Pierre de La Rue and Musical Life at the Habsburg-Burgundian Court

For twenty-four or more years composer Pierre de la Rue (d. 1518) provided music for one of the leading musical institutions of his day, the grande chapelle of the Habsburg-Burgundian court. Serving successive rulers Maximilian I, Philip the Fair, Juana of Castile, Marguerite of Austria, and the future Charles V, La Rue surpassed a dozen composer colleagues in his creation of polyphony to meet the needs of the court and its extravagant liturgy. This study, the first ever in English, traces La Rue’s life and career, explores aspects of his compositional output, and recounts the reawakening of modern scholarship to his unique contributions.

Honey Meconi is Director of Medieval Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of the University of Pensylvania and Music Fellow of Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy. Dr Meconi’s shorter writings have been published widely including with the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Journal of Musicology, Early Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, and numerous others. She is currently editing Early Musical Borrowing for Garland in their series ＂Criticism and Analysis of Early Music＂.