DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

526 JANNACONI JANNEQUIN
practical improvement on a keyboard devised at
first by an Englishman, and patented in 1843,
but in spite of the successful tours about 1886,
in which it was brought before the public by
various pianists who had taken the trouble to
master its peculiarities, it does not seem to have
found much permanent favour. Since 1892 the
inventor has lived in Constantinople. (Riemann'a
Lexikon ;
ZeUschrift of the Int. Mws. Ges. vol. v.
his affectionate remembrance as embodied in his
great work on Palestrina. It is strange that
one who is said to have been so highly esteemed
at home should be so little known abroad. His
name does not appear in the Catalogue of the
Sacred Harmonic Society, or the Euing Library,
Glasgow, and the only published piece of music
by him which the writer has been able to find
is a motet in the second jiart of Hullah's Part
Music, 'The voice of joy and health,' adapited
from a ' Laetamini in Domino, ' the autograph of
which, with that of a Kyrie for two choirs,
formed part of the excellent Library founded by
HuUah for the use of his classes at St. Martin's
Hall. This motet may not be more original
than the words to which it is set, but it is full
of spirit, and vocal to the last degree. Jannaconi
was a voluminous writer ; especially was
he noted for his works for two, three, and four
choirs. The catalogue of the Landsberg Library
at Rome does not exhibit his name, but Santini's
collection of MSS. contained a mass and four
other pieces, for four voices ; fourteen masses,
varying from eight to two voices, some with
instruments ; forty-two psalms, and a quantity
of motets and other pieces for service, some with
accompaniment, some without, and for various
numbers of voices. [An 8-part mass is at
Bologna,
(See the
and a 16 -part mass at Amsterdam.
Qiiellen- Lexikon.)] A MS. volume of
six masses and a pjsalm forms No. 1811 in the
Fetis library at Brussels ; the other pieces
named at the foot of Fetis's article in the Biographie
seem to have disappeared. G.
JANNEQUIN, Clement, composer of the
tradition a Frenchman, and one
1 6th century , by
of the most distinguished followers, if not actu-
ally a pupil, of Josquin des Pres. There is no
musician of the time of whose life we know less.
No mention is made of his holding any court
appointment or of his being connected with any
church. We may perhaps guess that, like many
other artists, he went in early life to Rome, and
was attached to the Papal Chapel ; for some of
his MS. masses are said to be still preserved
there, while they are unknown elsewhere. But
he must soon have abandoned writing for the
church, for among his published works two
masses, ' L'aveugle Dieu ' and ' La Bataille
(the latter, occurring in a collection of 1555, is
founded on his famous work— see below—which
appeared in 1545), and a single motet ' Congregati
sunt,' seem almost nothing by the side of
more than 200 secular compositions. Later in
life, it is true, he writes again with sacred
pp. 16.5 and 321.)
JANNACONI, or
M.
JANACONI, Giu.seppe,
born, probably in Rome, 1741, learnt music and
singing from Rinaldini, G. Carpani, and Pisari,
under whom, and through the special study of
Palestrina, he perfected himself in the methods
and traditions of the Roman school. In 1811,
on the retirement of Zingarelli, he became maestro
di cappella at St. Peter's, a post which he
held during the rest of his life. He died from words, but in a far different style, setting to
the efl'ects of an apoplectic stroke, March 16, music eighty-two psalms of David, and ' The
1816, and was buried in the church of S. Simone
e Giuda. A Requiem by his scholar Basili was
' Proverbs of Solomon (selmi la xeriU Hibraique),
leading us to conjecture that he may have
sung for him on the 23rd. Baini was his pupil become, like Goudimel, a convert to the reformed
from 1802, and the friendship thus begun lasted church, as Fetis thinks, or that he had never
till the day of his death. Baini closed his been a Christian at all, but was of Jewish origin
eyes, and all tliat we know of Jannaconi is from and had only written a few masses as the
inevitable trials of his contrapuntal skill. But
apiart from these vague speculations, it is certain
that Jannequin trod a very different path from
his contemporaries. Practically confining him-
self to secular music, he exhibited great origin-
ality in the choice and treatment of his subjects.
He was the follower of Gombert in the art of
writing descriptive music, and made it his
sjjeciality. Among his works of this class are
'La Bataille,' written to commemorate and
describe the battle of Marignan, fought between
the French and Swiss in 1515, to which composition
Burney directed ])articular attention
in his History, and which he has copied in his
Musical Extracts (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 11,588).
[The fifth part was added by Phil. Verdelot.
The first occurrence of Jannequin's name seems
to be in a collection of thirty-one 4-part songs
printed by Attaingnant in 1529, containing five
Ijy Jannequin. (M. Henri Expert has published
a new edition.) They seem to have been reprinted
in 1537, together with 'Chanson de la
guerre,' 'La chasse, '
' Le chant des oyseaux,'
'
'La Louette (.sic), and ' Le Eossignol. ' The
famous song on the street-cries of Paris appeared
first, with ' La Bataille,' in 1545.]
A second edition of some of Jannequin's works
was published in Paris (according to Fetis) in
the year 1559, and the composer must have been
living at that time, for they were ' reveuz et
corrigez par lui meme.'
In the same year, according to the same
authority, Jannequin published his music to
eighty-two psalms, with a dedication to the Queen
of France, in which he speaks of his poverty
and age. Old indeed he must have been, for
the year after, 1560, Eonsard the poet, an