Goudimel, Claude, (also rendered as Gaudimel, Gaudiomel, Godimel, Gondimel, Goudmel, Gudmel, etc.)

Goudimel, Claude, (also rendered as Gaudimel, Gaudiomel, Godimel, Gondimel, Goudmel, Gudmel, etc.), celebrated French composer and music theorist; b. Besançon, c. 1510; d. (killed in the St. Bartholomew massacre) Lyons, Aug. 27, 1572. In 1549 Goudimel studied at the Univ. of Paris. He publ. a book of chansons as a joint publisher with Du Chemin. He lived in Metz between 1557 and 1568, where he became a Huguenot. In 1568 he returned to Besancon, then lived in Lyons, where he perished. Most of his music was publ. by Du Chemin in Paris. Other contemporary publishers were Adrien Le Roy and Robert Ballard, who publ. his complete Huguenot psalter in 1564 under the title Les CL Pseaumes de David, nouvellement mis en musique á quatre parties; it was publ. in Geneva in 1565 as Les Pseaumes mis en rime françoise par Clément Marot et Th. de Béze, mis en musique á 4 parties; it was reprinted in a facsimile ed. in Kassel, 1935. Goudimel also composed 5 masses, 1 publ. by Du Chemin (1554) and 4 by Le Roy and Ballard (1558), together with other sacred music. Two 4-part motets were included in T. Susato’s Ecclesiasticarum cantionum (Antwerp, 1553-55). Publication of the Complete Works, under the direction of L. Dittmer and P. Pidoux (Inst. of Medieval Music), began in 1967 and concluded in 1983.

Bibliography

I G. Becker, Goudimel et son oeuvre (1885); M. Brenet, Claude Goudimel, Essai bio-bibliographique (Besangon, 1898).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire