Clément Janequin (c. 1485-1558); FRA

Clément Janequin (c. 1485–1558) was a French Renaissance composer renowned above all for his vivid secular chansons. Little is known of his early training, and unlike many major composers of his generation he appears never to have held a long-term position at a royal or cathedral musical establishment. He served in various clerical posts in southwestern France and later moved to Paris, where his music benefited from the rapidly expanding world of music printing. During his final years he held the title of singer and later composer to King Henri II, though he seems to have lived much of his life with limited financial security.

Janequin became famous for programmatic chansons that imitate sounds of the natural and human world with extraordinary rhythmic and vocal ingenuity. La Guerre, also known as La Bataille de Marignan, recreates a battle through fanfares, cries, and rapid onomatopoeic figures; Le Chant des oiseaux evokes birdsong, while La Chasse portrays the sounds of a hunt. He also wrote more conventional chansons and sacred music. The popularity of his descriptive works, widely disseminated in print, made Janequin one of the best-known French composers of the sixteenth century and demonstrated the chanson’s remarkable capacity for pictorial storytelling.

###

Read biography at allmusic.com.