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• 
  

• 
  Florence
  Florence (Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] ( listen), alternate obsolete form: Fiorenza; Latin: Florentia) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area.
  Florence is famous for its history. A centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time, Florence is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1870 the city was also the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy.
  The historic centre of Florence attracts millions of tourists each year, and Euromonitor International ranked the city as the world's 72nd most visited in 2009, with 1,685,000 visitors. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the city is noted for its history, culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace, amongst others, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.
  
  wn.com/Florence
• 
  Mexico
  Mexico (ⁱ/ˈmɛksɨkoʊ/; Spanish: México, IPA: [ˈmexiko] ( listen)), officially the United Mexican States (Spanish:  Estados Unidos Mexicanos (help·info)), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States of America; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the thirteenth largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of over 113 million, it is the eleventh most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.
  In Pre-Columbian Mexico many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory from its base in México-Tenochtitlan, which was administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This territory would eventually become Mexico as the colony's independence was recognized in 1821. The post-independence period was characterized by economic instability, the Mexican-American War and territorial cession to the United States, a civil war, two empires and a domestic dictatorship. The latter led to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system. Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
  
  wn.com/Mexico
• 
  Rome
  Rome (/ˈroʊm/; Italian: Roma pronounced [ˈroːma] ( listen); Latin: Rōma) is a city and special comune ("Roma Capitale") in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and the capital of Lazio (Latin: Latium). With 2.8 million residents in 1,285.3 km² (496.3 sq mi), it is also the country's largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. Between 3.2 and 3.7 million people live in the Rome metropolitan area. The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.
  Rome's history spans two and a half thousand years. It was the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, which was the dominant power in Western Europe and the lands bordering the Mediterranean for over seven hundred years from the 1st century BC until the 7th century AD and the city is regarded as one of the birthplaces of western civilization. Since the 1st century AD Rome has been the seat of the Papacy and, after the end of Byzantine domination, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. In 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic.
  
  wn.com/Rome
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  Venice
  Venice (Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] ( listen), Venetian: Venexia [veˈnɛsja]; (Latin: Venetia) is a city in northeast Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. The city in its entirety is listed as World Heritage Site, along with its lagoon.
  Venice is the capital of the Veneto region. In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland), mostly in the large frazioni of Mestre and Marghera; 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE) (population 1,600,000).
  
  wn.com/Venice

• 
  Adrian Willaert
  Adrian Willaert (c. 1490 – 7 December 1562) was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance and 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.
  He was probably born at Bruges, although a secondary source has suggested Roeselare. According to his student, the renowned late 16th century music theorist Gioseffo Zarlino, Willaert went to Paris first to study law, but instead decided to study music. In Paris he met Jean Mouton, the principal composer of the French royal chapel and stylistic compatriot of Josquin des Prez, and studied with him.
  Sometime around 1515 Willaert first went to Rome. An anecdote survives that indicates the musical ability of the young composer: Willaert was surprised to discover the choir of the papal chapel singing one of his own compositions, most likely the six-part motet Verbum bonum et suave, and even more surprised to learn that they thought it had been written by the much more famous composer Josquin. When he informed the singers of their error – that he was in fact the composer – they refused to sing it again. Indeed Willaert's early style is very similar to that of Josquin, with smooth polyphony, balanced voices and frequent use of imitation.
  
