Florence, Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V. A contextual study of the motet ‘Dominator caelorum’ by Jean Conseil / Costanzo Festa (?)

Abstract

Costanzo Festa (ca. 1490–1545) and Jean Conseil (ca. 1498–1534) spent most of their life in the papal chapel and composed motets based on the same texts: 'Deus venerunt gentes’, probably written in response tothe sack of Rome in 1527, as well as 'Lumen ad revelationum / Nunc Dimittis’. The five-voice motet 'Dominator caelorum’ is ascribed both to Festa and to Conseil. Thus if 'Ecce advenit dominator’ was really composed by Costanzo Festa, a papal composer, and performed at the meeting between Charles V and Clement VII in Bologna, as Klaus Pietschmann persuasively demonstrates, could not 'Dominator caelorum’ have been Conseil’s small musical contribution to this event? If so, it may have been Conseil who composed 'Dominator caelorum’ to embellish the Bologna meeting as Festa did by composing 'Ecce advenit dominator’.

Keywords

• Constanzo Festa
• Jean Conseil
• motet 'Dominator caelorum'
• Bologna
• Florence
• Pope Clement VII