He was born to a family of merchants in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Holy Roman Empire but came to the Seventeen Provinces at an early age. Alamire was not his real name; the name was a musical reference, "A" plus the solfege syllables "la", "mi" and "re". Most likely his actual name was van den Hove, although details on his family background are slim. In the late 1490s he began to receive commissions for work in the Low Countries, for example at 's-Hertogenbosch and Antwerp, where his impressive skill at musical copying and illuminating were immediately valued. This was the period when the explosion of musical creativity in the Low Countries was at its highest; that region was producing more composers than all of the rest of Europe combined, and these composers were emigrating into other areas, especially into royal and aristocratic courts who had the means to employ them. By 1503 Alamire had already created an edition of music for Philip I of Castile, and by 1509 he was an employee of Archduke Charles, shortly to become Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. His manuscripts were to become extremely valuable as gifts, as most European nobility at the time prized music, and many votes for the upcoming election of the Holy Roman Emperor would need to be bought. Alamire moved from Antwerp to Mechelen sometime between 1505 and 1516. Although he traveled frequently, Mechelen was to remain his permanent home from 1516 on.
Career as a spy
Between 1515 and 1518, under cover as a merchant of manuscripts, chaplain, singer, and instrumentalist, he traveled between London and the continent, as a spy for Henry VIII against the pretender to the English throne, Richard de la Pole, who mainly resided in Metz. He was aided in this enterprise by a Flemish sackbut player, Hans Nagel. In June 1516, he went to the Kingdom of England for instruction by the king and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, carrying music manuscripts and instruments along with him. Henry VIII and Wolsey came to distrust him, however, and indeed soon learned that he was working as a counter-spy for de la Pole himself; Alamire, valuing his head, wisely never returned to England after this discovery. Unsurprisingly, few English composers are represented in his manuscripts. During the 1520s Alamire was a diplomat and courtier in addition to continuing his activity as a music illustrator and copyist. He carried letters between many of the leading humanists of the time. Erasmus described him as "not unwitty", and Alamire's frequent scurrilous commentary on contemporary singers and players bears this out; many of his letters survive, and they are filled with epigrams and clever insults. Music was not his only skill; he received a generous payment on behalf of King Christian III of Denmark for instruction in the "craft of mining". In 1534 Alamire received a generous pension from Maria of Austria, for whom he had written a number of manuscripts in the early 1530s, and he disappears from court records after that time. He died in Mechelen.
