Hémart, Jean (…-before 27 Feb. 1493). Composer; Musician

Maître des enfants de 1468 à 1484. Comptes des petits vicaire (Wright1976, p.212): 1474: Hémart (5/13); 1486-n.n.

 Planchart : Jehan Hemart, alias de Landreches: documented as a supernumerary chorister in 1450-51 [LAN, 4G 7763 (1450-51), 11r]. By 1457-58 he was no longer a chorister but was going to school and staying with the magister scholarum [LAN, 4G 7763 (1457-58), 18r]. Was a small vicar from 23 May 1468 to 14 May 1476 [LAN, 4G 7466, 5r] 4G 7272 (1475-76), 7v]. He must have become a grand vicar shortly afterwards; his promotion would have been recorded in the lost register N of the acts. He is first mentioned as a magister puerorum on 20 March 1469, though his appointment might date from a few months before [LAN, 4G 7765 (1468-69), 17v]. He joined the grand community of chaplains in 1474-75 [LAN, 4G 6947, 13r] but appears in the lists only in 1475-76 [LAN, 4G 6948, 30r], which indicates that either he resigned his chaplaincy or shifted to the small community. On 30 June 1483 he collated a chaplaincy at the altar of the Trinity on the death of Pierre de Castelier (not Pierre du Castel) and that same day he resigned his grand vicariate which went to Robert le Voiturier [CBM 1061, 162v, 163v]. The accounts of grand community of chaplains show him holding the chaplaincy as a foreign chapel from 1485 on and the indication that he held it ad privilegium from 1489 on [LAN, 4G 6967, 42r; 4G 6971, 40r]. As had happened with Gobert le Mannier, Hemart was asked to sing with the small vicars, although no longer one of them, for a whole year on 08 August 1483 and was paid accordingly [CBM 1061, 164r]. His career as a magister puerorum probably came to end in the wake of a scandal; on 05 November 1483 Hemart was denounced as having a “religiosa” as his concubine and was punished severely [CBM 1061, 170v]. He was replaced as magister puerorum on 28 July 1484 [CBM, 1061, 187r]. On 15 April 1482 he had collated the custody of the parish church of Lessines on the death of Jehan le Caron 2 [CBM 1061, 139r], but after a lawsuit instituted by Henri Macheclier in 1484 [CBM 1061, 201v] the custodu of the church was assigned to canon Jacques Daussut on 14 April 1485 [CBM 1061, 241r]. Hemart died shortly before 27 February 1493, when Hugo le Caron collated the chaplaincy at the altar of the Trinity [CBM 1062, 51r]. He was a composer, his name is mentioned among the musicians in Compère’s Omnium bonorum plena, and in 1475-76 Symon Mellet copied a lamentation by Hemart presumably on the death of Du Fay [LAN, 4G 4683, 23r], a song by him survives in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Banco Rari 229, 226v-227r.