CLEMENS NON PAPA, JACOBUS

Jacobus Clemens non Papa was a prolific composer of both sacred and secular music, including over 230 motets, 2 magnificats, 15 masses, approximately 80 French-texted songs, 8 in Dutch, and 8 textless compositions. He also composed 159 psalms on the Dutch Psalter, the Souterliedekens. His place of birth is unknown but was presumably in present-day Belgium. He was employed at Bruges cathedral in 1544-45, was then at the court of Charles V* until 1549, and in October to December 1550 was employed by the Marian Brotherhood in 's-Hertogenbosch. He seems also to have worked in Ieper, where he died, and he also probably lived in Leiden for a time. His death has been determined by a date of 21 April 1555 for his motet Hic est vere martyr, marked as his "ultimum opus" in a manuscript, and by the dedication by the printer Phalese in his first book of masses in 1556.He may also have left the Souterliedekens unfinished, as the printer Tylman Susato composed ten works in the collection. A deploration on Clemens's death by Jacobus Vaet was published in 1558. The reason for his unusual name remains unclear. Most likely it originated as some kind of joke. Less likely are the traditional reasons that it distinguishes him from the poet Jacobus Papa or Pope Clement VII.

Clemens's musical style for his Latin sacred works is typical of his time: thickly textured works based on fuguelike imitative structures. His secular works are also much like those of his contemporaries, revealing him to be a good and skilled composer. Clemens is best known for the publication in 1556-57 of the Souterliedekens, the first polyphonic (part-song) settings in Dutch of the Psalter, printed in Antwerp by Tylman Susato. These are in three voices on metrical texts presumably by Willem van Zuylen van Nijevelt, originally printed in 1540 by Simon Cock, also in Antwerp. They are composed in a traditional fashion, employing the popular tunes named by Cock in either the tenor (middle) or upper voice, while the other parts are freely composed. The Souterliedekens clearly holds a prime position in the development of a sacred repertory in the vernacular.

W. Elders, "Jacobus Clemens Non Papa," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie, vol. 4, 1980: 476-80.