Jacobus de Kerle

Composer (ca. 1531 - 1591). Flemish composer and organist, active in Italy, Germany and elsewhere. He was one of the last important composers of the Netherlandish school. Kerle probably received his early education at the monastery of St Martin at Ypres, where he may well have been introduced to music by Gilles Bracquet. He was a singer at Cambrai Cathedral from September 1548 until c1550 (see Wright) and afterwards in Orvieto, where he was employed as magister capellae in charge of the boys’ choir; soon after, he became cathedral organist and the town carillonnew. From there he moved to Rome and then to Augsburg, where he was offered a position in 1568 as vicar-choral and organist at the Augsburg Cathedral by Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg. After leaving Augsburg in 1575, he continued to move often late in his life, accepting positions in Mons, Cologne, Augsburg again, Vienna, and finally Prague, where he lived from 1583 until his death in 1591.