  wn.com/Adrian_Willaert
• Alexander Agricola
  Alexander Agricola (1445 or 1446 – 15 August 1506) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. A prominent member of the Grande chapelle, the Habsburg musical establishment, he was a renowned composer in the years around 1500, and his music was widely distributed throughout Europe. He composed music in all of the important sacred and secular styles of the time.
  As is common with composers of the period, very little is known of his early life. He was born in Ghent, as suggested by a recently discovered epitaph, written in 1538. Most of his life he spent in posts in Italy, France and the Low Countries, though there are gaps where his activities are not known, and he seems to have left many of his posts without permission. He was a singer for Duke Sforza of Milan from 1471 to 1474, during the period when the Milanese chapel choir grew into one of the largest and most famous ensembles in Europe; Loyset Compère, Johannes Martini, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and several other composer-singers were also in Milan during those years.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Agricola
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  Andrea Gabrieli
  Andrea Gabrieli (1532/1533 – August 30, 1585) was an Italiancomposer and organist of the late Renaissance. The uncle of the somewhat more famous Giovanni Gabrieli, he was the first internationally renowned member of the Venetian School of composers, and was extremely influential in spreading the Venetian style in Italy as well as in Germany.
  Details on Gabrieli's early life are sketchy. He was probably a native of Venice, most likely the parish of S. Geremia. He may have been a pupil of Adrian Willaert at St. Mark's in Venice at an early age. There is some evidence that he may have spent some time in Verona in the early 1550s, due to a connection with Vincenzo Ruffo, who worked there as maestro di cappella – Ruffo published one of Gabrieli's madrigals in 1554, and Gabrieli also wrote some music for a Veronese academy. Gabrieli is known to have been organist in Cannaregio between 1555 and 1557, at which time he competed unsuccessfully for the post of organist at St. Mark's.
  In 1562 he went to Germany, where he visited Frankfurt am Main and Munich; while there he met and became friends with Orlande de Lassus, one of the most wide-ranging composers of the entire Renaissance, who wrote secular songs in French, Italian, and German, as well as abundant Latin sacred music. This musical relationship proved immensely fruitful for both composers: while Lassus certainly learned from the Venetian, Gabrieli took back to Venice numerous ideas he learned while visiting Lassus in Bavaria, and within a short time was composing in most of the current idioms, including one which Lassus entirely avoided: purely instrumental music.
  
  wn.com/Andrea_Gabrieli
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  Antoine Brumel
  Antoine Brumel (c. 1460 – 1512 or 1513) was a French composer. He was one of the first renowned French members of the Franco-Flemish school of the Renaissance, and, after Josquin des Prez, was one of the most influential composers of his generation.
  Little is known about his early life, but he was probably born west of Chartres, perhaps in the town of Brunelles, near to Nogent-le-Rotrou, making him one of the first of the Netherlandish composers who was actually French. He sang at Notre-Dame de Chartres from 9 August 1483 until 1486, and subsequently held posts at St Peter's in Geneva (until 1492) and Laon (around 1497) before becoming choirmaster to the boys at Notre-Dame de Paris from 1498 to 1500, and choirmaster to Alfonso I d'Este at Ferrara from 1506, replacing the famous composer Jacob Obrecht who had died of the plague there the previous year. The chapel there was disbanded in 1510, after which he evidently stayed in Italy; several documents connect him with churches in Faenza and Mantua, where he probably died in 1512 or shortly after. He is known to have written at least one work after his dismissal from Ferrara (the Missa de beata virgine), and he may have still have been alive in 1513 since there is a mention in a treatise of Vincenzo Galilei that Brumel was one of a group of composers who met with Pope Leo X in that year; however since Vincenzo was writing more than a generation later and reporting second-hand, and no other corroborating evidence has been found, this account is not considered to be certain. Then again, Heinrich Glareanus, writing later about Brumel, indicated that he lived to a "ripe old age", so it remains possible that he lived longer, but records have not survived.
  
