Biography
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Born In
Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
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Died
1618 (aged None)
Pedro de Cristo (Coimbra, 1545/1550 - Coimbra, 12th December 1618) was a Portuguese composer during the Renaissance. He is considered one of the most important Portuguese polyphony authors during the 16th and 17th centuries..
Pedro de Cristo spent most of his life in Coimbra, in Santa Cruz Monastery, where he became a cleric in 1571. He became kappellmeister in 1597, being a music tutor and dedicating to singing, and to several instruments.
Dom Pedro de Cristo can be considered one the biggest polyphony authors of the 16th century in the domain of religious music. As a composer, he has a vast work for polyphonic choir, with several motets, responsories, psalms, masses, hymns, passions, lamentations, hallelujah verses, canticles and spiritual villancicos.
He is not widely known, as most of his work hasn't been published yet. There are about 220 musical pieces composed by Dom Pedro de Cristo. Of these, less than 20 have been transcribed into modern musical notation.
His work is elaborated with simplicity and elegance, both inspired by Gregorian technique and deliberately offsetting itself from it, maintaining the strictness of the 14th century, and simultaneously getting free from it to produce a counterweight between sober construction and new, beautiful, musical melody lines.
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