Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

U Roy [Beckford, Ewart]

(b Kingston, Jamaica, 1942). Jamaican DJ and rapper. He was a pioneer of Kingston’s sound systems and rose to fame in 1968 through his partnership with the creator of dub, King Tubby. By eliminating the vocal tracks on the master tape of a recording U Roy created instrumental beds on which he would (see Rap §1) at dances, often commenting on the events of the day. His first recording, Earth’s Rightful Ruler, was made for Lee Perry and is arguably the first DJ record. By the time of the album Version Galore (Trojan, 1971) U Roy had established his style by using rock steady tracks from ‘Duke’ Reid’s Treasure Isle Records, especially those of the Paragons, retaining key phrases of the vocals and answering them with unique, syncopated, extemporized poetry. With the producer Prince Tony Robinson, he created a number of albums including the most eccentric collection Dread Inna Babylon (Virgin, 1975) and Natty Rebel (Virgin, 1976).

U Roy’s success inspired others such as Dennis Alcapone, Scotty and Big Youth to begin recording DJ discs and helped to create the standard format of Jamaican seven-inch records; the vocal version on the A-side and the instrumental, which can be used by DJs in dance halls, on the other. He is considered by many to be the father of American rap music which was popularized by Jamaican immigrants living in New York’s outer boroughs.

ROGER STEFFENS

Urquhart, Thomas

(fl London, c1650–80). English or Scottish violin maker. He was probably a pupil of Jacob Rayman, and was more or less a contemporary of Edward Pamphilon. Urquhart was the most accomplished craftsman of the three. An early, small-sized violin bearing a label with the date 166– (last digit illegible) is of extraordinary delicacy, with a golden varnish of the highest quality. Later instruments are slightly more robust, but excellently finished, and often have a fine red varnish of almost Italian character. These instruments are capable of very fine tone, and can often be distinguished from provincial Italian work of the period only by the intriguingly worked scroll, which is incised at the chin and marked with small prickings around the volute. Unfortunately many of the scrolls and labels were removed by unscrupulous dealers and replaced with more Italianate substitutes. It is likely that some of his work was relabelled and sold in his own lifetime by John Shaw, an eminent instrument dealer and music publisher of the period, who was appointed ‘instrument maker to his Majesty’ in 1687.

Apart from the record of a Thomas Urquhart buried at St Giles-in-the-Fields, London, in 1698, no information about Urquhart’s life has yet been unearthed. The family name of Urquhart certainly derives from Inverness, and has led some writers to conclude that he was Scottish.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Sandys and S.A. Forster: The History of the Violin (London, 1864)

W.M. Morris: British Violin Makers (London, 1904, 2/1920)

CHARLES BEARE, JOHN DILWORTH

Urrede [Urreda, Urede, Vreda, Vrede, Wreede], Juan de [Johannes]

(fl 1451–c1482). South Netherlandish composer, active in Spain. He was born in Bruges, the son of Rolandus de Wreede, who was organist at St Donatian until 1482. In 1451 Johannes was refused a clerkship at St Donatian on the grounds that father and son could not work in the same institution, but in 1457 he secured a similar position at the church of Our Lady. His name disappears from the records in 1460, and it is assumed that he left Bruges for Spain at this time, although he does not reappear until 1476, when he was paid as a member of the household of the first Duke of Alba, García Alvarez de Toledo, cousin to King Ferdinand. Urrede (the Castilian form of his name) may have served the duke for some years previously, but on 17 June 1477 he was appointed singer and maestro de capilla of the Aragonese royal chapel, his salary being backdated to 1 April of that year. The account books of the royal household reveal that he was employed until at least 1482, but in the meantime it would appear that he also applied to the professorship of Salamanca University, a position that, despite his request for changes to the system of electing new professors, he did not secure. After 1482 there is no further record of Urrede, although the royal household registers are missing for the period immediately following this and he may have served a few years longer. Possibly he died in the period between 1482 and 1484, although there is some evidence to suggest he may have lived substantially longer.

Urrede was not the only Netherlandish composer to work in Spain during this period, but he was certainly the most internationally renowned. Ramis de Pareia, the Spanish musical theorist and professor of music at Bologna University, described him as ‘carissimus noster regis Hispaniae capellae magister’, and he was also praised by the Italian theorist Giovanni Spataro (one of Ramis’s pupils), who, in his Tractato di musica (Venice, 1531), commended Urrede’s use of proportion in the Benedictus of a Mass (which would appear to have been lost). Unlike his Spanish-born colleagues, Urrede also enjoyed the prestige of having his works widely circulated: his compositions are preserved in French and Italian as well as Iberian sources. Two compositions especially were widely known and were repeatedly borrowed as the basis for new polyphonic compositions or instrumental settings. One of these is the famous canción Nunca fue pena mayor, the poem being attributed to the Duke of Alba and written about 1470. According to Anglès, Urrede’s three-part setting is based on a popular Spanish tune. Belmonte borrowed Urrede’s superius as the tenor of his canción Pues mi dicha non consiente. Both Pierre de La Rue and Francisco de Peñalosa wrote a Missa ‘Nunca fue pena mayor’. Bartolomeo Tromboncino parodied the beginning in his setting of Nunqua fu pena magiore. The tenor was borrowed in an anonymous piece without text in Petrucci’s Canti C (RISM 1504³), f.21v, and in another in I-Bc Q18, f.46v. The piece was sung in two plays written by the Portuguese poet Gil Vicente, and instrumental arrangements appeared in the Capirola Lutebook, written about 1517, and in Petrucci’s Intabolatura de lauto, libro primo (1507⁵).

