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:
“Nearly all the bands are mustered out of service; ours therefore is a novelty. We marched a few miles yesterday on a road where troops have not before marched. It was funny to see the children. I saw our boys running after the music in many a group of clean, bright-looking, excited little fellows.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I’ve come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I’ve never got there.... I’m always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play every day.”
—Miles Davis (1926–1991)
“If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)