Jacques Buus
Jacques Buus (also Jakob Buus, Jachet de Buus) (c. 1500late August, 1565) was a Franco-Flemish composer and organist of the Renaissance, and an early member of the Venetian School. He was one of the earliest composers of the ricercar, the predecessor to the fugue, and he was also a skilled composer of chansons.
Jacques Buus
- Born
- 1500 · Ghent.
- Died
- 1565 · Vienna.
- Occupation
- organist · composer
- Fields
- organ performance · music composing · composed musical work · music composition
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q1999938 · wikipedia · Jacques Buus
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
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Life
Life
Buus was probably born in Ghent around 1500, though details of his early life, as is the case with most Renaissance composers, are scanty. Possibly he either studied or had his early career in France, and he maintained some connections there throughout his life. In 1538, he published his first chansons, in Lyon by the printer Jacques Moderne. Three years later, he went to Venice and auditioned for the post of second organist at St. Mark's, winning the job and working alongside the existing organist, Giovanni Armonio. This was during the tenure of Adrian Willaert, who built the musical forces at St. Mark's into one of the most impressive in Europe, second only in quality to the papal chapel in Rome. Buus stayed at St. Mark's until 1550, when he departed for France, ostensibly because he was unable to pay his debts; however it has been suggested that he left because he had become a Protestant. In 1543, he had dedicated a volume of chansons to the Calvinist Duchess of Ferrara and, in 1550, he sent a book of Protestant chansons spirituelles to the Protestant Archduke Ferdinand II in Vienna. Late in 1550, he went to Vienna to work at the Habsburg court and he remained there for the rest of his life, ignoring entreaties from Venice to return.
Documentary record
Jacques Buus (1500 – 1565) was a composer. The birth of Jacques Buus is recorded in 1500 in Ghent, Belgium, and the death in 1565 in Vienna, Austria.
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Ghent.
Birth place
Vienna.
Death place
Music and influence
Buus was influential in the development of the instrumental ricercar; he wrote the longest ever composed, one of which has no less than 98 points of imitation. Another has 358 breves (equivalent to 716 bars of 4/4; at the typical tactus of the time60 to 80 minims, i.e. half-notes, to the minutethe piece would take 15–20 minutes to play). They are elaborately contrapuntal, making use of all the standard devices of Franco-Flemish polyphony, including augmentation, diminution, inversion, and so forth. He also wrote sacred vocal music, including motets and chansons spirituelles, a specifically Protestant form, although these were not for performance in Catholic Venice. The motets are similar in style to those of Nicolas Gombert, with dense textures, pervasive imitation, and free treatment of the source material.
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q1999938: Jacques Buus
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
reference work
- “Jacques Buus”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
References and further reading
References and further reading
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Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Jacques Buus, revision 1217954083 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), Personenteil Band 3, Bärenreiter und Metzler, Kassel und Basel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1112-8
- 2.Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (Hrsg.): Das große Lexikon der Musik. Band 1: A – Byzantinischer Gesang. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau u. a. 1978, ISBN 3-451-18051-0.
References
Citations
References
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Institutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q1999938: Jacques BuusWikimedia Foundation
Institutional witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 19 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Music memorabilia
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