Music
While only six of his works survive with reliable attribution, the recent reevaluation of a four-voice setting of the De profundis (Psalm 130) (long attributed to Josquin des Prez) gives evidence of his quality as a composer.
Champion's surviving music includes two masses, both for five voices: Missa Maria Magdalena and Missa Ducis saxsonie: Sing ich niet wol; two psalm motets, one for four and one for six voices; and a secular song, Noch weet ick, in Dutch. The setting of De profundis, long attributed to Josquin, is relatively well-known: for example, Grout and Palisca's History of Western Music, often used in college music history courses, gives it as an example of Josquin's late style. The famous copyist Pierre Alamire attributed it to Champion in its earliest extant source, the manuscript VienNB Mus 15941, and the case has recently been made that the attribution should remain with Champion, for stylistic reasons.
Stylistically his music is similar to Josquin's in many respects, including its large-scale tonal organization, use of motifs and paraphrase, and motivic development. In addition he used florid, rhythmically active textures with many layers.
Read more about this topic: Nicolas Champion
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
“Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
“Our beauties are not ours”:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)