Some biographical information can be gleaned from the text of a musical setting entitled Epitaphion Alexandri Agricolae symphonistae regis Castiliae, printed by Georg Rhau in 1538. Here, the composer is called a ‘Belgian’, who died in 1506 at the age of 60 while travelling through Spain in the service of Philip the Fair. Two more epitaphs have recently been discovered by Bonnie Blackburn; one of these specifies the date of death, and reveals that he was a native of Ghent. Archival documents and musical manuscripts give his surname almost invariably as Agricola, although one payment record from the Burgundian court, written in 1500, identifies the composer as ‘Alexander Ackerman’.
Alexander Ackerman and his brother Jan were the illegitimate children of Lijsbette Naps alias Quansuijs, an independent businesswoman of not inconsiderable means, who died in 1499, and whose trade activities in Ghent can be traced back as far as the early 1440s. Their father was Heinric Ackerman, a procurator in the household of a wealthy Ghent citizen, Joes Beste (whose illegitimate daughter Salmadrinen he married in 1448). Heinric must have died some time after 1474. While extensive documentation survives on Lijsbette Naps and her business activities, there is hardly anything to shed light on the early musical training of Alexander. It is possible that he served as a chorister or singer in the parish church of St Nicholas, Ghent, to whose musical establishment, the cotidiane, Lijsbette made a large donation in 1467; unfortunately, the payment lists of the cotidiane of St Nicholas have not survived. Given Agricola's apparent fame as a string player (he had been clarus vocum manuumque, according to the Epitaphion, and wrote several instrumental pieces), it is also possible that he had been associated, from an early age, with the Ghent guild of soft-instrument players. Very occasionally the composer is identified as ‘maistre Alexandre’; it is unclear whether this points to an academic degree or to recognized mastership in an established musical trade.
An Alessandro Alemanno, or Alessandro d'Alemagna, was active as a singer and viola player at various Italian musical centres in the early 1470s, and seems to have operated with a professional companion by the name of Antonio Pons, or Ponzo (likewise a viola player). It has often been assumed that this musician must be identical with the composer, though the latter was not actually German, since the county of Flanders was part of the French kingdom. No document ever gives Alessandro's surname, nor is he identified even once as ‘de Fiandra’. The case for identifying him with the composer must be tentative at best, and is weakened by a document from the court of Naples, dated 1456, which refers to a court singer Alessandro Alemanno – surely not the composer, who would have been about 10 years old at the time. (Given the almost complete absence of complete chapel rosters for Naples in the period 1455–80, it cannot be ruled out that he worked there continuously until 1470, when Alessandro Alemanno and Antonio Pons left the court of Naples to accept employment at Milan.) The case is further complicated by a Milanese document from December 1471 in which Alessandro Alemanno is said to have a cousin Pietro da Vienna ex Alemania – a man old enough to have been named as the father of one Sigismund by 1456. Nothing about Agricola's background suggests that he had any connections with Vienna. If documents or contemporary statements refer to the composer's origins at all, they invariably call him a Fleming or a Belgian. Edward Lerner's apparent identification of German chant versions in works by Agricola is problematic, given that he did not include liturgical sources from France and the Low Countries in his research, and that there are no exact matches even with the unique German variants he presented. (To illustrate the problem, Reinhard Strohm has pointed out that one of the works in question, Ave pulcherrima regina, is probably not a German piece, since it is based on a cantio of Lower Rhenish or Dutch origin.)
The earliest document to refer to Agricola with certainty comes from Cambrai Cathedral, where he received a payment of four pounds for his services as petit vicaire in 1475–6. It is about this time that the earliest surviving source for any of his works was copied: Gaudent in celis survives in D-Mbs Mus.ms.3154 on paper dated about 1476. So far as we can tell from the surviving sources, however, the international transmission of Agricola's music did not take off until the 1490s. Given the scarcity of French and Netherlandish sources from the 1470s and 80s it cannot be ruled out that his earliest works circulated mainly in those countries. (All we know for certain about the composer before 1491, after all, suggests that he lived and worked in Flanders and France.) Yet neither should we rule out the possibility that Agricola might have been a great deal younger than hitherto assumed. Even if the epitaph printed in 1538 was based on a first-hand report, the possibility remains that a stated age like 60 could have been as inflated – with the best of intentions, of course – as the ‘almost 100’ once credited to the deceased Ockeghem. (To suggest a possible parallel: when William Billings died in 1800, a Boston newspaper gave his age as 60, even though the family Bible confirms that he was born in 1746.) Ghent documents do not indicate a connection between Agricola's parents until the mid-1450s: in 1455 Lijsbette Naps lent money to Heinric Ackerman's employer, Joes Beste, and two years later Heinric served as surety for Joes's widow (whom he continued to serve as procurator) in a business transaction with Lijsbette.