Also widely known and much quoted by later composers was the hymn Pange lingua, based on the Toledan chant melody. Two settings of this hymn are ascribed to Urrede: one, included in the hymn cycle in E-TZ 2–3, is also found, slightly modified, in E-Bbc 454, and in at least ten other sources (almost all of Iberian or Latin-American provenance); the second is a unicum in E-SE, where it is attributed to ‘Johanes Urede’. Especially notable are the keyboard arrangements of the first version: the earliest extant is by Antonio de Cabezón, printed in the Cifra nueva (1557) of Luis Venegas de Henestrosa, but there are many later settings by Juan Cabanilles, among others. A number of masses based on Urrede’s hymn survive, some as late as the 17th century. Other liturgical works include a setting of the Magnificat (part of which was also arranged for keyboard by Gonzalo de Baena before 1540), the Nunc dimittis and the Kyrie and Gloria ‘Spiritus et alme’ of a Missa de Beata Virgine, copied into one of the manuscripts for the Sistine Chapel in about 1481. The Magnificat and Nunc dimittis are preserved in a section of a manuscript in Paris (F-Pn n.a.fr.4379) that has been shown to belong to the manuscript E-Sco 7-I-28 (see Fallows, 1992), one of the two sources to contain all three of Urrede’s extant songs. All three songs, originally for three voices (although versions for four voices survive of Nunca fue pena mayor and Muy triste será mi vida), were likewise copied into the Cancionero Musical de Palacio (E-Mp 1335), before 1500; indeed, Nunca fue pena mayor is the first song in the collection, which has led scholars to consider whether the manuscript was begun for the Duke of Alba or possibly for Prince Juan, only son of the Catholic Monarchs, who resided briefly in Salamanca until his untimely death in 1497.

Urrede’s compositions reflect the blend of Flemish and Spanish elements that is characteristic of the other arts in the Iberian peninsula during this period. He adopted the song form (canción) and chant tradition of his new homeland, but continued to write in a musical idiom that clearly showed the influence of the Franco-Burgundian school in which he would have been trained in Bruges. He, together with other composers of his generation such as Enrique (de Paris) and Johannes Cornago, who were also educated in the North, were key figures in the transmission and development of this idiom in the Spanish kingdoms in the mid-15th century.

WORKS

sacred

Kyrie ‘Spiritus et alme’, Gloria ‘Spiritus et alme’, 4vv, from Missa de Beata Virgine, I-Rvat C.S.14, f.6v

Magnificat (6th tone), 4vv, F-Pn n.a.fr.4379, P-Cug; ‘Quia fecit’, ‘Esurientes’, P-Ln Ivo Cruz 60, G. de Baena: Arte nouamente inuentada pera aprender a tanger (Lisbon, 1540)

Nunc dimittis, 3vv, F-Pn n.a.fr.4379, f.84v

Pange lingua, 4vv, 2 versions: one in E-Bbc 454, E-TZ 2–3, and many other MSS, ed. in Gerber; another in E-SE, ed. in Anglès

secular

De vos y de mi quexoso, 3vv, ed. in MME, v (1947), xxxiii (1971)

Muy triste será mi vida, 3vv, ed. in MME, v (1947), xxxiii (1971)

Nunca fue pena mayor, 3vv, ed. in MME, v (1947), xxxiii (1971)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonSM

StrohmM

Vander StraetenMPB, vi, viii

J., J.F.R. and C. Stainer, eds.: Early Bodleian Music: Sacred and Secular Songs (London, 1901/R), i: Facsimiles, ii: Transcriptions

Duke of Alva: ‘Disquisiciones acerca del cantor flamenco Juan de Wrede’, Boletín de la Real academia de la historia, lxxv (1919), 199–200

J.B. Trend: The Music of Spanish History to 1600 (Oxford, 1926/R)

H. Anglès: ‘El “Pange lingua” de Johannes de Urreda, maestro de capilla del Rey Fernando el Católico’, AnM, vii (1952), 193–200

R. Gerber: ‘Spanische Hymnensätze um 1500’, AMw, x (1953), 165–84

T.W. Knighton: Music and Musicians at the Court of Fernando of Aragon, 1474-1516 (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1984), i, 301

D. García Fraile: ‘La cátedra de la Universidad de Salamanca durante diecisiete años del siglo XV (1464–1481)’, AnM, xlvi (1991), 57–101

D. Fallows: ‘I fogli parigini del Cancionero Musical e del manoscritto teorico della Biblioteca Colombina’, RIM, xxvii (1992), 25–40

O. Rees: ‘Texts and Music in LisbonBN 60’, RdMc, xvi (1993), 1515–33

B. Turner: ‘Spanish Liturgical Hymns: a Matter of Time’, EMc, xxiii (1995), 472–82

D. Fallows: ‘A Glimpse of the Lost Years: Spanish Polyphonic Song, 1450–70’, Songs and Musicians in the Fifteenth Century (Aldershot, 1996), 19–36, esp. 32

T. Knighton: ‘A Newly Discovered Keyboard Source (Gonzalo de Baena’s Arte nouamente inuentada pera aprender a tanger, Lisbon, 1540): a Preliminary Report’, PMM, v (1996), 81–112

TESS KNIGHTON