(b at or nr Tournai, c1585; d before 1652). Flemish composer. On 25 October 1594 he went to Madrid, under his baptismal name, to become a choirboy in the Flemish chapel, where he studied with George de la Hèle. He left on 12 October 1600 and became a student at Douai. On 13 April 1604 he took his vows and entered the Capuchin monastery there; it was then that he took the name Leonardus Nervius. Catullius mentioned him alongside Pierre Maillart and Ghersem as one of the famous composers from Tournai. He is known to have published seven volumes of church music, but the five that have survived are all incomplete, thus making it difficult to evaluate his achievement.
Trias harmonica sacrarum cantionum, 3vv, bc (org) (1631), lost
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Vander StraetenMPB, i, ii, v, viii
A.Catullius: Tornacum, civitas metropolis, et cathedra episcopalis Nerviorum (Brussels, 1652), 101
Hildebrand [J. Raes]: ‘Wie was Leonardus Nervius?’, Musica sacra [Bruges], xliii (1936), 103–7
Hildebrand [J. Raes]: De Kapucijnen in de Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik (Antwerp, 1945–55), viii, 663; ix, 367
P.Becquart: Musiciens néerlandais à la cour de Madrid: Philippe Rogier et son école (1560–1647) (Brussels, 1967)
G.Spiessens and H.Vanhulst, eds.: Antwerpse muziekdrukkers: vocale en instrumentale polyfonie (16de–18de eeuw) (Antwerp, 1996)
HENRI VANHULST
Nes, Jard van
(b Zwolle, 15 June 1948). Dutch mezzo-soprano. She studied at the conservatory in The Hague with Herman Woltman (1973–8) and made her concert début in 1975 at the Holland Festival, where she later created the title role in Theo Loevendie’s Naima (1985). She made her opera début at the Netherlands Opera as Bertarido (Rodelinda) in 1983, and her other operatic roles have included Magdalene (Die Meistersinger) and Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde). At her Salzburg Festival début in 1990 she sang the Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte, conducted by Solti, but her main career has been in concerts. Van Nes has appeared regularly with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in works ranging from Bach to Mahler, whose second and third symphonies she has recorded with Haitink, and has performed regularly with other major orchestras in Europe and the USA. Her recordings include works by Bach and Handel, Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody and music by Berio, but her grave, finely moulded singing is perhaps heard at its best in the works of Mahler.
ALAN BLYTH
Nesbet [Nesbett], John
(d ?1488). English composer. He was a member of the Confraternity of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, and master of the Lady Chapel choir there, in succession to William Corbrand, from 1475 to 1488. In 1480 he received a payment from John Stone, the chronicler, ‘for his labour doyng a masse for seint Richard’. His two known surviving compositions are a five-voice Magnificat in the Carver Manuscript (GB-En; also in the Eton Choirbook, but there incomplete, see MB, xii, 2/1973, pp.xiii, 63) and a three-voice Benedicamus Domino in GB-Cmc Pepys 1236 (ed. in CMM, xl, 1967, p.160).
PAUL DOE
Nesenus, Johann
(b Bergen; dGöttingen, 1604). Norwegian composer, active in Germany. Like Caspar Ecchienus, he is one of the earliest Norwegian composers known by name. When he published a piece called Gott der Herr sprach (Helmstedt, 1594; inc.) he was described on the title-page as ‘artium studiosus’ from Bergen, Norway. He became a Kantor at Celle in 1597 and at Göttingen in 1598. He died of wounds received from a sword in the hands of a furious colleague. He published a collection of ten secular songs (eight four-part villanellas, one ‘Baurliedlein’ for five voices and another for eight) under the title Liebgärtlein (Mühlhausen, 1598; inc.). None of Nesenus’s music seems to have survived World War II intact, but the villanella ‘Ach, woher kumpt mein Hertzen’, no.5 of the Liebgärtlein, has been published by O. Gaukstad (Oslo University Library: Norsk Musikksamlung Publikasjon, vii, 1971) from an earlier copy made by Teschner in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek.
JOHN BERGSAGEL
Neser, Johann
(b Windsbach, nr Ansbach, c1560; d Heilsbronn, nr Ansbach, 29 March 1602). German composer. At the age of nine he went to Ansbach to become a chorister at the court of Margrave Georg Friedrich of Brandenburg; until 1572 he was taught music there by the Kapellmeister, Jacob Meiland. The margrave later gave him a scholarship to study at the University of Wittenberg, which he did from 1576 to 1582. He then became Kantor at the Fürstenschule, Heilsbronn, and it was as a result of his work in this post that he wrote his most important work, Hymni sacri (Wittenberg, 1600), which comprises 30 four- and five-part Latin hymns notated in open score and written mainly in a syllabic style using speech-rhythms (one four-part hymn is in Handbuch der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenmusik, iii/2, Göttingen, 1935, p.148). The great popularity of this collection in the Lutheran grammar schools of southern and central Germany opened the way to further, enlarged editions: 2/1619 (32 compositions), 3/1620 (32 Latin compositions and 14 German, including three by Erhard Bodenschatz, six by Mauritius Cnod and two by Johannes Eccard) and 4/1681. In addition Neser wrote an eight-part epithalamium (in 1581) and Cantiones quatuor for five, six and eight voices (Wittenberg, 1596), in which the influence of Lassus, Meiland and Lechner can be traced; a five-part motet survives in manuscript in the Dekanatsarchiv at Hof (ed. in H. Kätzel: Musikpflege und Musikerziehung im Reformationsjahrhundert, dargestellt am Beispiel der Stadt Hof, Göttingen, 1957)