Lupi, Johannes [Leleu, Jehan; Leleu, Jennot]

(b c1506; d Cambrai, 20 Dec 1539). Franco-Flemish composer. From 1514 to 1521 he was a choirboy at Notre Dame Cathedral in Cambrai. After attending school in Cambrai he received a fellowship from the cathedral chapter to study at the University of Leuven, where he enrolled in the faculty of philosophy on 28 August 1522. On 18 June 1526 he returned to the cathedral as a parvus vicarius. On 21 March 1527 he succeeded Johannes Remigii (Jean Rémy, dit Descaudin) as master of the choirboys. He was promoted to magnus vicarius on 8 April 1530 and shortly thereafter named sub-deacon. Lupi was repeatedly dismissed from his post, mainly because of his inability to keep discipline among the choirboys; he also had difficulty in balancing the budget. But he was held in such high esteem as a musician that he was always reinstated, upon his promise of emendation. He suffered from a chronic illness that caused him to leave his position from 1535 to 1537 and that was responsible for his early death. He never became a priest; it took the chapter’s special dispensation to fulfil his wish to be buried in the cathedral. Josquin Baston’s déploration, Eheu dolor (F-Pn 1591), mourns the death of Lupi, ‘not a wolf but an innocent lamb’.

In 1542 Attaingnant & Jullet published a book of motets entirely devoted to Lupi, containing 15 four- to eight-part motets. The collection is a retrospective one, containing early and late works, and was edited with exemplary care, particularly with regard to text underlay. The opening motet, Salve celeberrima virgo, is an impressive example of Lupi’s skill in writing eight-part counterpoint.

Lupi was among the foremost composers of his generation. He was gifted with an uncanny ability to weave five and six voices together in faultless imitative counterpoint. His melodies tend to be very melismatic, yet with an unusual sensitivity to text declamation. His works show a fine sense of harmonic planning, with a preference for the Dorian mode. Stylistically, he was closer to the school of Gombert than to the French school. Like Gombert, he preferred a full texture, continuous imitative counterpoint and elided cadences, often with a flattened 7th (for a contrary view, see Urquhart). He did not use canon or cantus firmus and only rarely paraphrased the chant melody.

Lupi wrote only two masses. Missa ‘Philomena praevia’, based on Richafort’s motet, shows an unusual type of parody treatment: the Kyrie is a literal transcription of the prima pars of the motet, and the Gloria and Credo have no more than a few freely written bars, although the sections of the motet are not quoted consecutively. Only the ‘Pleni’, Benedictus and Agnus Dei are entirely Lupi’s own creation. Missa ‘Mijn vriendinne’, called Missa ‘Plus oultre’ in one source, also seems to be a parody mass, but of a different type. It is related to an anonymous Missa ‘Amica mea’ that survives in fragmentary state (NL-L, F).

Lupi’s creative genius is best shown in his motets. An outstanding trait of his works is thematic unity. 13 of his motets are settings of responsories in the form aBcB, but two others also have identical musical endings for the two partes. His themes are related in various ways: by emphasis on certain intervals or notes, by exact repetition, by inversion or by variations in rhythm. Melodic unification also results from Lupi’s handling of the modes; each mode suggested to him a number of melodic shapes appropriate only to that particular one, and thus similarities can be traced between motets written in the same mode. A number of his themes exhibit antecedent–consequent relationships. Lupi paid particular attention to text setting. The text shapes the melodic lines as well as the motet’s whole structure. Each phrase of text is usually stated twice. The first musical phrase in most cases comes to rest on a non-cadential degree, avoiding traditional clausulas and a complete stop; the repetition of the phrase ends with a full cadence on the tonic or dominant, or with an interrupted cadence, depending on the grammatical structure of the text.

Lupi’s chansons range from the serious to the risqué. Vous scavez bien, an early work, begins with a theme very similar to one in Josquin’s Mille regretz and has the same melancholy cast. Au joly bois sur la verdure and Quant j’estoys jeune fillette are light, narrative chansons in the Parisian tradition, with many syllables set to repeated quavers. Chansons such as Reviens vers moy, a lady’s plea to her lover, and its regretful response, Plus revenir, are more characteristic; nearly all phrases are set in close imitation, with little chordal motion. Stylistically, Lupi was just outside the Parisian school. His chansons are more polyphonic than those of Claudin de Sermisy; often they have long melismas. He liked to repeat the first phrases, at times using the opening material in the final phrase.

Lupi’s music was generally not confused with that of Lupus and Lupus Hellinck in contemporary sources. An exception is the motet Ergone conticuit, a setting of Erasmus’s lament on the death of Ockeghem, attributed to ‘Jo. Lupi’ in RISM 1547⁵. Chronological and stylistic considerations suggest that this is more likely to be the work of Lupus. There were two other musicians named Johannes Lupi. One was an organist who in 1502 left his post at the collegiate church of Ste Gertrude in Nivelles. The other, who probably died in about 1548, was a chaplain and singer at the church of Our Lady in Antwerp. (On these two musicians, see Albrecht.) Neither is known to have been a composer.

WORKS

Edition:Johannis Lupi Opera omnia, ed. B.J. Blackburn, CMM, lxxxiv/1–3 (1980–89) [B i–iii]

only principal sources given

masses

motets

chansons

all edited in B iii

doubtful works

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (L. Finscher)

H. Albrecht: ‘Lupus Hellinck und Johannes Lupi’, AcM, vi (1934), 54–65

J. Delporte: ‘Jean Leleu (dit Lupus ou Lupi: 1506–1539)’, Musique et liturgie, xxii (1938–9), 61–6, 81–5, 101–5

H. Boone: ‘Un musicien de l’école cambrésienne du XVIe siècle, Jean Leleu’, Mémoires de la Société d’émulation de Cambrai, lxxxvii (1939), 99–117

C. van den Borren: Geschiedenis van de muziek in de Nederlanden, i (Antwerp, 1948), 297ff

B.J. Blackburn: The Lupus Problem (diss., U. of Chicago, 1970)

B.J. Blackburn: ‘Johannes Lupi and Lupus Hellinck: a Double Portrait’, MQ, lix (1973), 547–83

C. Wright and R. Ford: ‘A French Polyphonic Hymnal of the 16th Century: Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 17’, Essays on Music for Charles Warren Fox, ed. J.C. Graue (Rochester, 1979), 145–63

P. Urquhart: ‘Cross-Relations by Franco-Flemish Composers after Josquin’, TVNM, xliii (1993), 3–41

BONNIE J. BLACKBURN