Jacob Obrecht. Jacob Obrecht was a Flemish-Dutch, Low Countries composer.
He was the most famous composer of masses in Europe in the late 15th century, being eclipsed by only Josquin des Prez after his death. What little is known of Obrecht's origins and early childhood comes mostly from his motet Mille quingentis.
He was the only son of Ghent city trumpeter Willem Obrecht and Lijsbette Gheeraerts. His mother died in 1460 at the age of 20, and his father in 1488 in Ghent.
Details of his early education are sparse, but he probably learned to play the trumpet, like his father, and in so doing learned counterpoint and how to improvise over a cantus firmus. He is likely to have known Antoine Busnois at the Burgundian court, and certainly knew his music, since Obrecht's earliest mass shows close stylistic parallels with the elder composer.
Scholar, composer and clergyman, Obrecht seems to have had a succession of short appointments, two of which ended in less than ideal circumstances. There is a record of his compensating for a shortfall in his accounts by donating choirbooks he had copied. Throughout the period he was held in the highest esteem both by his patrons and by his fellow composers. Tinctoris, writing in Naples, singles him out in a shortlist of contemporary master composers, all the more significant because he was only 25 when Tinctoris created his list, and on the other side of Europe
He was the most famous composer of masses in Europe in the late 15th century, being eclipsed by only Josquin des Prez after his death. What little is known of Obrecht's origins and early childhood comes mostly from his motet Mille quingentis.
He was the only son of Ghent city trumpeter Willem Obrecht and Lijsbette Gheeraerts. His mother died in 1460 at the age of 20, and his father in 1488 in Ghent.
Details of his early education are sparse, but he probably learned to play the trumpet, like his father, and in so doing learned counterpoint and how to improvise over a cantus firmus. He is likely to have known Antoine Busnois at the Burgundian court, and certainly knew his music, since Obrecht's earliest mass shows close stylistic parallels with the elder composer.
Scholar, composer and clergyman, Obrecht seems to have had a succession of short appointments, two of which ended in less than ideal circumstances. There is a record of his compensating for a shortfall in his accounts by donating choirbooks he had copied. Throughout the period he was held in the highest esteem both by his patrons and by his fellow composers. Tinctoris, writing in Naples, singles him out in a shortlist of contemporary master composers, all the more significant because he was only 25 when Tinctoris created his list, and on the other side of Europe
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