CORDIER, BAUDE
(d. 1397/98). Composer and harp player, now believed to be identifiable with Baude
Fresnel of Reims, harpist and valet de chambre to the court of Burgundy from 1384 until
his death in 1397/98. Of his music, eight songs survive only in sources from the second
quarter of the 15th century; but one Gloria appears in the 14th-century Apt manuscript
and two unusually mannerist songs—Tout par compas, written in the shape of a circle,
and Belle bonne sage, written in the shape of a heart—appear in the Chantilly manuscript
(Musée Condé 564, ca. 1400).
David Fallows
Reaney, Gilbert, ed. Early Fifteenth-Century Music. Vol. 1. N.p.: American Institute of
Musicology, 1955.
Wright, Craig. Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419. Henryville: Institute of Mediaeval
Music, 1979.
CORMONT
. Name of two Gothic architects, Thomas and Renaud. The inscription in the Amiens
cathedral labyrinth related that Thomas de Cormont succeeded the first master mason,
Robert de Luzarches, who began construction of the Gothic edifice in 1220. In turn,
Thomas was followed by his son, Renaud, who brought the cathedral to completion and
placed the labyrinth plaque in 1288.
Because Thomas de Cormont appears to have followed the plans and retained the
forms of Robert de Luzarches, a precise determination of the work of these two Amiens
masters remains elusive. Thomas is most frequently attributed with the construction of
the ambulatory chapels, sections of the transepts, and west façade in the later 1230s and
early 1240s. Numerous similarities in structure, decoration, and tracery patterns led
Robert Branner to propose Thomas as the designer of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris,
erected 1241–48.
During a long career between 1245/50 and 1288, Renaud de Cormont built the upper
levels of the Amiens choir according to a set of radically different architectural premises.
Instead of his predecessors’ clear articulation of the elevation’s components, Renaud
blurred the distinction between stories by setting the same number of units in the
triforium and clerestory and by glazing the triforium. His highly decorative vocabulary,
seen in the pierced gables of the choir clerestory, the openwork tracery of the flying
buttresses, the gablelike moldings that crown the choir triforium openings, and the star
vault of the crossing, imparts a sense of metallic fantasy to his architecture. However,
Renaud’s daring reduction of the mass of the supporting masonry armature and
dissolution of the wall into expansive glazed surfaces led to problems of stability that
plagued the Amiens chevet for the next three centuries.
Michael T.Davis
The Encyclopedia 499