  wn.com/Antoine_Brumel
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  Antoine Busnois
  Antoine Busnois (also Busnoys) (c. 1430 – November 6, 1492) was a French composer and poet of the early Renaissance Burgundian School. While also noted as a composer of sacred music, such as motets, he was one of the most renowned 15th-century composers of secular chansons. He was the leading figure of the late Burgundian school after the death of Guillaume Dufay.
  While details of his early life are largely conjectural, he was probably from the vicinity of Béthune in the Pas-de-Calais, possibly the hamlet of Busnes, to which his name seems to refer. He may have been related to the aristocratic family of Busnes; in particular, a Philippe de Busnes, canon of Notre-Dame in Lens, could have been a relative. He clearly received an excellent musical education, probably at a church choir school somewhere in northern or central France. An aristocratic origin may explain his early association with the French royal court: as early as the 1450s references to him appear there, and in 1461 he was a chaplain at Tours. That he was not entirely a man of peace is indicated by a petition for absolution he filed in Tours, dated February 28, 1461, in which he admitted to being part of a group that beat up a priest, "to the point of bloodshed", not one but five times. While in a state of anathema he was foolhardy enough to celebrate mass, an act which got him excommunicated; however Pope Pius II pardoned him.
  
  wn.com/Antoine_Busnois
• Antoine de Févin
  Antoine de Févin (ca. 1470 – late 1511 or early 1512) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was active at the same time as Josquin des Prez, and shares many traits with his more famous contemporary.
  Févin was most likely born in Arras, the son of an alderman. His brother Robert de Févin was also a composer. Most likely Antoine left Arras in the late 1480s, though there is no evidence that he went to Italy, the commonest destination for Franco-Flemish composers of the time. In the 1490s it is likely he became a priest (although there is no known documentation of that today), and he also may have obtained a master's degree at a university, since he is commonly known as maistre later in his life. By 1507, he was working as a singer and composer in the chapelle royale for Louis XII of France, who praised him highly. He died at Blois.
  The Swiss music theorist and biographer Heinrich Glarean, writing in 1547, noted that Févin was a follower of Josquin, and that he died young; he also mentioned him as being a composer of Orleans, though this most likely referred to the association of that city with the court of Louis XII.
  
  wn.com/Antoine_de_Févin
• Antonius Divitis
  Antonius Divitis (also Anthonius Rycke, and Anthoine Le Riche – "the rich") (c. 1470 – c. 1530) was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance, of the generation slightly younger than Josquin des Prez. He was important in the development of the parody mass.
  He was born in Leuven. He first appears in the historic record in 1501 in Bruges, at the church of St. Donatian, where he taught singing to the choirboys. Later in 1501 he became singing master, then he became succentor, and at the end of 1501 was ordained a priest. He took a similar musical post in Mechelen at the church of St. Rombout in 1504, but he had fallen into debt, and left his job in a hurry in 1505, evidently fleeing from bill collectors. In late 1505 he joined the singers in the chapel of Philip the Fair. Along with Pierre de la Rue, Alexander Agricola, and others in the chapel, he went to Spain in 1506 with Philip when he was summoned there to become king; although Philip died of typhoid later that year, the singers remained until 1508, maintained by Philip's insane widow, Joanna of Castile. The chapel was disbanded in 1508 and the singers scattered.
  
  wn.com/Antonius_Divitis
• Balduin Hoyoul
  Balduin Hoyoul (Liège, 1547-8; Stuttgart, 26 Nov 1594) was a Renaissance composer of the Franco-Flemish school.
  From the age of 13 he was a singer at the Court in Stuttgart under Ludwig Daser. 1563-64 he was a pupil of Lassus in Munich. In 1589 he took over from his father-in-law as Hofkapellmeister in Stuttgart. In 1593 he applied, unsuccessfully, for the more prestigious court post at Dresden. In 1594 he died of the plague and was succeeded in Stuttgart by another pupil of Lassus, Leonhard Lechner.
  
