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:
“... it is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)