Loys Bourgeois

BOURGEOIS, Loys. b. Paris, ca. 1510–15; d. ca. 1559. Bourgeois was a composer of chansons who adhered to the Reformed religion. Born in Paris, he emigrated from Lyons to Geneva in 1545 and was granted citizenship in 1547. From 1539 to 1557 he worked as musical editor for successive editions of the Calvinist psalter of Clément Marot* and Théodore de Bèze* (see French Protestant psalms*), adapting old Latin hymn melodies (see Medieval hymns and hymnals*) and sequence* melodies, and composing some new melodies himself. It is doubtful whether any of them were adapted from secular chansons, as Orentin Douen believed; the resemblances cited by Douen seem fortuitous. In the 1551 Geneva edition,...