Pycard
Life
Floreat: c. 1410
Biography by Margaret Bent
English composer. The lack of an initial for the forename renders identification uncertain, though a possible candidate is a Thomas Pycharde who witnessed a charter together with Thomas Damett, probably the composer, in 1420. One Jehan Pycard alias Vaux was recruited for the chapel of John of Gaunt in 1390/91 and appears to have served until the late 1390s, as he was noted as a principal singing-man in 1392/ in 3 and 1397/ in 8. This may or may not have been the John Vaux resident in the Close of Lincoln Cathedral in 1382 and 1394.
After Leonel Power, he is the most fully represented composer in the original layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, and the only English composer in that layer other than Leonel to be ascribed a work other than a concordance outside this source. He is remarkable for the ingenuity and resource of his compositional techniques and has many distinctive features of style. Of his eight surviving works at least four are canons, one of them a double canon. Four canons are ascribed to him in Old Hall, one more to Byttering, and the two remaining canonic works in this source (both Credos) might well be by Pycard. Anselm Hughes first suggested that he might have written the Credo Old Hall no.75, a triple mensuration canon and proportional exercise of truly doctoral complexity, which survives anonymously. The triple canon no.71, copied anonymously, is consistent with the style of Pycard’s other canons. His authorship may also be suspected in the case of some canonic compositions with English features preserved in continental manuscripts. Harrison was the first scholar to publish a solution to the Sanctus, no.123, in which the plainchant itself is presented in canon. If the canon is two in one, complete consonance results. If a third canonic part is added, as Harrison recommended, this consonance is undermined, and is not much worsened by the addition of further canonic derivations. It is no coincidence that these supernumerary parts fit as well as they do, since the harmonic framework is static and repetitive, and the plainchant has been rhythmicized to fit it. The thin texture of a canon two in one with tenor cannot stand alone, but the missing parts (probably a contratenor and an upper part, which might have been pseudo-canonic) must have been written on the facing page which is now lost. The remaining canons by Pycard are indicated either by an explicit Latin directive or simply by a double row of text underlay requiring telescoped performance. No.26 is unusual in applying canon for part of the composition only, and at the interval of a 4th. The Stratford Credo, GB-STb 1744, starts with two repeated notes followed by a rest: two of Pycard’s Old Hall Glorias open with a descending 5th, each note of which is repeated. It has several melodic and rhythmic features consistent with Pycard’s style, but the two surviving parts are not sufficiently legible to determine whether this piece too was canonic, though canon can be made to work for short sections, and the recurrent harmonic pattern of the tenor commends the possibility.
None of Pycard’s mass sections can be conclusively related to each other, though technical and stylistic relationships are often evident. (Andrew Hughes, for example, has discussed those of nos.26 and 76.) All Pycard’s known works open in C or C-dot time, often using exceptionally short note values and placing single text syllables on abnormally short notes. His use of musica ficta, explicit and implicit, is very bold, often arising from the canonic writing. All the works that survive intact are in four or five parts, two of them having a solus tenor as an alternative to two of the lower parts. Of the non-canonic pieces only one, no.28, is isorhythmic, and it sets up some complex cross-rhythms between lower and upper parts. The Credo, no.76, uses a unique device, the placing of subsidiary red clefs to indicate ‘mental transposition’ of the middle section in a manner related to the technique of sights. Imitation is present in the remaining non-canonic piece, no.78, with some striking involvement of all four parts.
On the Stratford leaf, in the space between discantus and tenor parts, appears the rebus ‘long joy long dolour’ (with the note form of the long in place of the word ‘long’ in each case) which calls to mind the appearance of ‘long joy bref langour’ in the English source of the anonymous and rather later Mass Quem malignus spiritus.
View the Wikipedia article on Pycard.
List of choral works
Other works not listed above (See Template:CheckMissing for possible reasons and solutions)
Click here to search for this composer on CPDL
Publications
External websites:
- [<url> Description]