Nicolas Champion - Life

Life

Champion was born in or near Liège, where he probably received his early training. Little information survives regarding his early life, and the first record relating to his involvement with Philip's Grande chapelle, the Habsburg chapel choir, dates from 13 November 1501, prior to Philip's first trip to Spain. He was one of the few singers who remained with the chapel after Philip's death in 1506, maintained by his wife Joanna the Mad; for several years after Philip's death, Joanna traveled around Castile with his corpse in its coffin, having her chapel choir sing requiems to it each night, until her father Ferdinand I finally had her locked up in the fortress at Tordesillas.

After the dissolution of Joanna's chapel, Champion joined the chapel of Charles V. While there, he had a high status and was highly paid, according to court records, though he was always at a lower level than Pierre de La Rue. There is evidence that Champion may also have been associated with the court of Frederick the Wise, Duke of Saxony, such as the five-voice mass he wrote for them.

Read more about this topic:  Nicolas Champion

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Tomorrow in the offices the year on the stamps will be altered;
    Tomorrow new diaries consulted, new calendars stand;
    With such small adjustments life will again move forward
    Implicating us all; and the voice of the living be heard:
    “It is to us that you should turn your straying attention;
    Us who need you, and are affected by your fortune;
    Us you should love and to whom you should give your word.”
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    ... the opportunity offered by life to women is far in excess of any offered to men. To be the inspiration is more than to be the tool. To create the world, a greater thing than to reform it.
    Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)