Claude Goudimel

Claude Goudimel was born in Besançon, modern-day France, which at that time was a French-speaking imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire.

The death of Goudimel inspired among the versifiers of this time a respectable number of epitaphs, sonnets and other famous pieces in French, Latin and Greek.

In one of his four complete editions he puts - unlike other settings at the time - the melody in the topmost voice, the method which has prevailed in hymnody to the present day.

It was, therefore, after his departure from Paris that the celebrities Adrien le Roy and Robert Ballard published his masses in 1558; and it was also during his time in Metz that Goudimel began to concentrate all of his artistic ability in the various musical interpretations of the French translation of the psalms by Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze.

His Psalm settings, however, are more polyphonic, characteristic of the moderate contrapuntal style exemplified by the chansons of Jacques Arcadelt, an approximate contemporary.