  wn.com/Balduin_Hoyoul
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  Carlo Gesualdo
  Carlo Gesualdo, also known as Gesualdo da Venosa (Venosa, 8 March 1566 – Gesualdo, 8 September 1613), Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer.
  As a composer of the late Renaissance, he is remembered for writing intensely expressive madrigals and sacred music that use a chromatic language not heard again until the late 19th century.
  Gesualdo's family had acquired the principality of Venosa in 1560. His uncle was Carlo Borromeo, later Saint Charles Borromeo. In addition, Gesualdo's mother, Girolama, was the niece of Pope Pius IV.
  Most likely he was born at Venosa, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, but little else is known about his early life. Even his birthdate — 1560, 1561 or 1566 — is a matter of some dispute, though a recently discovered letter from his mother indicates he was probably born in 1566. Gesualdo had a musical relationship with Pomponio Nenna, though whether it was student to teacher, or colleague to colleague, is uncertain. At any rate, he had a single-minded devotion to music from an early age, and showed little interest in anything else. In addition to the lute, he also played the harpsichord and guitar.
  
  wn.com/Carlo_Gesualdo
• Christopher Tye
  Christopher Tye (c. 1505 – c. 1572) was an English composer and organist, who studied at Cambridge University and in 1545 became a Doctor of Music both there and at Oxford.
  He was choirmaster of Ely Cathedral from about 1543 and also organist there from 1559. The title page to Tye's Actes of the Apostles (London 1553) describes him as one of the Gentlemen of his grace's most honourable chapel, and he may have been music teacher to King Edward VI, who reportedly quoted his father, Henry VIII, as saying England hath one God, one truth, one doctor hath for music's art, and that is Doctor Tye, admired for skill in music's harmony.
  Tye remained at Ely under the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary despite his apparent Protestant leanings. In 1560 or 1561 he resigned his post at Ely and took holy orders, becoming Rector of Doddington, Cambridgeshire. He died in 1572 or 1573, apparently still active under Elizabeth, for Anthony Wood relates that
  Dr Tye was a peevish and humoursome man, especially in his latter dayes, and sometimes playing on ye Organ in ye chap. of qu. Elizab. wh. contained much musick, but little of delight to the ear, she would send ye verger to tell him yt he play'd out of Tune: whereupon he sent word yt her ears were out of Tune.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Tye
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  Cipriano de Rore
  Cipriano de Rore (occasionally Cypriano) (1515 or 1516 – between September 11 and September 20, 1565) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in Italy. Not only was he 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.
  Little is known of Rore's early life. His probable birth years (1515/1516) are known from his age at death (49, recorded on his tombstone in the cathedral in Parma), and his probable birthplace was a small town in Flanders, Ronse (Renaix), right on the boundary between the French- and Dutch-speaking areas. Recent research has established that his parents were Celestinus Rore (died before 1564) and Barbara van Coppenolle, and he had at least two siblings, Franciscus and Celestinus. The family was active in Ronse at least since 1400, and their coat of arms appeared both on his personal seal and his tombstone in Parma Cathedral.
  
  wn.com/Cipriano_de_Rore
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  Claude Goudimel
  Claude Goudimel (c. 1514 to 1520 – between 28 August and 31 August 1572) was a French composer, music editor and publisher, and music theorist of the Renaissance.
  Claude Goudimel was born in Besançon. Few details of his life are known until he is documented in Paris in 1549, where he was studying at the University of Paris; in that year he also published a book of chansons. In the early 1550s he worked with printer Nicolas Du Chemin, and may have still been studying at the University of Paris until 1555; by 1555 he was also Du Chemin's partner in the publishing business.
  Goudimel moved to Metz in 1557, converting to Protestantism, and is known to have been associated with the Huguenot cause there; however he left Metz due to the increasing hostility of the city authorities to Protestants during the Wars of Religion. First he settled in his native town of Besançon, and later moved to Lyon.
  He was murdered in Lyon sometime between 28 and 31 August 1572, during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, along with much of the Huguenot population of the city.
  
