Feragut, Bertrand (…-…). Composer; Musician; Singer

Voir Dictionnaire

Allinson 1993, p. 84

Bertran Feragut 10-12 A singer in the chapel, Feragut was paid wages of 6 escus a month from May 1449 to July 1449 (10-12), and he received 8 escus for a robe for May 1449 (10). Feragut is by far the most renowned of all members of the chapel. However some confusion surrounds his biography owing to the wide-ranging nature of surviving sources of evidence, in both date and physical location. One work attributed to Feragut, Excelsa civ itas Vincentia, was used to greet the entrance of Pietro Emiliani, Bishop of Vicenza to the city of Vicenza in 1409.175 The same piece was used to greet Emiliani's successor in 1433. It has been suggested that Feragut was present at the 1409 performance, although with no supporting documentary evidence, and therefore, by the same reasoning, Feragut must have been present in Vicenza in 1433.176 During the period 1425-30 Feragut was the maestro di cappella and tenor of the Duomo at Milan.177 In 1431 he composed the motet Francorum nobilitati178 which Lewis Lockwood suggests was addressed to Duke Niccolo of Ferrara.179 Lockwood places Feragut in Ferrara on 19 August 1431, when a group of singers engaged to sing in the cathedral included a 'Bertrandi'.180 If Feragut left Milan in 1430 then he could have been in Ferrara in 1431. However it is possible that the reference to 'Bertrandi' is to another musician of the same name. A document dated 9 December 1438 places Feragut in Florence, hired for a service at the Cathedral.181 Documentary sources for the Cathedral have several periods missing, and the next surviving document in which Feragut might be expected to appear is a wage appropriation dated 6 March 1445.182 But his name is absent from the list, and it therefore appears that Feragut had been employed for only one service at the Cathedral, or else that his service at the Cathedral had ended by 1445. From this time until 1 May 1449 his whereabouts are unknown and it has been suggested that Feragut died in the service of Ren? of Anjou in July 1449 or soon after. However there is no definite evidence for this, and in view of the earlier gaps in our knowledge of Feragut's life he may have moved on from the court, possibly back to Italy. Evidence of Feragut being in Holy Orders is found in a Register of Supplications to the Pope for 1427-8. This refers to a 'Bertrandus Feraguti', a monk of San Mich?le de Medicina in Bologna, formerly a monk of the Augustinian order of eremitani when he was in Ferrara. Since Feragut was at this time maestro di cappella of the Milan Duomo, and had been since 1425, his connections with Ferrara must date from before 1425.183 This Register raises further discrepancies in Feragut's biography. Here he is evidently in Orders, as he is in the 1438 document. Yet the 1425-30 references are to tenor and maestro di cappella, and those of 1449 are to chantre (the possible 1431 reference gives Beltramus no title). It is conceivable that a monk could have been maestro di cappella in Milan, although it is strange that no mention of Holy Orders is made. Even more strange is the lack of references to Holy Orders in the Anjou accounts, where other monks are given the title of fr?re. Either Feragut was ordained in the middle of his career and then left the Order (not impossible in view of the change of Orders earlier in his life), or the biographies of more than one person are being mistakenly combined. I. Ferjon