Ochsenkun [Ochsenkhun], Sebastian

1. Early life and career.

Given his place of birth, it is possible that Ockeghem began his musical training in Saint Ghislain itself, conceivably as a choirboy in the parish church where he founded the obit. It seems more probable, however, that he received most of his early education in nearby Mons at one of the churches with a musical establishment capable of providing such instruction. These include – significantly, in view of the circumstances linking Ockeghem to Binchois – those of St Germain and Ste Waudru, which were probably both served by the same group of choristers.

The date of Ockeghem’s birth has yet to be established, and in the absence of unequivocal documentation estimates have ranged from 1410 (or earlier) to 1430. A clear preference for about 1420 seems to have emerged in the biographical literature (Plamenac; RiemannL12; van den Borren, 1948–51; Picker, 1988), but Ockeghem could have been born as much as a decade earlier. A personal and affectionate relationship with Binchois, attested by Ockeghem’s déploration on Binchois’s death in 1460 and his compositional reference to a Binchois chanson (Gallagher, 1995), may go back to a period when both were still resident in Hainaut. If so, the two may have become acquainted even before Binchois, who served as organist at Ste Waudru from 1419, left Mons for Lille in 1423. That would suggest, in turn, that Ockeghem, if a choirboy at the time (hence between 7 and 15 years of age), could have been born as early as 1405 and hardly later than c1415.

The earliest documentation of Ockeghem’s activity as a musician is for the year beginning 24 June 1443, when he was numbered among the vicaires-chanteurs at the church of Our Lady, Antwerp. The nature of that appointment indicates that his training was by then fully completed. At the same time, his irregularity in attending the services in which the choir was involved and the lack of evidence for subsequent contact with the city or any of its churches suggest that his ties to Antwerp were neither close nor lasting.

His next known appointment was at the court of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, whose principal residence was in Moulins. In the accounts for 1446–8 Ockeghem is listed first among the seven singers of the ducal chapel, preceded only by the premier chapelain and three priests (Vayssière, 1891), indicating that he was by then an accomplished musician whose skills and gifts were fully recognized. Because the payment records of the court are fragmentary, it is unclear whether, as seems likely, he entered the duke’s service directly after his stay in Antwerp, in the summer of 1444, or somewhat later. Similarly, there is no way to determine from the documents currently known, whether he continued as a member of the ducal chapel until he joined the musical establishment of Charles VII at the French royal court some time in 1451, as seems most plausible, or had an interim appointment elsewhere. Since Binchois was employed at the ducal court of Burgundy from the 1420s until he retired to Soignies in 1453, it is perhaps worth noting that the Duchess of Bourbon was Agnes of Burgundy, the sister of Duke Philip the Good; Ockeghem’s appointment to the Bourbon chapel may therefore have been facilitated in some way by that connection.

Ockeghem, Jean de