  wn.com/Claude_Goudimel
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  Claude Le Jeune
  Claude Le Jeune (1528 to 1530 – buried 26 September 1600) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance. He was the primary representative of the musical movement known as musique mesurée, and a significant composer of the "Parisian" chanson, the predominant secular form in France in the latter half of the 16th century. His fame was widespread in Europe, and he ranks as one of the most influential composers of the time.
  He was born in Valenciennes, where he probably received his early musical training. Sometime fairly early in life he became a Protestant. The first record of his musical activity is from 1552, when four chansons attributed to him were published at Leuven, in anthologies of works by several composers. In 1564 he moved to Paris, where he became acquainted with the Huguenots. By this time he had already acquired some international fame, as evidenced by the appearance of his name in a list of "contemporary composers of excellence" in a manuscript copy of the Penitential Psalms of Orlande de Lassus, which were probably composed in the 1560s in Munich. Lassus may have met Le Jeune in the mid-1550s during a trip to France; however this has not been definitely established.
  
  wn.com/Claude_Le_Jeune
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  Clément Janequin
  Clément Janequin (c. 1485 – 1558) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers of popular chansons of the entire Renaissance, and along with Claudin de Sermisy, was hugely influential in the development of the Parisian chanson, especially the programmatic type. The wide spread of his fame was made possible by the concurrent development of music printing.
  Janequin was born in Châtellerault, Vienne. His career was highly unusual for his time, in that he never had a regular position with a cathedral or an aristocratic court. Instead he held a series of minor positions, often with important patronage. He was born in Châtellerault, near Poitiers, though no documents survive which establish any details of his early life or training. In 1505 he was employed as a clerk in Bordeaux, to Lancelot du Fau, who eventually became Bishop of Luçon; he retained this position until du Fau's death in 1523, at which time he took a position with the Bishop of Bordeaux. Around this time he became a priest, though his appointments were rarely lucrative; indeed he always complained about money.
  
  wn.com/Clément_Janequin
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  Cristóbal de Morales
  Cristóbal de Morales (c. 1500 – between September 4 and October 7, 1553) was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance. He is generally considered to be the most influential Spanish composer before Victoria.
  Cristóbal de Morales was born in Seville and, after an exceptional early education there which included a rigorous training in the classics as well as musical study with some of the foremost composers, he held posts at Ávila and Plasencia. All that is known about his family is that he had a sister, and that his father had died prior to his sister's marriage (in 1530). Others who lived in Seville were considered to be potential relatives of Morales. These include Cristóbal de Morales, whose position was to sing for the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1504, Alonso de Morales, whose title was treasurer of the cathedral in 1503, Francisco de Morales (d 1505), a canon, and Diego de Morales, who was the cathedral notary in 1525.
  
  wn.com/Cristóbal_de_Morales
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  Franchinus Gaffurius
  Franchinus Gaffurius (Franchino Gaffurio; January 14, 1451 – June 25, 1522) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was an almost exact contemporary of Josquin des Prez and Leonardo da Vinci, both of whom were his personal friends. He was one of the most famous musicians in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
  He was born in Lodi to an aristocratic family. Early in life he entered a Benedictine monastery, where he acquired his early musical training; later he became a priest. Later he lived in Mantua and Verona before settling in Milan as the maestro di cappella at the cathedral there, a position which he accepted in January 1484.
  During the previous decade the Sforza family, using the composer Gaspar van Weerbeke as a recruiter, had built the choir at their chapel in Milan into one of the largest and most distinguished musical ensembles in Europe: composer-singers such as Alexander Agricola, Loyset Compère and Johannes Martini had all been employed there. While the membership of the choir at the Milan cathedral was mostly Italian, the cross-influence between his choir and the group at the Sforza chapel was significant. Gaffurius retained the post at the cathedral for the rest of his life, and it was in Milan that he knew both Josquin des Prez and Leonardo da Vinci.
  
  wn.com/Franchinus_Gaffurius
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  Giaches de Wert
  Giaches de Wert (1535 – 6 May 1596) 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.
  Next to nothing is known about his early life, except that he was from Flanders, from either the vicinity of Ghent or Weert, which is near Antwerp. As a boy he went to Avellino in southern Italy, near Naples, where he became a choir boy in the chapel of Maria di Cardona, Marchesa of Padulla. Maria was the wife of Francesco d'Este, Marchese di Massalombarda, a captain under Charles V; Francesco was a son of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, and her husband Alfonso I d'Este). Francesco was often in France and adjacent areas on military campaigns, and as an adjunct to these adventures he brought musically talented youths back to Italy with him. Wert's association with the Este family was to endure through most of his life.
  
