O

OCKEGHEM, JOHANNES

(ca. 1420–1497)
Franco-Flemish composer, active mainly in France.
According to recently discovered documents, he was
born in Saint-Ghislain, a village near Mons in the Bel-
gian province of Hainaut. His career is fi rst traced in
Antwerp, where he was a singer at the church of Notre-
Dame in 1443/44. From 1446 to 1448, he was singer in
the chapel of Charles I, duke of Bourbon, at Moulins.
He became a member of the French royal chapel under
Charles VII ca. 1450 and continued to serve that institu-
tion under Louis XI and Charles VIII. Named as fi rst
chaplain in 1454, he was subsequently cited as master
of the chapel (1464) and counselor to the king (1477).
In 1459, Charles VII, who was hereditary abbot of Saint-
Martin of Tours, appointed Ockeghem to the important
post of treasurer of Saint-Martin. Sometime before 1472,
possibly in 1464, he was ordained a priest at Cambrai.
The only journey he is known to have undertaken outside
France and the Low Countries is one to Spain in 1470.
In 1484, he revisited his native country when he and
other members of the royal chapel traveled to Damme
and Bruges in Flanders. He eventually retired to Tours,
where he died on February 6, 1497.
Among his pupils may have been Antoine Busnoys,
a cleric at Saint-Martin of Tours in 1465 and subse-
quently singer in the chapel of Charles the Bold, duke of
Burgundy. Busnoys honored Ockeghem in his motet In
hydraulis, calling him the “true image of Orpheus.” At
Cambrai, Ockeghem met Guillaume Dufay, his greatest
musical contemporary, who in 1464 entertained him at
his house. The Flemish music theorist Johannes Tincto-
ris dedicated his treatise on the modes (1476) jointly to
Ockeghem and Busnoys, and in his treatises on propor-
tions and counterpoint he cited Ockeghem as “the most
excellent of all the composers I have ever heard.” In his
last treatise, De inventione et usu musicae (ca. 1481),

Tinctoris describes him not only as a distinguished com-

poser but as the fi nest bass singer known to him.

Ockeghem’s personal appearance and manner, as

well as his musicianship, were often praised by his

contemporaries. Guillaume Crétin wrote a Déploration

surle trespas de feu Okergan, praising his “subtlety” and

calling on his mourning colleagues, led by Dufay and

Busnoys, to sing his music, including his “exquisite and

most perfect Requiem Mass.” The poet Jean Molinet

also wrote a déploration on his death, which was set

to music by Josquin des Prez, the great master of the

next generation of French composers. An epitaphium

for Ockeghem by Erasmus of Rotterdam was set by

Johannes Lupi in the 16th century.

Ockeghem composed in all genres, but his most

important works are his fourteen Masses. A single

Credo and only fi ve motets by him are known, but they

are each highly individual works. Twenty-two secular

songs, all but one in French, come down to us. The

exception is a Spanish song, probably a memento of

his visit to Spain.

In his time and throughout subsequent centuries,

Ockeghem was renowned for his contrapuntal skill,

especially in canonic writing. His masterpiece in this

technique is his Missa prolationum, consisting almost

entirely of double canons at all intervals within the

octave, and in four different “prolations” (meters)

simultaneously. Almost legendary in his time was a

thirty-six-voice canon mentioned by Crétin and oth-

ers, the identity of which remains controversial. His

Requiem Mass, which may have been written on the

death of Charles VII (1461), is the earliest surviving

example of its kind.

The most distinctive features of Ockeghem’s mu-

sic are its varied, unpredictable rhythms and long-

breathed, overlapping phrases. Its texture of equally

important though highly independent melodic lines