Biography
(d Westminster, 3 May 1459-22 May 1460). English composer. A member of the London Guild of Parish Clerks, he was towards the end of his life verger at St Stephen's, Westminster. He may have been the John Boddenham born in Oxford in 1422 and a scholar and chorister of Winchester College and later a scholar and fellow of New College, Oxford. His two mass cycles are unusually free in form, one of them parodying Binchois ballade Dueil angoisseux, and his three motets are intricate pieces of great rhythmical complexity. Eight songs widely distributed in MS sources, often with alternative texts in different languages, are probably his, though some are also ascribed to other composers (e.g. the song O rosa bella, also ascribed to Dunstable). The dissemination of his music suggests he was a composer of stature.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.