Claude Goudimel

Claude Goudimel (born c. 1514, Besançon [France]—died August 28?, 1572, Lyon) was a French composer, editor, and publisher who is noted for his influential and popular settings of the metrical psalms.

Little is known of Goudimel’s early life. He was a university student in Paris in 1549 when his first chansons were published. He began working for the publisher Nicolas Du Chemin in 1551, becoming his business partner from 1552 to 1557, during which period most of Goudimel’s own work was published. He set to music some of the poetry of Pierre de Ronsard. Although his early works—including five masses, three Magnificats, and several motets—reflect the Roman Catholic rite, at some point he converted to Calvinism and moved to Metz (a Huguenot city), where he lived for perhaps a decade. While in Metz he made several volumes of psalm settings, and—with Loys Bourgeois—he became an instrumental figure in the creation of the Genevan Psalter. Goudimel is believed to have left Metz by 1567. He worked as a music editor for the remainder of his life. He was killed in Lyon during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, which spread from Paris to the provinces.

Despite his wide range of compositions, Goudimel is remembered chiefly for his vernacular psalm settings. He completed nearly 300 Calvinist psalm settings and some 70 chansons. His first collection (1551–56) set several psalms in the style of motets for from three to six voices. In his 1564 setting of the complete psalm cycle, the traditional melody is usually in the treble voice. The 1565 book, again a complete cycle, is written in the simplest note-against-note style, with the melody in the tenor voice. Goudimel’s settings proved enormously popular, and they were widely adopted by Reformed churches.