Life
What little is known of Obrecht's origins and early childhood comes mostly from his motet Mille quingentis. He was the only son of Ghent city trumpeter Willem Obrecht and Lijsbette Gheeraerts. His mother died in 1460 at the age of 20, and his father, in 1488 in Ghent.
Details of his early education are sparse, but he likely learned to play the trumpet, like his father, and in so doing learned the art of counterpoint and improvisation over a cantus firmus. There is a good chance he knew Antoine Busnois at the Burgundian court; at any rate he certainly knew his music, since his earliest mass shows close stylistic parallels with the elder composer.
Scholar, composer and clergyman, Obrecht seems to have had a succession of short appointments, two of which ended in less than ideal circumstances. There is one interesting record of his compensating a shortfall in his accounts by donating choirbooks he had copied. Throughout the period he was held in the highest respect both by his patrons and by the composers who were his peers. Tinctoris, who was writing in Naples, singles him out in a short list of the master composers of the day—all the more significant because he was only 25 at the time Tinctoris made his list, and on the other side of Europe. Erasmus served as one of Obrecht's choirboys around the year 1476.
While most of Obrecht's appointments were in Flanders in the Netherlands, he made at least two trips to Italy, once in 1487 at the invitation of Duke Ercole d'Este I of Ferrara, and again in 1504. Duke Ercole had heard Obrecht's music, which is known to have circulated in Italy between 1484 and 1487, and said that he appreciated it above the music of all other contemporary composers; consequently he invited Obrecht to Ferrara for six months in 1487. In 1504 Obrecht once again went to Ferrara, but on the death of the Duke at the beginning of the next year he became unemployed. In what capacity he stayed in Ferrara is unknown, but he died in the outbreak of plague there just before 1 August 1505.
Read more about this topic: Jacob Obrecht
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