Jacobus de Kerle

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(1531/32 -1591)

Franco-Flemish composer. From 1555 he was in Italy, in a church post at Orvieto; from 1562 he served the Archbishop of Augsburg in Rome during the closing stages of the Council of Trent. He was active at Ypres in 1565--7, but then took over the choir of Augsburg cathedral, moving on to a Benedictine abbey in Kempten in 1575. Again he returned to Flanders, as canon of Cambrai in 1579, but he went back to Germany in 1582 as choirmaster to the Elector of Köln; later that year he took up his last post, as an Imperial court chaplain in Prague. His published music included eight volumes of motets and Vespers music and one of Masses. The Preces commissioned by the Cardinal of Augsburg in 1562 are in a lyrical, uncomplicated Palestrinian style and may well have influenced the fathers of the Council of Trent not to abandon polyphony in church music.





A Partial Jacobus de Kerle Discography | IVA: The Netherlanders from Josquin des Pres
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