Jean-Baptiste Loeillet (of Ghent)

It’s been an extremely trial for historians to dig through the many Jean Baptiste Loeillets that music background provides; there have been at least four past due seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century composers who either had been christened with some type of the name, or whose music is usually to be found published beneath the name. Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant, created in Ghent, in July 1688, was the cousin from the eight-years-older composer known basically as Jean Baptiste Loeillet (who, gladly plenty of for musicologists, shifted to London and informally transformed his name to John, therefore simplifying identification a little); as composers, both were frequently recognised incorrectly as one another throughout their lifetimes, therefore today we can not be completely sure which ones composed which items — it really is, regrettably, likely that web publishers released music by both beneath the name “Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant” — nonetheless it appears safe to state that of both, the one given birth to in 1688 (the “appropriate” Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant) was the much less prolific and in a particular sense the much less significant composer. Loeillet de Gant (or de Gand) was created right into a long-established category of Flemish music artists: he was the child of the Pierre Loeillet, who was simply subsequently fathered by Jean Baptiste Francois Loeillet, who was simply not actually a specialist musician but whose sibling was. Very little is known for several about the life span and profession of De Gant. He was raised in Ghent but sooner or later relocated to France to provide the Archbishop of Lyons there, and most likely died in the first 1720s. Loeillet de Gant could be summed up pretty easily like a composer: he required the reigning Italianate design of chamber music, added a wholesome dosage of French ornaments to it, and did his better to develop himself right into a good craftsman. His catalog isn’t weighty — several dozen sonatas and trio sonatas for winds or violin and basso continuo, plus some sonatas (duets) for just two flutes unaccompanied — but he imbued the music he had written using a depth of contrapuntal curiosity, a relative stability worth focusing on between all of the voices and parts, that’s relatively uncommon for music of his time and that means it is valuable regardless of its mass (or absence thereof).