Music
Jacquet wrote almost exclusively sacred vocal music. He was attentive to the trends of the time, and his music shows a clear stylistic progression from an early reliance on late 15th century practices to a later grasp of the pervasive imitation used by the generation of composers after Josquin. His craftsmanship is careful, and his counterpoint is fluid and graceful; parts are well-balanced, and occasional homophonic sections break the prevailing polyphonic texture. Most of his music is full-textured, with all voices singing.
He wrote 23 masses which have survived, and well over 100 motets. Many of the motets are for state occasions: arrivals of dignitaries, marriages, tributes, laments and so forth. Only three secular works have survived, and those are most likely early compositions; the more zealous leaders of the Counter-Reformation had a low opinion of secular music, and Jacquet seems to have obliged them.
In his later years, his music was simpler, and he wrote many hymns. The tendency of the Council of Trent at this time was to encourage relatively simple music in which the words could be clearly understood; Jacquet was both following this trend, and showing the natural development of a style which had embraced complex polyphony early, and which later sought simplicity and clarity.
Read more about this topic: Jacquet Of Mantua
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R’s, a little music and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)