Goudimel, Claude 01/01/1506 - 08/24/1572

Charles Goudimel (1506-1572) was a French composer who lived in Paris, Metz, Besançon and Lyon. He was probably a student of the Netherlands composer Josquin Desprez. Around 1540 he founded a music school in Rome, which produced, among others, Giovanni Animuccia und Giovanni Maria Nanino, as well as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. He was a Huguenot (French Protestant) and died a victim of the St. Bartholomew's night persecution of Protestants.



In 1565 Goudimel published a setting of the so-called Geneva Psalter, a metric translation of the Psalms of Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze. The psalter appeared eight years later with a German text by Ambrosius Lobwasser in Leipzig and was received as well in Germany as in France. From the foreword to this work may be gathered that the melodies do not come from Goudimel himself, but were rather taken over by him and newly set.



In addition to the psalm settings he published masses, motets and settings of Horation Odes and chansons, of which a part appeared along with similar works of Orlando di Lasso in a collection published in 1574 in Lyon.