Johannes Lupi

A composer of masses and motets Lupi was gifted in the latter genre and rather nonenigmatic in the former. He was a choirboy at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Cambrai and attended the University of Louvain. When he returned to the Cathedral in Cambrai he was a vicar but did not rise to the status of a priest. He was often relieved of his post as master of the boys choir because he could not keep them disciplined and also had a problem balancing his budget. His death came early from a chronic illness but his skill in the composition of motets continues in his works. Lupi composed masses but these works demonstrated a great deal of imitation with little if any indication of his own creative abilities. A devotion to his work was undertaken by Attaingnant and Jullet who compiled a book of fifteen motets in Lupi's honor. The first motet in the volume was "Salve celeberrima virgo" which included Lupi's unique ability to sustain an eight-part counterpoint. The motets composed by Lupi contain a themaic unity with responsories arranged in an aBcB structure. Lupi arranged his music with a number of different relational concepts: similar interval patterns, exact repitition, inversions, modes, and variations in rhythms. Generally Lupi's music was exceptional in his meld of five to six voice counterpoints, perfected imitation, and melismatic phrases. (These may have been over-done if not for the fact that Lupi was able to musically describe the emotion of the textual data.) Modal much of the time, Lupi preferred the Dorian mode and used the modes to further unify his composiions. ~ Keith Johnson