(b Pinguente, c1495–1500; d Lyons, after 1560). French music printer of Italian birth. He was the second printer to publish music on a large scale in France. The first was Pierre Attaingnant of Paris, who began issuing his music books in 1527–8, using a practical and relatively inexpensive single-impression method which he had just developed. Moderne was one of the first (along with Johann Petreius and Christian Egenolff independently in Nuremberg and Frankfurt) to adapt this new method for his own use. He began printing polyphonic music in 1532 (a book of plainsong masses is dated 1530) and continued to be Attaingnant’s only serious rival in France for 15 years.
From the identification on his early books as ‘Jacobus Modernus de Pinguento’ we may presume that Moderne was born in the village of Pinguente (now Buzet, Croatia) on the Istrian peninsula. Whether he spent some apprentice years in Venice cannot be determined. His name appeared as a bookseller on the tax rolls of Lyons for the first time in 1523 and regularly thereafter until the early 1560s. According to a contract dated 28 May 1562 he rented out a room in his house, but in 1568 his widow is listed in the tax records.
He is identified in the archives and frequently on his title-pages as ‘grand Jacques’, no doubt because of his girth or his height, or both. His social stature must have been substantial as well, since the Lyons records show him to have been a modest landowner and an official in various Lyons activities, as well as a neighbour to some of that city’s most prominent citizens.
Moderne’s publishing activity was by no means restricted to music. He was an active printer of several types of popular books – on religion, home remedies, emblems and palmistry among others – in Latin and in French. Though some undated volumes were undoubtedly printed before, the earliest dated one appeared in 1526. He continued issuing these books throughout his career.
Music is the major part of his production and the part that brought him the greatest renown. Masses, motets, chansons and instrumental music are well represented in his books. After issuing two books of masses in plainchant in 1530, he produced a series of eight polyphonic motet anthologies from 1532 to 1542, four called Motteti del fiore because of the woodcut of a thistle (see illustration). A similar series of 11 (or perhaps more) chanson collections, entitled Le parangon des chansons, was issued between 1538 and 1543. The Parangon des chansons series was printed uniquely and innovatively in ‘table-book’ format, with the tenor and altus voices presented on facing pages inverted above the superius and bassus (a presentation adapted 60 years later by Peter Short and Thomas East for the English ayre). Later several books were devoted to the music of single composers. There was also at least one unsigned collection of some anonymous monophonic noëls and two treatises on music theory reprinted from earlier sources. There is no evidence that Moderne was a musician himself. He is never so described in the contemporary records, nor has any music written by him turned up in manuscripts or printed editions.
Moderne may have been persuaded to try his hand at music printing by the composer Francesco de Layolle, who was the organist at Notre Dame de Confort and who had already published several books of motets with Gueynard and other printers of Florentine origin at Lyons between 1525 and 1528. He acted as editor for Moderne’s first polyphonic publication, Liber decem missarum of 1532, as Moderne acknowledged in the dedication. He probably continued as Moderne’s editor, especially since the greater part of the musical output was prepared for publication before Layolle’s death around 1540. After that the originality of the repertory declined.
Moderne printed about 50 music books, which contain over 800 pieces. More than half are unique to Moderne’s prints. Many of the rest were frequently reprinted later by others but made their first printed appearance here. These books are a particularly important source for the music of Layolle and of Pierre de Villiers, who seems to have lived in Lyons and perhaps also offered musical assistance to Moderne. Besides Layolle and Villiers, Eustorg de Beaulieu, Charles Cordeilles, Henry Fresneau, Gabriel Coste, P. de La Farge and Guillaume de La Moeulle were of local origin or residence. Moderne devoted two publications of masses, motets and Magnificat settings exclusively to Pierre Colin of Autun, while including several other motets and chansons by Colin in his anthologies. But most of the composers best represented in the collection are international figures like Gombert, Willaert, Arcadelt, Lhéritier and Jacquet of Mantua, or members of the Parisian school like Claudin de Sermisy, Maillard, Sandrin, Certon and the ubiquitous Janequin. In contrast to Attaingnant who confined himself mostly to French and Netherlandish composers, Moderne included works by musicians from Italy, Spain and Germany. He devoted entire books to Italian canzonas by Layolle and Matteo Rampollini, to motets by Morales and to lute music by Francescho Bianchini and Giovanni Paolo Paladino. The first part of Musique de joye, reprinted from a Venetian source, contains ricercares by a number of other Italians as well as dances from Attaingnant and other French sources; Morales, Mateo Flecha and Luys de Narváez represented Spain, and Leonhard Paminger and Mathias Eckel, Germany. Moderne was the first to print the lute music of the Hungarian Balínt Bakfark.
Some explanation for the variety in Moderne’s repertory lies in the character of the place where he worked. In the first half of the 16th century Lyons was a cosmopolitan city with large Italian and German colonies, an important centre for the new printing trade and a meeting ground for intellectuals. Its position on the border between France and Savoy and at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers made it a crossroads. Fairs four times a year brought traders from as far away as Lebanon in the east and Portugal to the west. Thus Moderne had access to music of varied origins and a ready market to disseminate his music books throughout Europe.
S.F. Pogue: Jacques Moderne, Lyons Music Printer of the Sixteenth Century (Geneva, 1969)
D. Heartz: Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 144ff
D. Crawford: ‘Reflections on some Masses from the Press of Moderne’, MQ, lviii (1972), 82–91
S.F. Pogue: ‘Further Notes on Jacques Moderne’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance, xxxv (1975), 245–8
S.F. Pogue: ‘A Sixteenth Century Editor at Work: Gardane and Moderne’, JM, i (1982), 217–38
L. Guillo: Les éditions musicales de la Renaissance lyonnaise (Paris, 1991)
F. Dobbins: Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford, 1992)
SAMUEL F. POGUE/FRANK DOBBINS