Leonel Power

Biographical details for previous historical figures could be maddeningly elusive. Leonel Power, an British musician who was simply, with John Dunstaple, probably seminal for the advancement of all Western european classical music, resided a lifestyle many information on which stay shrouded in the mists of your time. Power’s biographers can only just think at his delivery date based on the design of his music, and will only small it right down to the 15-calendar year period 1370-1385. (One previously historian had suggested a birth a long time before that, using a birthplace in Ireland’s Waterford State, but was probably wrong.) The initial documentary record of his lifestyle originates from 1419, when Power was signed up as a respected chaplain in the retinue of Thomas, Duke of Clarence (youthful brother of Ruler Henry V). In 1423 he is at Canterbury, getting into the fraternity of Christ Chapel; by 1439 at the most recent he was providing that chapel as choirmaster. It really is otherwise hard to pinpoint his actions from the loss of life of his patron the Duke in fight (1421), and Power’s existence in the services of John, Duke of Bedford from 1439-1444; it really is feasible for he immediately relocated to Bedford’s chapel. An excellent friend of Power’s also evidently offered Clarence with him, was nephew to Bedford’s chamberlain, and may have provided Power a conduit in the older boy’s network for such a fresh job. His loss of life day of June 6, 1445, in Canterbury is definitely well-attested. Power resided and worked well in a period of great cross-fertilization and switch in Western music. As the past due fourteenth century have been a period where French music crossed the route to Britain, in the 1st few decades from the fifteenth, British music and music artists were influential within the Continent. Many British musicians are recognized to have already been present among the worldwide convention from the Council of Constance, aswell as traveling using their British patrons on promotions such as for example Harfleur and Agincourt (or in occupied France later on). And Leonel Power was probably one of the most prominent included in this. The key manuscript referred to as “Aged Hall” was most likely put together for the chapel from the Duke of Clarence, but was later on from the royal chapels of both Henry V and Henry VI (Henry V made up a bit of music within it). Power published possibly 3 x as very much music as any additional known composer in Aged Hall, and his theoretical treatise “over the gamme [gamut, or musical range]” was also well-known.