Jean Delahaye

Jean Delahaye, also cited as Johannes Delahaye, Jehan Delahaie or Joannes Deshayes, was a French composer active around 1465, of whom very little secure biographical information survives. His name suggests an origin in a locality in Touraine formerly called La Haye, although he may also have come from La Haye, near Lyons-la-Forêt, under the jurisdiction of the archbishopric of Rouen.

A safe-conduct mentions a Johannes Delahaye among the chaplains of Louis of Luxembourg, Chancellor of France for the English crown in the 1420s and Archbishop of Rouen. After Louis's death in 1443, almost all the clerics of his chapel passed into the service of Gilles of Brittany, brother of Duke John IV of Brittany. Between 1445 and 1461 he appears sporadically in the records of Tours, where he is listed as married and apparently without any connection to an ecclesiastical institution. A Joannes Deshayes also appears among the canons of Saint-Martin of Tours which, given the presence there of Ockeghem and Busnoys, makes it plausible that this was the same musician, although this cannot be stated with certainty.

His surviving output consists of seven rondeaux, all copied and attributed in the Chansonnier de Nivelle, linked to the royal palace at Bourges, and four pieces also appear in songbooks copied in the Loire valley. His circulation seems to have been limited to that region, so he did not achieve the international reputation of Ockeghem or Busnoys, although in the Chansonnier de Nivelle he is the second most represented composer, after Busnoys. He is also the only fifteenth-century composer known to have set a text by François Villon: the rondeau Mort j'appelle de ta rigueur, often considered one of the most beautiful chansons of the period.

None of his works appears to predate 1465. Tout au long, a combinatorial chanson built on two presumably pre-existing rustic songs, may be the earliest. His legacy is modest in extent, but his link to Villon and his presence in the Loire songbooks make him a singular figure of the late medieval French chanson.