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Pierre de La Rue (c.1460–November 20, 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as a leading exponent of the Netherlands style in the decades around 1500.
Life
He may have been born at Tournai, in modern Belgium, but few records remain of his early life. The first reliable evidence for his activities comes from Siena Cathedral in Italy, where he was employed as a singer from 1483 to 1485. After Siena, in 1492 he went to 's-Hertogenbosch Cathedral (in present-day Netherlands), but the next year he joined the chapel of Emperor Maxmilian. The remainder of his career was centered on Brussels, though he made at least two trips to Spain, and spent some time in Mechelen, Malines, and at Courtrai, where he died. An epitaph from his tomb in Courtrai implies that he may have worked at the courts in France and Hungary as well, though no other evidence supports this.
On his trips to Spain he met many of the other Franco-Flemish composers who were working at the same time (for instance, Josquin, Isaac and Robert de Févin) and these meetings may have proved decisive on the development of his style.
Works
La Rue wrote masses, motets, Magnificats, settings of the Lamentations, and chansons, and overall showed more diversity than almost any of the other composers of his generation, except perhaps for Josquin. He seems to have composed music for only about 20 years, beginning after his return from Italy; it has proven almost impossible to date any of his works precisely, but they mostly conform to the stylistic trends prevalent around 1500. Stylistically, his works are more similar to Josquin than to any other composer working at the same time; in fact, misattribution of doubtful works has gone both ways.
Most of his masses are for four or five voices, though there are two for six, and one of these, the Missa Ave sanctissima Maria is a six-voice canon, a technically difficult feat worthy of Ockeghem. Most of his masses are of the cantus firmus type, though he occasionally writes a parody mass. He liked to alternate textures for contrast, often using sections with only two voices which have fully scored sections before and after.
La Rue's motets are mostly for four voices; they use pervasive imitation, though not usually at the outset (unlike the style of Josquin). His thirty chansons show a diversity of style, some being rather similar to the late Burgundian style (for example, as seen in Hayne van Ghizeghem or Gilles Binchois), and others using the more current imitative polyphonic style. He seems not to have picked up the Italian frottola style which featured light, homophonic textures (which Josquin used so effectively in his popular El Grillo and Scaramella), even though he spent time in Italy.
Sources
- Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
- Article "Pierre de La Rue," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
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