MUSIC PATRONAGE AND THE RISE OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE IN THE LOW COUNTRIES

Abstract

The Netherlands in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was an ur ban culture, in which artistic activities were more closely linked to the Flemish and Brabantine towns than to the Burgundian-Hapsburg court, variously resident in Brugge, Mechelen, and Brussels. Ecclesiastical and civic support of the arts was manifested publically in the region's cele brated choirs and wind bands, musical symbols of their pride and pros perity. The rising bourgeois culture sought power through their orderly world of associations, including confraternities, trade guilds, merchant nations, and literary societies. This urban corporate society became a new and formidable music patron that diminished the role of nobility and clergy by demanding a more functional music. Nowhere is this transfer of artistic influence to the newly-rising strata of society more ap parent than in Antwerp, the largest and wealthiest trade center of nor thern Europe. Unlike neighboring cities, Antwerp was never a university, court, or major government center. The city was a margraviate in name only, its elite the elected officials and entrepreneurs. Guicciardini claimed there were few noblemen there and because the city was so engrossed with commerce, they too were involved in the trafficing of merchandise. Art and music as commercial commodities were a natural develop ment of this culture geared for industry and trade. Paramount among the haute bourgeoisie were the thousands of foreign businessmen, mem bers of merchant nations resident there ?the Spanish, Portuguese, Flo rentines, Genovese, English, and North and South Germans. With their support, the trades of music printing and instrument building flourish ed in Antwerp as they did in few other centers: the English commission ed printed liturgical books for their rite; the Spanish, Portuguese, and Genovese financed music books intended for use by the foreign resi dents of Antwerp and for export to their homeland; and the Germans col