Life
As is common with composers of the period, very little is known of his early life. He was born in Ghent, as suggested by a recently discovered epitaph, written in 1538. Most of his life he spent in posts in Italy, France and the Low Countries, though there are gaps where his activities are not known, and he seems to have left many of his posts without permission. He was a singer for Duke Sforza of Milan from 1471 to 1474, during the period when the Milanese chapel choir grew into one of the largest and most famous ensembles in Europe; Loyset Compère, Johannes Martini, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and several other composer-singers were also in Milan during those years.
In 1474 Duke Sforza wrote a letter of recommendation for him to Lorenzo de' Medici, and Agricola accordingly went to Florence. In 1476 he is known to have been in Cambrai, in the Low Countries, where he probably was employed as a singer. For the long period from 1476 to 1491 nothing definite is known except that he spent part of the time in the French royal chapel, and he must have been building his reputation as a composer during this time, for he was much in demand in the 1490s, with France and Naples competing for his services. In 1500 he took a position with Philip the Handsome, who was Duke of Burgundy and King of Castile. He apparently accompanied the Duke on his travels through his empire; by this time he was one of the most esteemed composers in Europe. He was in Valladolid, Spain, in August 1506, where he died during an outbreak of the plague on August 15 of that year.
Read more about this topic: Alexander Agricola
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“This death’s livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life was sign that they have sold their wills and bodies to the State: and contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for that its beginning was voluntary.”
—T.E. (Thomas Edward)