In his recent book, Rob Wegman has brought together many new pieces of information about this period. Ghent had recently revolted against Burgundy, resulting in a bloody defeat of the Ghent forces in 1453. By 1458, when the duke came to Ghent in a celebration renowned as the “joyous return,” [Fr. trans., joyeuse rentrée] the city was reconciled to its ruler. Part of this healing process involved the trumpeters. Ghent’s city trumpeters were so outstanding that Charles, count of Charlais and son of the duke, often summoned them to his service. This began as early as 1454 and continued even after Charles became duke of Burgundy in 1467. One of these occasions brought the trumpeters as far as Mantua in 1459.

When Jacob Obrecht first appears in surviving documents, in 1480, he has just been ordained a priest and holds the master of arts. We can only speculate on the education that led him this far. He must have studied at a choir school, and the most likely possibility is the collegiate church of St. Veerhilde in Ghent, the only such school in the city. Only a choir school would prepare a boy for roles as singer, university student and priest.

He must have entered a university about the age of 15, though none of the universities near Ghent lists his name. (A different Jacob Obrecht, son of Jacob, was enrolled at Louvain in 1470, a source of confusion until the composer’s father’s name Willem was established.) There is, however, a plausible connection with the university at Naples, where the prince of Aragon, Ferrante (or Ferdinand), had become king in 1458. The duke of Burgundy made an alliance with Ferrante in 1471, and in 1473 made him a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the most prestigious order of nobility in Europe (membership was limited to 31). It is quite possible that Willem Obrecht accompanied the mission that conferred the honor on Ferrante in 1475, and it is at least possible that Jacob Obrecht went there to study at the university about this time.

In 1480, he has just been ordained a priest and holds the master of arts. We can only speculate on the education that led him this far. He must have studied at a choir school, and the most likely possibility is the collegiate church of St. Veerhilde in Ghent, the only such school in the city.

After Willem Obrecht’s death in 1488, his son wrote a funeral motet in his honor. Making a play on words, using similar spelling for two different names, Obrecht says that his father died “on the feast of St. Cecilia” and “traveled through the Sicilian shore.” (The kingdom of Naples was another Sicily.) This lends support to the undocumented supposition that Willem Obrecht accompanied a mission to the court of Ferrante.

There is another connection with Naples. About 1480 Johannes Tinctoris, who had been working there since 1472, wrote about the leading composers of the time in Complexus effectuum musices. He names Jacob Obrecht at the end of a list of ten composers (most of them still familiar names today) whose compositions are known throughout the whole world. If Tinctoris’s idea of the whole world did not reach any further than parts of western Europe, we can still wonder how he knew of the twenty-two-year-old Obrecht at all, unless, of course, he had been living in Naples and composing at that early age.

There is just one problem with this testimony. The sole source of Tinctoris’s treatise was copied in Ghent in 1504, leaving open the possibility that the copying was contaminated by a later addition. On the other hand, Obrecht must have known Tinctoris, too. In the notation of an early motet, Regina caeli, Obrecht makes a clear demonstration of the theoretical principle of cumulative proportions found in Tinctoris treatise, Proportionale musices. The demonstration is so elaborate that it must be understood as a compliment to the theoretician.