Adam Rener

Adam Rener (also spelt Reiner) was a singer and composer from the Southern Netherlands, born in Liège around 1485 and died in Altenburg around 1520. His significance lies in the fact that, together with his contemporary Isaac, he carried the spirit of Netherlandish music to Germany shortly after 1500.

According to surviving records, in 1498 he was a boy singer at the court of Emperor Maximilian. Around 1500, probably after his voice broke, he moved to Burgundy to train, and in 1503 he was again listed at the Habsburg court as a composer. From 1507 he worked as singer and composer in the chapel of the Elector of Saxony at Torgau, a post he seems to have inherited from Adam von Fulda, who died in 1505. Reports of his time at Torgau cease in 1517, and his last documented trace is his name in the court archives of Altenburg in 1520.

Under his direction, the Saxon chapel became a music centre of the first order, with an up-to-date repertory reflected in the so-called Jena choirbooks, in whose preparation he may have taken part. His works often show a tendency to depart from the strict cantus firmus in favour of a freer construction, which was characteristic of the period. This feature is most evident in his masses and magnificats, and less so in his proper settings of the Office, which are closer to German traditions.

His surviving output includes nine mass ordinary settings, a cycle of magnificats, three secular German songs and more than thirty motets, some of them cycles of propers. Taken together, they make a considerable contribution to the Netherlandish and German repertory of the sixteenth century and can be placed alongside the much more extensive output of Isaac, with whom they share many technical features.