Pierre Passereau

Pierre Passereau (fl. 1509–1547) was a French composer of the Renaissance. Along with Clément Janequin, he was one of the most popular composers of "Parisian" chansons in France in the 1530s. His output consisted almost exclusively of chansons; most of them were published by printer Pierre Attaingnant. Most of them were "rustic" in character, similar to patter songs, using onomatopoeia, double entendres, and frequent obscenity, a common feature of popular music in France and the Low Countries in the 1530s.

Life Some details of Passereau's life have been compiled by scholars, including pioneering 19th-century musicologist François-Joseph Fétis in his enormous Biographie universelle des musiciens (1834). Passereau first appears in the historical record as a tenor singer in the chapel of the Count of Angoulême (who was later to become King Francis I); therefore he was already an adult, and born before about 1495. He had some association with both Bourges Cathedral and Cambrai Cathedral, as he appears in the records of both places, and is documented as being a singer at Cambrai between 1525 and 1530. He may also have been a priest at the church of Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie in Paris, although this statement by Fétis has not been independently confirmed.

Additional features of Passereau's chansons include the use of quick declamation, chordal passages with occasional polyphony, generally syllabic word setting, satirical and ribald subjects, and catchy rhythms.

An additional indication of Passereau's popularity is his inclusion by François Rabelais as one of a list of popular musicians in Gargantua and Pantagruel.