Surname
Carmen
Given Name
Jean
Role
Composer
Music copyist
Musician
Active period
1403 - 1403
Biography
Carmen, Johannes
(fl 1400–20). French composer. He belonged to the generation of composers active in Paris immediately before the advent of Du Fay. Carmen and his contemporaries Johannes Tapissier and Johannes Cesaris are mentioned in a retrospective passage of Le champion des dames (c1440) by Martin le franc.
Tapissier, Carmen, Césaris
Not long ago did sing so well
That they astonished all Paris
And those who thereabouts did dwell.
In the early 15th century, Carmen was associated with the court of the Duke of Burgundy, where his colleague Johannes Tapissier was also employed. On two occasions in 1403 he was recompensed by Duke Philip the Bold for services rendered at the Burgundian court when it resided in Paris. The second order of payment describes him as a ‘scribe and notator of music’ and states that he had copied ‘certain hymns … newly made’ into a music book of the ducal chapel. At one time Carmen also served as the cantor of the church of St Jacques-de-la-Boucherie in Paris. His motet Venite adoremus dominum/Salve sancta laments that the Church then stood ‘in various ways divided’ and was evidently written before the Great Schism was formally ended at the Council of Konstanz in 1417.
The known compositions by Johannes Carmen are three four-voice motets: Pontifici decori speculi, Salve Pater/Felix et beata, and Venite adoremus dominum/Salve sancta. All three are isorhythmic and appear to be built on newly composed tenor melodies. Pontifici decori speculi is unusual in that it has the two highest voices in a canon at the unison throughout. Salve Pater/Felix et beata and Venite adoremus dominum/Salve sancta are each supplied with a solus tenor in 15th-century sources and can be reduced to a three-voice performance. The three motets are published in Early Fifteenth-Century Music, ed. G. Reaney, CMM, xi/1 (1955).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. van den Borren: Guillaume Dufay (Brussels, 1925), 331ff
E. Dannemann: Die spätgotische Musiktradition in Frankreich und Burgund vor dem Auftreten Dufays (Strasbourg, 1936), 57–8, 75–6
C. Wright: Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419: a Documentary History (Henryville, PA, 1979)
C.L. Turner: ‘Proportion and Form in the Continental Isorhythmic Motet c.1385–1450’, MAn, x (1991), 89–124
CRAIG WRIGHT
(fl 1400–20). French composer. He belonged to the generation of composers active in Paris immediately before the advent of Du Fay. Carmen and his contemporaries Johannes Tapissier and Johannes Cesaris are mentioned in a retrospective passage of Le champion des dames (c1440) by Martin le franc.
Tapissier, Carmen, Césaris
Not long ago did sing so well
That they astonished all Paris
And those who thereabouts did dwell.
In the early 15th century, Carmen was associated with the court of the Duke of Burgundy, where his colleague Johannes Tapissier was also employed. On two occasions in 1403 he was recompensed by Duke Philip the Bold for services rendered at the Burgundian court when it resided in Paris. The second order of payment describes him as a ‘scribe and notator of music’ and states that he had copied ‘certain hymns … newly made’ into a music book of the ducal chapel. At one time Carmen also served as the cantor of the church of St Jacques-de-la-Boucherie in Paris. His motet Venite adoremus dominum/Salve sancta laments that the Church then stood ‘in various ways divided’ and was evidently written before the Great Schism was formally ended at the Council of Konstanz in 1417.
The known compositions by Johannes Carmen are three four-voice motets: Pontifici decori speculi, Salve Pater/Felix et beata, and Venite adoremus dominum/Salve sancta. All three are isorhythmic and appear to be built on newly composed tenor melodies. Pontifici decori speculi is unusual in that it has the two highest voices in a canon at the unison throughout. Salve Pater/Felix et beata and Venite adoremus dominum/Salve sancta are each supplied with a solus tenor in 15th-century sources and can be reduced to a three-voice performance. The three motets are published in Early Fifteenth-Century Music, ed. G. Reaney, CMM, xi/1 (1955).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. van den Borren: Guillaume Dufay (Brussels, 1925), 331ff
E. Dannemann: Die spätgotische Musiktradition in Frankreich und Burgund vor dem Auftreten Dufays (Strasbourg, 1936), 57–8, 75–6
C. Wright: Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419: a Documentary History (Henryville, PA, 1979)
C.L. Turner: ‘Proportion and Form in the Continental Isorhythmic Motet c.1385–1450’, MAn, x (1991), 89–124
CRAIG WRIGHT