Coclico, Adrianus Petit

Coclico, Adrianus Petit, Flemish composer and music theorist; b. in Flanders, 1499 or 1500; d. Copenhagen, after Sept. 1562. Although reared as a Catholic, he converted to Protestantism. After being imprisoned on account of his religious convictions, he went to Wittenberg in 1545 to teach music privately. He then lived in Frankfurt an der Oder and in Stettin before matriculating at the Univ. of Königsberg (1547). He subsequently entered the service of the Duke of Prussia. While living apart from his wife and seeking unsuccessfully for a dissolution of his marriage, he became intimate with his housekeeper, with whom he fathered a son in 1550. He deemed it best to go to Nuremberg, where he was active as a teacher. By 1555 he was in Schwerin, but soon went to Wismar as director of the choirboys at the ducal chapel of Mecklenburg. He eventually settled in Copenhagen, where he was a singer and musician at the court of King Christian II and later of Marcellus Amersfortius. His motet collection, Consolationes piae: Musica reservata (Nuremberg, 1552; ed. in Das Erbe Deutscher Musik, first series, XLII, 1958), is of historical interest for the use of “musica reservata” in the title. He also wrote the treatise Compendium musices (Nuremberg, 1552; facsimile ed. by M. Bukofzer, 1954; Eng. tr. by A. Seay, 1973).

Bibliography

M. van Crevel, A.P. C: Leben und Beziehungen eines nach Deutschland emigrierten Josquinschülers (The Hague, 1940); E. Sholund, The Compendium Musices by A.P.C. (diss., Harvard Univ., 1952).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire