Firminius [Firmin]  Lebel  {Pius IV-Pius V}

Noyon;  maestro di cappella  at Santa Maria Maggiore, December 1540-September 1545;  maestro di cappella  at San Luigi dei Francesi, October 1545-September 1561; admitted without examination, 4 September 1561;  mandati : September 1561-September 1565;  died  in Rome on 13 December 1573 (according to the list in VatS 681, fol. 77r) or between 27 and 31 December 1573 [ CASIMIRI  (1926)] and a funeral Mass for his soul and the souls of Domenico Maria Ferrabosco  and Giovanni Antonio Latino  was held in San Luigi dei Francesi on 4 March 1574;  punctator  in 1563.

Lebel was a successful   maestro di cappella  (his time at Santa Maria Maggiore may have corresponded with the young Palestrina's) and composer, but was an unsuccessful singer; the cardinals' commission of 1565 noted his lack of a voice ("questi [Lebel and  Fornarino ] non hano voce bona ma hano bona intelligenza nella musica"--Document 1.15;"non habet vocem"--Document 1.16) and removed him from the choir, assigning a pension of 4 ducats (low, because he had been admitted without examination). He remains among the "second class" singers from October 1565-October 1571.

WORKS IN VATS MSS

Motets: Ave verum corpus (VatS 38); Puer natus est nobis (VatS 38; ed. in CASIMIRI (1924), pp. 68-78 and in Societatis polyphonicae romanae repertorium); Sancta Maria sucurre miseris (VatS 17)

Edition: CASIMIRI, Raffaele. Societatis polyphonicae romanae repertorium (Rome, 1925-34), vol. 1.

DOCUMENTS

DS 6

31r: entry dated 4 September 1561 [FREY, p. 156]

DS 10

53v: entry dated 4 March 1574 [FREY, p. 137]

See Ferrabosco.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: CELANI, p. 754; CASIMIRI, Raffaele. Firmin le Bel de Noyon; maître à Rome de Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina (Rome, 1922); CASIMIRI, Raffaele. "Firmin Le Bel di Noyon; maestro a Roma di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina."  Note d'Archivio  1 (1924): 64-67; CAMETTI, Alberto. "Firminio Lebel: maestro in S, Luigi dei Francesi a Roma. "  Rivista Musicale Italiana  32 (1925): 196-205;  CASIMIRI, Raffaele. "Firmin Lebel e la data di sua Morte."  Note d'Archivio  3 (1926): 41-45; FREY, Herman-Walther. "Die Kapellmeister an der franzözischen Nationalkirche San Luigi dei Francesi in Rom im 16. Jahrhundert. Teil I: 1514-1577."  Archiv für Musikwissenschaft  22 (1965): 280-282;  FREY, Die Diarien; SHERR, "Competence and Incompetence."