Few records of Manchicourt's life survive: information about his life and work is obtained primarily from publications of his works. The earliest known information indicates that in 1525 he was a choirboy at Arras. By 1539, he was provost at the cathedral in Tours, where he would have had access to a considerable library of the works of the great master, and previous incumbent, Johannes Ockeghem. For at least nine years, from 1545 to 1554, he held the post of maître de chapelle at Nôtre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai. On the death of the incumbent, Nicolas Payen, in 1559, Manchicourt was appointed maestro de capilla flamenca (master of the Flemish chapel) at the court of Philip II in Madrid, which post he held until his death five years later.
The fact that Pierre Attaingnant, publisher of the French Royal Court, devoted his fourteenth and final volume of motets in 1539 entirely to Manchicourt's work (an honour he bestowed on no other, and emulated by Flemish publishers Susato and Phalèse in 1545 and 1554 respectively) bears testament to the composer's reputation in his day. Around the time of his death, Manchicourt's highly polyphonic style of composition rapidly went out of fashion — a fate shared with his contemporaries Nicolas Gombert, Jacobus Clemens and Thomas Crecquillon — as the liturgical reforms of the Council of Trent took hold, marking the transition from the High Renaissance to the less florid Late-Renaissance style of Victoria and Palestrina.
Manchicourt’s sacred works appear in more than fifty printed collections and at least twenty hand-copied manuscripts, dating from 1532 through to the late 16th century. His surviving sacred output consists of nineteen masses, a mass section, a Magnificat, 71 Latin motets (of which one has doubtful attribution and two have conflicting attribution), and two chansons spirituelles. A further nine sacred works — polychoral psalm settings — are contained in a degraded manuscript in Zaragoza whose contents are not documented.
Manchicourt's surviving secular output includes three dedicatory motets, and fifty French chansons that appear in at least sixteen publications (including one devoted entirely to Manchicourt's works).
Latin dedicatory motets
Nunc enim si centum 4vv (2.p. Ne dubitatis; 3.p. Innumeras unus) – in praise of Charles V
Nil pace est melius 5vv (2.p. Vive igitur felix) – in celebration of a treaty restoring possessions to Duke Moritz of Saxony
O decus, o patrie lux 5vv (2.p. Salve, pontificum) — in praise of Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, patron of the arts, to whom Manchicourt dedicated his 1554 volume of motets