1563–1633 · France · Baroque
Jean Titelouze (c. 1563 – 24 October 1633) was a French organist, composer and poet who served for decades as organist of Rouen Cathedral. His hymn and Magnificat settings are the earliest published organ collections in France, and Titelouze himself is regarded as the founder of the French organ school. He tried to write pieces that were easy to play — a good place to start getting to know organ music.
The Titelouze family is documented in Saint-Omer from the late fifteenth century. Jean Titelouze, a composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, was born in that town around 1563; his exact date of birth is unknown. His father and uncle were town musicians, and he most likely learned music within his family — no precise details of his education have survived. He entered the priesthood and by 1585 was serving as organist of Saint-Omer Cathedral. That same year he moved to Rouen.
It was once suggested that the surname Titelouze had an English or Irish origin, derived from “Title-House”, but this theory has since been disproved: the name is now linked instead to “de Toulouse”.
In Rouen, Titelouze began serving as organist of the church of Saint-Jean in 1585, earning 60 livres tournois a year; by 1589 his pay had risen to 70 livres. From 1588 he also carried out the duties of organist at the cathedral, and in 1589 Jaspar Petit took his place at Saint-Jean.
In 1588, after the death of the organist François Josseline, Titelouze took his place as organist of Rouen's Notre-Dame Cathedral. According to the chapter's records, his salary in that post rose gradually, from 90 livres in 1590 to the 120 livres he received from 1599 onward.
He was also called on to play on special occasions: for a fee of 15 sols 6 deniers, for instance, he played at the church of Saint-Étienne-la-Grande-Église for the feast of Saint Étienne, and in 1603, from 29 September to 1 November, he played the organ of the church of Saint-Michel in Rouen for a fee of 9 livres tournois. He kept in touch with Saint-Jean as well: in 1600 he brought sheet music bought in Paris there, and in 1603 he checked repairs made to its organ.
In 1604 the Rouen finance bureau registered the letters of French naturalization that had actually been granted to Titelouze back in 1595: at the time of his birth, Saint-Omer had been part of the Spanish Netherlands. His work was not confined to Rouen — he also acted as an organ consultant, taking part in the installation and repair of instruments in various towns.
In 1600, Titelouze arranged for the Franco-Flemish organ builder Crespin Carlier, already well known in the field, to come to Rouen and rework the cathedral's organ. Contemporaries judged the result the finest instrument in France; this organ, together with Carlier's later projects around the country, helped establish what became the classical French organ. The two continued to work together occasionally on other instruments.
In 1610 Titelouze became a canon of Rouen Cathedral: on 2 April he was granted the prebend of Baillolet, which brought him 107 livres 4 sols in 1611. That same year, on 29 June, he also received the parish of Londinières, left vacant by the death of Louis Duval. As a canon he sometimes represented the chapter — at the provincial Estates of 1617, for instance.
Titelouze had a reputation as an expert in organ building. In 1588 he joined other assessors in examining the organ of the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Ronde in Rouen, checking the work of the builder Nicolas Barbier. In 1597 he drew up a repair estimate for the organ of the church of Saint-Michel in Rouen and later verified the completed work, and in 1602 he himself chose Crespin Carlier to repair that organ, whose design also added a cornet stop.
His opinion was sought beyond Rouen as well — as far afield as Amiens, Poitiers and the basilica of Saint-Denis. In January 1616, when Toussaint Le Febvre, organist of the church of Saint-Maclou in Rouen, died, Titelouze recommended Jacques Le Febvre to succeed him.
Titelouze also wrote poetry and twice won prizes at the poetry contests of Rouen's Académie des Palinods, in 1613 and 1630. He is known to have been in contact with Norman poets, in particular the literary circle of the "Illustres Bergers", led by Louis Mauduit, son of Jacques Mauduit.
Titelouze was a friend of Marin Mersenne — a leading French music theorist, mathematician, philosopher and theologian. Their surviving correspondence, seven letters dated 1622–1633, touched on modes, intervals, temperament, acoustics and notation; Titelouze also advised Mersenne on his treatise L'Harmonie Universelle, published in 1634–1637. No theoretical writings of his own, however, are known to survive.
In his letters to Mersenne, Titelouze also mentioned occasional bouts of illness and trips to Paris — in November 1624, December 1625 (probably in connection with preparing the Le Magnificat collection) and January 1630; Louis Mauduit sometimes acted as a go-between for the correspondence between Rouen and Paris. In one letter Titelouze said he had a few more organ pieces that might see print if the printer Ballard was willing to take them up after other work, including that of Molinié.
In 1623 Titelouze published Hymnes de l'Eglise, organ settings of various plainchant hymns intended for use during the liturgy; a second edition of the collection followed the very next year, 1624. That same year, 1623, because of health problems, he partly withdrew from his duties as organist, though he kept the post until the end of his life. In 1626 he brought out a second organ collection, Le Magnificat, containing eight settings of the Magnificat.
Jean Titelouze died in Rouen on 24 October 1633 and was buried in Rouen Cathedral. The tightly-woven polyphonic writing typical of his music fell out of use in French organ composition before long, yet its influence lingered on for a while after his death.
Only two collections of organ pieces survive from Titelouze — Hymnes de l'Eglise and Le Magnificat — and on their strength he is regarded as the founder of the French organ school. His style still grew fully out of the Renaissance choral tradition and stands clearly apart from the distinctly French organ writing that took shape after him, in the mid-seventeenth century. Each piece is built either on a sustained chant melody held in long notes in one voice — usually the bass — with the other voices providing counterpoint, or after the pattern of the sixteenth-century motet, where the melody passes from voice to voice, with or without imitation between entries. At the same time, Titelouze deliberately avoided the colourful solo stops already found on French organs of his day: judging by the prefaces to both collections, he cared about making the pieces easy to play; in the preface to Hymnes he even suggested that a player simplify the pieces if they proved too difficult.
His second collection, Le Magnificat, gathers eight settings, one for each of the eight church modes; each one supplies seven versets covering the odd-numbered verses of the Magnificat, and the verse Deposuit potentes comes with two alternatives. Titelouze notes in his preface that this arrangement means the same versets can serve for the Benedictus too. Nearly every verset is written as a fugue, several of the subjects come straight from the chant melody, double fugues and inversions appear throughout, and the writing stays in four voices from start to finish. Musically this book reaches further than the earlier Hymnes.
The site offers 23 of Titelouze's organ pieces — versets from his hymn settings, among them "Ave Maris Stella", "Veni Creator", "Urbs Jerusalem", "Ad Cœnam" and "Pange Lingua"; none from the Le Magnificat collection are on the site yet. One piece is at elementary level, nine at intermediate level, and thirteen at upper intermediate level. A good place to start is with the simpler versets of "Ave Maris Stella" and "Veni Creator".