Agricola is untraceable for at least 10 years after his employment at Cambrai. He is not included in a list of the French royal chapel dated 28 July 1486 (the only such list to survive from that decade), though he must have entered that establishment within the next five years. We know this because he left the French court without permission in 1491, heading first for Mantua and then Florence, where he was appointed at the Cathedral on 1 October at a monthly salary of four florins, and worked as a colleague of Henricus Isaac. (Isaac may be the composer of the Epitaphion mentioned earlier, since he wrote the Nil prosunt lacrimae that almost certainly constitutes its tertia pars.) A letter of Charles VIII of France to Piero de’ Medici, dated 25 April (probably 1492), urgently requests the return of ‘Alexandre Agricola, chantre de nostre chappelle’ as well as an unnamed ‘good lute player in his company’. Agricola's employment at Florence Cathedral ended on 1 June 1492. Barely two weeks later we find him at the court of Naples. In a letter of 13 June, King Ferrante I of Naples wrote to Charles VIII: ‘We have seen [Alexander] happily – as much for his being a servant of your majesty as for his own virtues – and he has stayed with us for a few days. Indeed, we have taken pleasure in his singing and we should have been glad to retain him in our service.’
Agricola returned to France (as Ferrante had been careful to promise Charles VIII), apparently passing through Florence on 28 October, when the SS Annunziata recorded his receipt of twelve gold florins ‘for the four months when he was in Rome and Naples’. Several months later, on 11 February 1493, King Ferrante instructed his ambassador at the French court to offer Alexander an annual salary of 300 ducats, ‘this being in accord with what he has asked’. (Although there were two Italian currencies called ducato, in either case the salary asked by Agricola would have significantly exceeded the 200 ducats demanded by Josquin at Ferrara in 1502.) The composer evidently accepted Ferrante's offer, but the latter was forced to postpone the appointment due to his rapidly worsening political situation in April 1493. By September of that year, he finally instructed his French ambassador to make Agricola ‘understand that he should not come’. Five months later, Agricola did come to Naples in the company of Johannes Ghiselin, though not to accept the job offer. A letter from 10 February 1494 (17 days after Ferrante's death) registers the composer's presence at the Neapolitan court, as does another letter of 6 March, though it is apparent from both documents that he was now in the employ of Piero de' Medici. (At exactly this time, the Florentine chapels were being disbanded in response to the preaching of Savonarola; evidently Agricola and Ghiselin had left Florence with permission, but without being formally dismissed.)
Nothing is known about the composer's whereabouts between March 1494 and August 1500, when he accepted employment at the court of Burgundy. It is possible that his mother's death in February 1499 made him return to Ghent: the city accounts record a small tax that he and his brother Jan paid over her inheritance, though Alexander need not have done so in person. In any case, as a Burgundian court singer Agricola did have occasion to return to his birthplace. Philip the Fair and his court were in Ghent on 30 November 1505, and the Burgundian accounts confirm the payment of his salary on that date, along with payments to such composers as Pierre de la Rue, Anthonius Divitis and Marbrianus de Orto. Several months later, the court departed on its ill-fated journey to Castile, reaching Valladolid by 22 July 1506. On that date Agricola received his last known payment. Soon after he must have caught the ‘raging fever’ (febris fervens) that was said to have killed him ‘on the land by Valladolid’ on 15 August 1506. His remains were buried in the town; it is not known in which church. Burgundian documents indicate that his prebends were located in Gorinchem and Valenciennes (Notre Dame de Salle).
On 15 November 1522, a certain ‘cantore Alessandro Agricola’ turns up at the court of Mantua, staying there until at least the next year. He may have been the son either of Alexander or more probably (since children were usually named after their godparents) of his brother Jan, who was apparently identical with the singer Johannes Agricola of Ghent (active at 's-Hertogenbosch in 1486–93 and 1496) and the composer Johannes Agricola who left settings of Fors seulement and Dat ic mijn lijden aldus helen moet.