  wn.com/Giaches_de_Wert
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  Gilles Binchois
  Gilles de Binche (called Binchois), also known as Gilles de Bins (ca. 1400 – 20 September 1460), was a Franco-Flemish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian School, and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple, at least by contemporary scholars, his influence was arguably greater than either, since his works were cited, borrowed and used as source material more often than those by any other composer of the time.
  Binchois was probably from Mons, the son of Jean and Johanna de Binche, who may have been from the nearby town of Binche. His father was a councillor to Duke Guillaume IV of Hainault, and also had a position in a church in Mons. Nothing is known about Gilles until 1419, when he became organist at the church of Ste. Waudru in Mons. In 1423 went to live in Lille. Around this time he may have been a soldier in the service of the Burgundians, or perhaps the English Earl of Suffolk, as indicated by a line in the memorial motet written on his death by Ockeghem.
  
  wn.com/Gilles_Binchois
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  Gioseffo Zarlino
  Gioseffo Zarlino (31 January or 22 March 1517 – 4 February 1590) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was possibly the most famous music theorist between Aristoxenus and Rameau, and made a large contribution to the theory of counterpoint as well as to musical tuning.
  Zarlino was born in Chioggia, near Venice. His early education was with the Franciscans, and he later joined the order himself. In 1536 he was a singer at Chioggia Cathedral, and by 1539 he not only became a deacon, but also principal organist. In 1540 he was ordained, and in 1541 went to Venice to study with the famous contrapuntist and maestro di cappella of Saint Mark's, Adrian Willaert.
  In 1565, on the resignation of Cipriano de Rore, Zarlino took over the post of maestro di cappella of St. Mark's, one of the most prestigious musical positions in Italy, and held it until his death. While maestro di cappella he taught some of the principal figures of the Venetian school of composers, including Claudio Merulo, Girolamo Diruta, and Giovanni Croce, as well as Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer, and the famous reactionary polemicist Giovanni Artusi.
  
  wn.com/Gioseffo_Zarlino
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  Giovanni Artusi
  Giovanni Maria Artusi (c. 1540 – 18 August 1613) was an Italian theorist, composer, and writer.
  Artusi was one of the most famous reactionaries in musical history, fiercely condemning the new style developing around 1600, the innovations of which defined the early Baroque era. He was also a scholar and cleric at the Congregation San Salvatore at Bologna, and remained throughout his life devoted to his teacher Gioseffo Zarlino (the principal music theorist of the late sixteenth century). When Vincenzo Galilei first attacked Zarlino in the Dialogo of 1581, it provoked Artusi to defend his teacher and the style he represented.
  The most famous episode of Artusi's career, and one of the most famous episodes in the history of music criticism, occurred in 1600 and 1603 when he attacked the "crudities" and "license" shown in the works of a composer he initially refused to name (it was Monteverdi). Monteverdi replied in the introduction to his fifth book of madrigals (1605) with his discussion of the division of musical practice into two streams: what he called prima pratica, and seconda pratica: prima pratica being the previous polyphonic ideal of the sixteenth century, with flowing counterpoint, prepared dissonance, and equality of voices; and seconda pratica being the new style of monody and accompanied recitative, which emphasized soprano and bass voices, and in addition showed the beginnings of conscious functional tonality.
  
