Johannes Martini
Johannes Martini (c.
1440–late
1497 or early
1498) was a
Franco-Flemish composer of the
Renaissance.
He was born in
Brabant around
1440, but information about his early life is scanty. He probably received his early training in
Flanders, as did most of the composers of his generation. Sometime before
1473 he became associated with the ducal chapel in
Ferrara,
Italy, where
Ercole I d'Este was attempting to build a musical establishment on the par of some of the other aristocratic centers in Italy.
He was a member of the famous
Milan chapel of the
Sforza family in July
1474, along with
Loyset Compère,
Gaspar van Weerbeke, and some of the other composers from northern Europe who were part of the first wave of Franco-Flemish influence in Italy. In November he returned to Ferrara. What prompted him to leave and return is not known, but since the Milanese chapel was then the most renowned in Europe, it is possible he went to investigate the competition for his employer as much as to improve his own singing and compositional skill.
Martini was well-rewarded by his employer, receiving not only an unusually large salary for his position in the chapel, but his own house in Ferrara.
In
1486 he traveled to
Hungary as part of the group from Ferrara involved in the installation of a d'Este as
Archbishop of
Esztergom, and in
1487 and
1488 he made two separate trips to Rome to negotiate the benefices given to him by Duke Ercole.
Martini wrote
masses,
motets,
psalms,
hymns, and some secular songs, including
chansons. His style is conservative, sometimes referring back to the music of the
Burgundian School, especially in the masses. Some stylistic similarity to
Obrecht suggests that the two may have known each other, or at the very least Martini may have seen Obrecht's music. Obrecht was a guest in Ferrara in
1487, and his music is known to have circulated in Italy in the early
1480s.
In addition to his rather conservative output of masses, he is the first composer known to have set psalms for double choir singing
antiphonally. This style, which was to become famous in
Venice under the direction of
Adrian Willaert seventy years later, seems to have had no influence at the time: yet it was a striking innovation.
His secular music is in both
French and
Italian.
* Article "Johannes Martini", in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
*
Gustave Reese,
Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
*
