Van Pullaer, Louis (…-…). Composer; Musician; Singer

Cathédrale de Cambrai, 1503-1507. Attesté comme maître de musique. Houdoy 1880, p. 129.

Pullaer [Pulaer], Louis van
(b Cambrai, c1475; d Cambrai, 21 Sept 1528). South Netherlandish choir director and composer. In 1485 he was an enfant de choeur at Cambrai Cathedral, where he remained as a singer until 10 October 1494. By the middle of the following year, he had become the director of the children’s choir at St Denis, Liège. He returned to Cambrai in 1503 and on 5 April assumed the directorship of the cathedral choir, replacing his former mentor, Denis de Hollain. On 23 April 1507 Pullaer was dismissed for neglect of his duties, but on 17 June 1507 he was appointed choir director at Notre Dame in Paris – a position he assumed on 22 December. In 1509 he received a benefice at St Germain-l’Auxerrois, while in 1514 he took part as a singer in the funeral office for Anne of Brittany. He remained at Notre Dame until 1527, when he returned to Cambrai as a canon of the cathedral. His Missa ‘Christus resurgens’ for four voices (with the second Agnus Dei for five) (in F-CA 3) is a parody mass based on Richafort’s motet Christus resurgens in which the pre-existent material is treated rather freely.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MGG1 (J. Robijns)
J. Houdoy: Histoire artistique de la cathédrale de Cambrai (Lille, 1880/R)
F.L. Chartier: L’ancien chapitre de Notre-Dame de Paris et sa maîtrise (Paris, 1897/R)
A. Pirro: ‘Dokumente über Antoine Brumel, Louis van Pullaer und Crispin van Stappen’, ZMw, xi (1928–9), 349–53
J. Delporte: ‘La messe “Christus resurgens” de Louis van Pulaer’, IMSCR I: Liège 1930, 91–2
J. Delporte: ‘La messe “Christus resurgens” de L. van Pulaer’, Revue liturgique et musicale, xiv (1930), 10–13 [contains an edn of Ky and Ag I; see suppl. to Revue liturgique et musicale, xvi (1932), for a complete edn of the mass]
C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris 500–1550 (Cambridge, 1992)
ALLAN W. ATLAS/ERIC JAS