Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nepotis [De Neve].

Surname of three South Netherlandish musicians of successive generations, perhaps related, who served the Habsburg rulers of the Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries.

(1) Govard [Godefroid, Gomar] Nepotis

(2) Florens [Fleurquin] Nepotis

(3) George Nepotis

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vander StraetenMPB, iii, vii, viii

G. van Doorslaer: ‘La chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art, iv (1934), 21–57, 139–65

J. Schmidt-Görg: Nicolas Gombert, Kapellmeister Kaiser Karls V: Leben und Werk (Bonn, 1938/R), 57–9

J. Duverger: ‘Florequin Nepotis, orgelist van Margareta van Oostenrijk en van Karel V (na 1495–1537)’, Miscellanea musicologica Floris van der Mueren (Ghent, 1950), 99–113

MARTIN PICKER

Nepotis

(1) Govard [Godefroid, Gomar] Nepotis

(b c1450; d Antwerp, 1499). Priest and organist. Active at the church of Our Lady, Antwerp c1485, he served as organist to the court of Philip the Fair at Mechelen from November 1492 to April 1496. During this period he taught Philip's younger sister Margaret of Austria to play ‘many musical instruments’.

Nepotis

(2) Florens [Fleurquin] Nepotis

(b Mechelen, c1495; d before 15 March 1537). Organist, son of maître Cornelis Nepotis and possibly a nephew of (1) Govard. According to Margaret of Austria, he was ‘raised and taught music and other studies’ at her court in Mechelen. In 1514 he was a ‘young singer’ in the chapel of Archduke Charles; in 1515 he became assistant to the court organist Bredemers and Margaret's private organist. In 1515–16 he was a student at the University of Leuven. In 1518 the archduke sought to have Florens transferred to his own service, much to Margaret’s annoyance. In 1520 Albrecht Dürer, then visiting her court, drew a portrait of Florens, which has unfortunately been lost.

Florens's duties at Margaret's court, where he held the title of ‘varlet de chambre’, included giving her jester lessons in singing and in playing the clavichord, a task he found distasteful. In 1522 he entered Charles V’s service, but he returned to Margaret in 1525. After Margaret's death in 1530, he passed to the service of her successor, Mary of Hungary. Charles V knighted him in 1530, and he is again listed among the members of Charles's chapel in 1532.

Florens, often called ‘Fleurquin’, is sometimes confused with Fleurquin de la Grange (d before Jan 1501), who in 1497 succeeded Govard Nepotis as organist to Philip the Fair, serving until July 1500.

Nepotis

(3) George Nepotis

(b c1530; d after 1567). Singer, possibly a nephew of (2) Florens. In 1540 he was a choirboy in the imperial chapel of Charles V and in 1555 an adult singer there. In 1556 he accompanied the emperor to Spain and into retirement at Yuste. After Charles's death in 1558, he entered the chapel of Philip II, where he served until at least 1567.

Nera

(It.).

See Crotchet (quarter-note); semiminima and croma are also used. See also Note values.

Nercom [Nercome, Nercum], Daniel.

See Norcombe, Daniel.

Neri, Filippo

(b Florence, 21 July 1515; d Rome, 26 May 1595). Italian saint and religious leader. He pursued his early education in Florence, partly at the Dominican friary of S Marco. By 1534 he was a pupil in Rome, but within a year he abandoned his studies to devote his life to prayer and charitable works. In 1548 he founded the Confraternita della SS Trinità to assist needy pilgrims who flocked to Rome. In 1551 he entered the priesthood; within a year he began to attract a small group of laymen who met daily at his living quarters at S Girolamo della Carità to discuss religious topics and to pray together. By 1554 attendance at these gatherings had become so great that they were transferred to the church loft which was remodelled as an oratorio (oratory or prayer hall). In the informal spiritual exercises held there Neri introduced the singing of the lauda spirituale (see under Lauda). In 1575 Pope Gregory XIII recognized Neri's group as an official community, the Congregazione dell'Oratorio, and granted them the old church of S Maria in Vallicella, soon replaced by the Chiesa Nuova. Towards the end of Neri's life as many as 3000 people would attend the spiritual exercises which had become an important aspect of the Catholic reform movement in Rome, and Neri was widely regarded as a living saint. He was beatified on 25 May 1615 and canonized on 12 March 1622.

Neri's importance for the history of music lies in his emphasis on the lauda for both solo and congregational singing and in the stress he placed on music as a means of attracting people to his oratory services. The earliest maestro di cappella for Neri’s oratory was Giovanni Animuccia; Palestrina and Victoria probably participated in its music. Francesco Soto de Langa was maestro di cappella from 1571 to 1596 as well as a composer and compiler of laude collections published for the oratory's use.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Bacci: Vita di S. Filippo Neri, fiorentino (Rome, 1622)

G. Marciano: Memorie historiche della Congregazione dell'oratorio (Naples, 1693–1703)

D. Alaleona: Studi su la storia dell'oratorio musicale in Italia (Turin, 1908, 2/1945 as Storia dell'oratorio musicale in Italia)

L. Ponelle and L. Bordet: Saint Philippe Néri et la société romaine de son temps, 1515–1595 (Paris, 1928, 2/1958; Eng. trans., 1932)

G. Incisa della Rocchetta and N. Vian, eds.: Il primo processo per San Filippo Neri nel codice vaticano latino 3798 e in altri esemplari dell'archivio dell'Oratorio di Roma, Studi e testi, cxci, cxcvi, ccv, ccxxiv (Rome, 1957–63)

M. Trevor: Apostle of Rome: a Life of Philip Neri, 1515–1595 (London, 1966)

H.E. Smither: A History of the Oratorio, i: The Oratorio in the Baroque Era: Italy, Vienna, Paris (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977)

A. Morelli: Il tempio armonico: musica nell'Oratorio dei Filippini in Roma (1575–1705), AnMc, no.27 (1991)

HOWARD E. SMITHER