Nicolas Grenon (c.1375 – 1456) was a French composer of the early Renaissance. He wrote in all the prevailing musical forms of the time, and was a rare case of a long-lived composer who learned his craft in the late 14th century but primarily practiced during the era during which the Renaissance styles were forming. Events October 24 - Valdemar IV of Denmark dies and is succeeded by his grandson Olaf III of Denmark. ... // Events July 7 - Joan of Arc acquitted (but she had already been executed). ... Renaissance music is European classical music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 to 1600. ... This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ...

Life

The earliest records of Grenon are from Paris, where he worked first in the Notre Dame Cathedral, and on the death of his brother moved to a job at the St Sépulchre as a canon. He rose in the ecclesiastical hierarchy at St Sépulchre, and then left Paris, moving first to Laon in 1403, and then Cambrai in 1408. In 1409 he took a post for the Duke of Berry as the "master of the boys", the music teacher and caretaker of the choirboys, at Bourges; and in 1412 he began his career with the Burgundian court of John the Fearless (Duke of Burgundy). In 1419 he returned to Cambrai, and from 1425 to 1427 worked in Rome as the master of the choirboys in the papal chapel under Pope Martin V. City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... This article is about the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. ... Laon is a city and commune of France, préfecture (capital) of the Aisne département. ... Events July 21 - Battle of Shrewsbury. ... Cambrai (Dutch: Kamerijk) is a French city and commune, in the Nord département, of which it is a sous_préfecture. ... Events December 13 - The Order of the Dragon is officially formated under King Sigismund of Hungary. ... Events January 1 - The Welsh surrender Harlech Castle to the English. ... Bourges is a town and commune in central France. ... Events End of the reign of Emperor Go-Komatsu of Japan. ... Composer Guillaume Dufay (left) and Gilles Binchois (right), Martin le Franc, Champion des Dames The Burgundian School is a term used to denote a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of... John I of Valois (May 28, 1371 in Dijon – killed September 10, 1419 on the bridge of Montereau), also known as the Fearless was duke of Burgundy from 1404 to 1419. ... Events January 19 – Hundred Years War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England which brings Normandy under the control of England. ... Events Foundation of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Births John II, Duke of Lorraine (died 1470) Edmund Sutton, English nobleman (died 1483) Deaths January 18 - Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, English politician (born 1391) March 17 - Ashikaga Yoshikazu, Japanese shogun (born 1407) May 24 - Murdoch Stewart, 2nd Duke of... Events Lincoln College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is founded. ... Nickname: The Eternal City Motto: SPQR: Senatus PopulusQue Romanus Location of the city of Rome (yellow) within the Province of Rome (red) and region of Lazio (grey) Coordinates: Region Lazio Province Province of Rome Founded 21 April 753 BC  - Mayor Walter Veltroni Area    - City 1285 km²  (580 sq mi)  - Urban... Martin V, né Oddone Colonna or Odo Colonna (1368 – February 20, 1431), Pope from 1417 to 1431, was elected on St. ...

He retired to Cambrai, where in the 1440s he worked with Guillaume Dufay on a complete revision of the polyphonic liturgical music of the cathedral. He died in Cambrai in 1456 after an unusually long life. Dufay (left), with Gilles Binchois Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (?August 5, 1397 – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. ... // Events July 7 - Joan of Arc acquitted (but she had already been executed). ...

Music and influence

Grenon's music shows aspects of both medieval and early Renaissance practice. His secular music is the most up-to-date, and includes examples of each of the prevailing formes fixes, the ballade, the virelai and the rondeau. The melody is always in the topmost voice, and all are for three voices. A musician plays the vielle in a 14th century medieval manuscript. ... Formes fixes (English: fixed forms) are French poetic forms of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which were translated into musical forms, particularly the forms of songs. ... The ballade was a verse form consisting of three (sometimes five) stanzas, each with the same metre, rhyme scheme and last line, with a shorter concluding stanza (an envoi). ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Virelay. ... A Rondeau is a form of French poetry with 13 lines written on two rhymes, as well as a corresponding musical form developed to set this characteristic verse structure. ...

The motets by Grenon are unusual in their use of strict isorhythmic technique, usually in all voices. In some aspects they are similar to motets of Dufay, except for the strictness of the isorhythmic principle. One is datable to 1414, since it praises the antipope John XXIII, and probably corresponds to the opening of the Council of Konstanz. Grenon also wrote masses, but none survive complete; only a fragment of a Gloria remains, not enough to establish his stylistic technique for this type of composition. In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions. ... Isorhythm (iso or same) consists of an order of durations or rhythms, talea (cutting, plural taleae), which is repeated within a tenor melody whose pitch content or series, color (repetition), varied in the number of members from the talea. ... Dufay (left), with Gilles Binchois Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (?August 5, 1397 – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. ... // Events Council of Constance begins. ... Antipope Felix V, the last historical Antipope. ... Antipope John XXIII Baldassare Cossa, (about 1370 – November 22, 1419), also known as John XXIII,was Pope or antipope during the Western Schism (1410–1415) and is now officially regarded by the Catholic Church as an antipope. ... The Council of Constance was an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, called by the Emperor Sigismund, a supporter of Antipope John XXIII, the pope recently elected at Pisa. ... The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the fixed portions of the Eucharistic liturgy (principally that of the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, generally known in the US as the Episcopal Church, and also the Lutheran Church) to music. ...

References and further reading

• Craig Wright. "Nicolas Grenon", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), vii, 702.
• ____. "Nicolas Grenon", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed January 22, 2005), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0-393-09090-6