Antonius [Antonio]  Colebault [Bidon, da Asti] {Leo X}

Soprano; Asti; at the court of the Duke of Savoy,  1500-1502 ; in the chapel of the Duke of Ferrara,  1502 - 1510 ; in Mantuan service,  1511 ; in the chapel of the Duke of Ferrara,  1512-1516 ; earliest reference, payment of 28 August  1516 ; other payments to Bidon, to his son Gasparino, or to others in his household in  1519 ,  1520 , and  1521 ; see  FREY  for a bull dated 14 August  1519 . Two laudatory epitaphs were published in 1525, so Bidon was dead by then.

Bidon was a famous virtuoso singer mentioned by a number of writers as one of the wonders of the age. He may have been related to Jacques Colebault, otherwise known as Jacquet of Mantua. His status at the papal court at the beginning is, however, not clear. The special payments discovered by  FREY  do not refer to him as a singer in the chapel or as a member of the musica segreta (and in fact, he is never listed among the musici segreti), although the bull of  1519  does call him a cantor capellanus and camerarius. He had moved to Rome with his son (and presumably his wife) and had other musicians in his household. He may have felt some concern about his status in Rome, however. In July  1517 , he attempted to reingratiate himself with the Duke of Ferrara, asking for monetary help in expediting a beneficial matter and declaring himself ready and eager to return to Ferrara. In one of his letters he declares that he will have to seek formal permission from the Pope to leave Rome (which he thinks he can easily get even though the pope would be sorry to lose him), but suggests that even though the pope had showered favors on him, nothing specific had come of it ("Credo bene li farà malle de perderme benche lui ne habbia assai di megliori di me et niente di manco Sua Santitade mi dimostra grandissima benevolentia, benche per fine a chi non mi l'abia ancora dimonstrato, forzi non è ancora il tempo mio."[see  LOCKWOOD,  " A Virtuoso Singer" for the entire letter]). But the attempt to return to Ferrara was unsuccessful. Bidon was also a composer, but his only extant composition is an added voice to Josquin’s five-voice Miserere found in CH-SGs 463.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: PIRRO, André. "Leo X and Music."  The Musical Quarterly  21 (1935): 1-16;  PRIZER, William. "La Cappella di Francesco II Gonzaga e la Musica Sacra a Mantova del Primo Ventennio del Cinquecento." in  Mantova e i Gonzaga nella Civiltà del Rinascimento  (Mantua, 1974), pp. 267-276;  FREY  (1956): 54-55, (1956): 62;  LOCKWOOD, Lewis. "Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: French Music and Musicians in Italy, 1505-1520." Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (1979), 191-246 , esp. 210;  LOCKWOOD, Lewis. "A Virtuoso Singer at Ferrara and Rome: the Case of Bidon." in Richard SHERR, ed., Papal Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).