Adrianus Petit Coclico
Netherlandish composer
Adrianus Petit Coclico (1499 in Flanders – after September 1562 in Copenhagen) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance.
Biography
Like many Renaissance composers, very little is known about Coclico's early life. He was raised Catholic but became a Protestant and left Flanders for Germany. The earliest known reference to him in official documents is at Wittenberg University in 1545, and though he later claimed to have been a pupil of Josquin des Prez and to have worked for Henry VIII, the French royal court, and the Pope, scholarship has not been able to substantiate any of these claims.
In 1546, Coclico applied for a position as chair of music at Wittenberg, composing a lost piece on a text by Philipp Melanchthon, and was denied the position. He married around this time, though his wife soon left him, and his attempts to have the union dissolved failed.
He then moved to Frankfurt an der Oder and founded a musicians' society with members of the circle of humanist Jodocus Willich. In poor financial straits, Coclico left Frankfurt for Stettin in 1547, where he was again denied a position; in September of that year he graduated from Königsberg University and entered into the service of the Duke of Prussia. Coclico was involved in religious disputes with Lutherans there and claimed to have been imprisoned on account of his religion. Nevertheless, he retained his post until 1550, at which time he was found to have sired a child with his housekeeper.
“Adrianus Petit Coclico” enters the record as netherlandish composer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Adrianus, Petit and Coclico can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Adrianus Petit Coclico” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Adrianus, Petit and Coclico provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 7, 2022. The linked authority identifier is Q376156. VIAF identifies the subject as 27192453. The Library of Congress control number is no92002029. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1499, 1562, 1545 and 1546.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adrianus Petit Coclico” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.