Jean Richafort

Whether, as the poet Ronsard suggested, Jean Richafort was a pupil of Josquin des Prez is debatable. But Richafort certainly referenced the great man’s music and composed an imposing monument to him in a richly sonorous Requiem, published in 1532. A dark-hued flow of expansive polyphony, its burnished patina is ambushed now and then by arresting dissonances—and, like the Missa Praeter rerum seriem and several motets, is built on material drawn from Josquin. Richafort was likely born around 1480 in Hainant, a territory bordering present-day France and Belgium, and those two countries would anchor a career that ended with an ecclesiastical appointment in Bruges, where Richafort died some time after 1547. Sacred works dominate an output that exemplifies the High Renaissance Franco-Flemish school at its best, and he was evidently well enough regarded for a substantial collection of his motets to be published posthumously. The saucily lighthearted drinking song “Tru tru trut avant” raises a glass to Richafort’s more worldly side.