From Cologne Closely Related to Antwerp

Although Jean De Castro lived and worked in Cologne during the last decade of his life (1591-1599), he managed to maintain close contact with Antwerp: he continued to have music volumes printed there and dedicated new music book to people from Antwerp, including some he got acquainted with in Cologne. They had left Antwerp after the fall of the city in 1585 and were mostly Protestant merchants who expected no good from a city oppressed again by Catholic Spain.

In 1592 De Castro had three volumes published in Antwerp: one of them, a book of motets, he dedicated to Johannes Parmentier, a merchant from Antwerp who was mainly active in Cologne. Parmentier was a trading partner of Jacques Marissal in Venice, who was also from Antwerp and to whom De Castro the year before had addressed a chanson volume (see Table IV nrs. 17 and 19).

Two years later he composed a book of chansons for the brothers Pels. They as well were Antwerp merchants who had moved to Cologne some years earlier. (see Table IV nr. 25).

No less than three volumes dating from the eight last years in Cologne were dedicated to the children Hooftman whom he had met in Antwerp before 1577, but who in the meantime had moved to The Hague to escape religious persecution (they were Calvinists). The music books De Castro composed for them contain little treasures of late-16th century intimate domestic music (Music Fragment 5).

During his first years in Cologne De Castro continued to collaborate with the Antwerp publisher Jan Moretus. Later Moretus' role was taken over by the Cologne printer Gerhard Grevenbruch.

After the composer's death, Antwerp continued to play an important role in the further distribution of his music. Apart from one, all the reprints came from the presses of the Antwerp printing house of Phalèse and Bellère, and their heirs.