Gilles Joye

Gilles Joye (1424 or 1425 – 31 December 1483) was a

Life

He may have come from

Between 1454 and 1459 no record of his activities survives in the Low Countries; based on his composition of an Italian ballata on a poem by a contemporary Florentine, it has been suggested that he spent some time in Italy, as did so many other Franco-Flemish composers of his and succeeding generations. By 1459 he was back at St. Donatian in Bruges.^[1]

In 1462 he was hired as a singer by the Burgundian court chapel, a position he retained officially until 1471, although he had ceased to perform his duties in 1468. Between 1465 and 1473 he was also a rector at Delft. After 1471 he most likely returned to St. Donatian. He died in Bruges, and was buried in the church of St. Donatian.^[1]

A portrait of Joye has survived, possibly painted by

Joye is one of the composers mentioned in Guillaume Crétin's famous poem Déploration sur le trépas de Jean Ockeghem written on the death of Johannes Ockeghem in 1497; in it he is one of the angels welcoming Ockeghem into Heaven. The composers mentioned by Crétin have long been used as a list of those considered most famous in the late 15th century, thus indicating Joye's reputation, in spite of the small number of his works which have survived.^[2]

Works

1. Ce qu'on fait a catimini (3 voices, rondeau, in French)
2. Mercy mon dueil je ne supplied (3 voices, rondeau, in French)
3. Non pas que je veuille penser (3 voices, rondeau, in French)
4. Textless rondeau, also for three voices
5. Poy ché crudel Fortuna et rio Distino (3 voices, ballata, in Italian)

Notes

References

• Fallows, David. L. Macy (ed.). Gilles Joye. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 29 October 2010. (subscription required)
• "Gilles Joye," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.
  ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• ISBN 0-393-09530-4 (Note: Reese makes the claim that Joye was also a theologian and poet; this derives from the biographical compilation by J. F. Foppens
  in 1731, Compendium chronologicum episcoporum brugensium (Bruges, 1731), but a more recent study by F. Van Molle (1960) refutes this, showing that Foppens confused Joye with someone else.)