Hildegard And Josquin’s Prosperous Lives

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Music Appreciation S. Stroud September 28, 2010 Hildegard and Josquin’s Prosperous Lives During the Medieval times, life was hard and Hildegard of Bingen may have lived a hard life, but I was very prosperous and knowledgeable life. Hildegard was the tenth child in her family and her parents believed that the tenth child was a gift from god and should be donated back to the church. So Hildegard lived with the Benedictine nuns. “She is known for being one of the most remarkable contributors to the repertoire of the Gregorian chant.” (Wright) Hildegard was a very enlighten women, not only did she write beautiful chants, but she also started her own Covent by the town of Bingen, Germany, on the Rhine River (Wright). Hildegard was educated by the Benedictine nuns. Not only did Hildegard write music, she wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature illuminations (Lerman). Oddly, then, the first Renaissance man” was really Hildegard because of her importance to music. The music she wrote possess many qualities of typical chants, but it sets a starkly vivid text which Hildegard created herself (Wright). One of her most famous songs is, O Greenest Branch, which depicts the famous Virgin Mary (Wright). This song was sung at Catholic masses; more exactly it is a Sequentia, a sixth musical portion of the Mass. Her song was mostly sung by other nuns and monks, so her songs had to be simple. Josquin Desprez was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance. Josquin was born in northern France, but was attracted to Italy to pursue professional achievement (Wright). He was a very famous musician because he worked for numerous Dukes and eventually the Pope in the Sistine Chapel in Rome (McComb). During the Renaissance time people began to
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