Adrian Willaert was a Flemish composer of High Renaissance music. Mainly active in Italy, he was the founder of the Venetian School. He was one of the most representative members of the generation of northern composers who moved to Italy and transplanted the polyphonic Franco-Flemish style there.
Giaches de Wert was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal. He was one of the most influential of late sixteenth-century madrigal composers, particularly on Claudio Monteverdi, and his later music was formative on the development of music of the early Baroque era.
Cipriano de Rore was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in Italy. Not only was he a central representative of the generation of Franco-Flemish composers after Josquin des Prez who went to live and work in Italy, but he was one of the most prominent composers of madrigals in the middle of the 16th century. His experimental, chromatic, and highly expressive style had a decisive influence on the subsequent development of that secular music form.
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but usually features three to six voices, whilst the metre of the madrigal varies between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets. Unlike the verse-repeating strophic forms sung to the same music, most madrigals are through-composed, featuring different music for each stanza of lyrics, whereby the composer expresses the emotions contained in each line and in single words of the poem being sung.
Jacques Arcadelt was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in both Italy and France, and principally known as a composer of secular vocal music. Although he also wrote sacred vocal music, he was one of the most famous of the early composers of madrigals; his first book of madrigals, published within a decade of the appearance of the earliest examples of the form, was the most widely printed collection of madrigals of the entire era. In addition to his work as a madrigalist, and distinguishing him from the other prominent early composers of madrigals – Philippe Verdelot and Costanzo Festa – he was equally prolific and adept at composing chansons, particularly late in his career when he lived in Paris.
In music history, the Venetian School was the body and work of composers working in Venice from about 1550 to around 1610, many working in the Venetian polychoral style. The Venetian polychoral compositions of the late sixteenth century were among the most famous musical works in Europe, and their influence on musical practice in other countries was enormous. The innovations introduced by the Venetian school, along with the contemporary development of monody and opera in Florence, together define the end of the musical Renaissance and the beginning of the musical Baroque.
Baldassare Donato was an Italian composer and singer of the Venetian school of the late Renaissance. He was maestro di cappella of the prestigious St. Mark's Basilica at the end of the 16th century, and was an important figure in the development of Italian light secular music, especially the villanella.
1550 in music involved some significant events.
The decade of the 1540s in music involved some significant events.
Jan Nasco was a Franco-Flemish composer and writer on music, mainly active in Italy. He was the first director of the Veronese Accademia Filarmonica, and his writings, particularly a group of letters he wrote to the Academy in the 1550s, are important sources of information on performance practice regarding use of instruments in madrigals as well as motets.
Antonino Barges was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in Venice and Treviso. While known as a composer of light popular secular forms such as the villotta, he also wrote motets and a Requiem. He was a friend and probably a student of Adrian Willaert, the founder of the Venetian School, and was listed as a witness to Willaert's last will and testament.
Pietro Taglia was an Italian composer of the Renaissance, active in Milan, known for his madrigals. Stylistically he was a progressive, following the innovations of more famous composers such as Cipriano de Rore in Venice, and his music was well-known at the time.
Giovanni Domenico da Nola was an Italian composer and poet of the Renaissance.
Francesco Portinaro was an Italian composer and humanist of the Renaissance, active both in northern Italy and in Rome. He was closely associated with the Ferrarese Este family, worked for several humanistic Renaissance academies, and was well known as a composer of madrigals and dialogues.
Alfonso dalla Viola was an Italian composer and instrumentalist of the Renaissance. He was the principal composer at the Este court in Ferrara for about four decades in the middle sixteenth century, and was renowned as a player of several instruments, including the viola d'arco. While much of his incidental music, composed for court entertainments, is lost, several books of his madrigals have survived. His position as court composer in Ferrara paralleled that of Francesco Corteccia in the competing city of Florence.
Domenico Maria Ferrabosco was an Italian composer and singer of the Renaissance, and the eldest musician in a large prominent family from Bologna. He spent his career both in Bologna and Rome. His surviving music is all vocal, consisting of madrigals and motets, although he is principally known for his madrigals, which musicologist Alfred Einstein compared favorably to those of his renowned contemporary Cipriano de Rore.
Ippolito Chamaterò was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, originally from Rome but active in northern Italy. He wrote both sacred and secular music, particularly madrigals; all of his surviving music is vocal. His sacred musical style was in conformance with the Counter-Reformation musical ideals following the Council of Trent, and his madrigals were related stylistically to those of Adrian Willaert and Cipriano de Rore.
Oltremontani were those of the Franco-Flemish School of composers who dominated the musical landscape of Northern Italy during the middle of the sixteenth Century. The role of the oltremontani composers at the ducal courts of Italy was analogous to the dominance at the Spanish court of the Flemish chapel, and other composers of the Franco-Flemish School in Germany and France.
Note nere was a style of madrigal composition, which used shorter note values than usual and had more black note-heads.
Ippolito Baccusi was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, active in northern Italy, including Venice, Mantua, and Verona. A member of the Venetian School of composers, he had a strong reputation as a master of counterpoint, and wrote both sacred and secular vocal music.
