George de La Hele
Biography
George de La Hèle (also Georges, Helle, Hele) (1547 – August 27, 1586) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, mainly active in the Habsburg chapels of Spain and the Low Countries. Among his surviving music is a book of eight masses, some for as many as eight voices. While he was a prolific composer during his time in Spain, much of his music was destroyed in 1734 in the burning of the chapel library in Madrid
La Hèle's masses, his most considerable surviving compositions, all use the parody technique, and each announce the polyphonic model on which they are based in the table of contents of the book. The models include works by Josquin, Cipriano de Rore, Thomas Crecquillon, and Lassus. All of the sources are motets; unlike many composers of parody masses, he avoided secular songs as sources.[3]
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La Hèle was evidently highly regarded, certainly by Philip II, and the publication of his masses was an unusually opulent one – but Plantin's business sense was sufficient to require La Hèle himself to buy forty copies of his own book to help with the cost of printing (although at a discount: 16 florins instead of the usual price of 18).[3] The work sold better than expected, and as a result many copies of this particular publication survive. Most of La Hèle's other music existed in manuscript copies kept in the library of the Palacio Real, but when the entire complex was destroyed by fire on Christmas Eve, 1734, it was all lost. Some of the lost music is known from an inventory of 1585, and includes motets, Passion settings, mass sections, and Lamentations.[1]
His entire surviving output – ten compositions – has been published in series 56 of Corpus mensurabilis musicae (two volumes).
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.