Biography
Goudimel enrolled as a student at the University of Paris—where he most certainly never served as Palestrina’s teacher—and his chansons began reaching print by 1549 while he remained a pupil there. He later worked as a proofreader for du Chemin’s publishing house, an association that brought him into contact with Ronsard and led to his assisting with editions of that poet’s verse. From roughly 1557 he made his home in Metz and stayed in the city until his death in the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Goudimel earned recognition chiefly for his psalm settings, which adopt three distinct compositional approaches. The initial manner employs a free motet texture in which the melodic material is shared evenly among all voices. The second manner assigns the principal melody to the superius while the remaining parts unfold in counterpoint. In the third manner the melody resides in the tenor beneath a texture dominated by horizontal harmonies. His masses and Magnificat settings proved terribly concise when measured against other works in those genres.