Andreas Pevernage - Music

Music

Pevernage was a fairly prolific composer of both sacred and secular vocal music; of his output, about 235 pieces (115 sacred, 120 secular) remain. No specifically instrumental music has survived.

His output of sacred includes six masses, published in Antwerp after his death (1602), for from five to seven voices; a collection of motets entitled Cantiones sacrae (1578), which also includes some secular works, many of which are occasional pieces written in honor of local nobility, including Margaret of Parma; and a group of 14 Marian antiphons, like the masses published posthumously. Stylistically they are typical of late-16th-century practice, alternating homophonic and polyphonic textures, and using groups of voices in alternation in a cori spezzati style; the influence of the Venetian school was felt even as far away as the Netherlands.

Pevernage also wrote Italian madrigals, in Italian; it was a wildly popular form even in northern Europe (the vogue in England was just beginning in the late 1580s), and also wrote many French chansons, published in four separate books. They make use of syncopation, melismas, and complex rhythms.