Music
All of Joye's surviving music is vocal and secular, and for three voices only. Four of his works are rondeaux, in French (though the text for one rondeau is lost), and one is an Italian ballata, probably written between 1454 and 1459 when he may have been in Italy. Joye's songs are typical of the Burgundian secular music of the period; they are melodic, clear, and lyrical in style. One of them, Ce qu'on fait, is frankly obscene. No sacred music is known for certain to have been written by Joye, but two anonymous masses based on the contemporary lyric O rosa bella have been attributed to Joye for stylistic reasons; in addition, the similarity of O rosa bella to the name of his favorite prostitute, along with the general irreverent character evident in his life and other work, may support this hypothesis.
Joye is one of the composers mentioned in Guillaume Crétin's famous poem Déploration sur le trépas de Jean Ockeghem written on the death of Johannes Ockeghem in 1497; in it he is one of the angels welcoming Ockeghem into Heaven. The composers mentioned by Crétin have long been used as a list of those considered most famous in the late 15th century, thus indicating Joye's reputation, in spite of the small number of his works which have survived.
Read more about this topic: Gilles Joye
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