known with certainty about his life, he may have been associated with the French royal court, since he wrote at least one motet for them. Most likely he lived and worked in Paris, based on evidence of his print editions, which...
. A connection between the two is assumed since they both set the same unusual text (Domine salvum fac regem desiderium cordis ejus), and their settings contain apparently deliberate similarities.
Costeley's chansons were by far the most famous part of his output, and they are in the Parisian chanson style of the time, with vivid word-painting, along with a tendency to think harmonically rather than polyphonically – as the age of purely polyphonic writing was coming to an end over most of Europe. The subject matter of the chansons is widely varied, as was true for most composers in the genre; some of the chansons are love songs, some are imitations of war or victory odes, and some are humorous or scatalogical.
A peculiarity of Costeley's style – and his notation – is that he specified the accidentals he wanted applied to his music with great care and precision, something which was unusual prior to the middle of the 16th century, but which began to occur thereafter. He was fond of unusual melodic intervals, such as the diminished third, and probably wanted to make sure they were performed correctly. Some of his chansons, for example the earthy Grosse garce noire et tendre, use this interval prominently: in this work he uses it in an imitative passage. In other pieces he uses augmented intervals, including seconds, fourths, fifths, and sixths. Even more unusual than his use of previously prohibited intervals, however, is his pioneering use of microtones. The chanson Seigneur Dieu ta pitié of 1558 made use of justly tuned enharmonic intervals which, if played on a keyboard instrument, would require nineteen keys per octave; Costeley specifies that tuning such an instrument in equal "thirds of a tone" would be necessary to perform his chanson. This amounts to a specification of 19 equal temperament
19 equal temperament
In music, 19 equal temperament, called 19-TET, 19-EDO, or 19-ET, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into 19 equal steps . Each step represents a frequency ratio of 21/19, or 63.16 cents...
for a keyboard version of this chanson.
While he was a member of Jean-Antoine de Baïf's Academie de musique et de poésie, few of his works show the influence of, or intent to contribute to, the newly-developed genre of musique mesurée. Only two compositions in the collection entitled Musique, published in 1570, show the metrical freedom which characterizes the style.
One instrumental composition by Costeley has survived, and that only in a reconstructed version from a manuscript prepared by a non-musician. It is a short fantasie for organ, and is considered significant because it is one of the only surviving bits of keyboard music from late 16th-century France, other than pieces transcribed from vocal originals. The repertory of French keyboard players from the time seems to not have been written down, and certainly remained unpublished.