  wn.com/Giovanni_Artusi
• Giovanni de Macque
  Giovanni de Macque (Giovanni de Maque, Jean de Macque) (1548/1550 – September 1614) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, who spent almost his entire life in Italy. He was one of the most famous Neapolitan composers of the late 16th century; some of his experimentation with chromaticism was likely influenced by Gesualdo, who was an associate of his.
  Macque was born in Valenciennes, but moved to Vienna at an early age, where he sang as a choirboy, and where he studied with Philippe de Monte, the renowned composer of madrigals. When his voice broke in late 1563 — the only evidence for his birthdate — he was moved out of the choir and into a Jesuit college, and sometime before 1574 he moved to Rome, where he worked as a composer and as an organist; he published his first book of madrigals in 1576 (in Venice, which had a much more active publishing industry). While in Rome he met Marenzio, and his early book of serious madrigals show Marenzio's influence.
  Macque moved to Naples around 1585, where he became famous as the leader of the Neapolitan school. His first employment there was with the Gesualdo household, a place he remained until May 1590 (shortly before the Gesualdo murders: see Carlo Gesualdo). Some of his work at this time is dedicated to Carlo, as well as the other members of the aristocratic household: Cesare d'Avalos, father of Carlo's murdered wife, as well as Fabrizio, Carlo's father. Later in 1590, however, he became organist at Santa Casa dell'Annunziata in Naples, and in 1594 organist to the Spanish viceroy (Naples was a Spanish possession at the time); in 1599 he became maestro di cappella at the Chapel Royal of Naples. While maestro di cappella he taught many of the later Neapolitan composers, including Luigi Rossi.
  
  wn.com/Giovanni_de_Macque
• Giovanni Gabrieli
  Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 – 12 August 1612) was an Italian composer and organist. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance to Baroque idioms.
  Gabrieli was born in Venice. He was one of five children, and his father came from the region of Carnia and went to Venice shortly before Giovanni's birth. While not much is known about Giovanni's early life, he probably studied with his uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli; he may indeed have been brought up by him, as is implied by the dedication to his 1587 book of concerti, in which he described himself as "little less than a son" to his uncle. He also went to Munich to study with the renowned Orlando de Lassus at the court of Duke Albert V; most likely he stayed there until about 1579. Lassus was to be one of the principal influences on the development of his musical style.
  By 1584 he had returned to Venice, where he became principal organist at San Marco di Venezia, also known as Saint Mark's Basilica, in 1585, after Claudio Merulo left the post; following his uncle's death the following year he took the post of principal composer as well. Also after his uncle's death he began editing much of the older man's music, which would otherwise have been lost; Andrea evidently had had little inclination to publish his own music, but Giovanni's opinion of it was sufficiently high that he devoted much of his own time to compiling and editing it for publication.
  
  wn.com/Giovanni_Gabrieli
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  Guillaume Dufay
  Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397? – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.
  From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels. Circumstantial evidence claims him to have been born the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt, though this suggestion is as of yet unproven. Marie moved with her son to Cambrai early in his life, staying with a relative who was a canon of the cathedral there. Soon Dufay's musical gifts were noticed by the cathedral authorities, who evidently gave him a thorough training in music; he studied with Rogier de Hesdin during the summer of 1409, and he was listed as a choirboy in the cathedral from 1409 to 1412. During those years he studied with Nicolas Malin, and the authorities must have been impressed with the boy's gifts because they gave him his own copy of Villedieu’s Doctrinale in 1411, a highly unusual event for one so young. In June 1414, at the age of only 16, he had already been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, immediately adjacent to Cambrai. Later that year he probably went to the Council of Konstanz, staying possibly until 1418, at which time he returned to Cambrai.
  
  wn.com/Guillaume_Dufay
• Gustave Reese
  Gustave Reese (November 29, 1899 – September 7, 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications Music in the Middle Ages (1940) and Music in the Renaissance (1954); these two books remain the standard reference works for these two eras, with complete and precise bibliographical material, allowing for almost every piece of music mentioned to be traced back to a primary source.
  Reese was born in New York City. He was an avid scholar and had interests in many areas outside music, including art, architecture, and literature. He is also remarkable in that he lacked formal musicological training. He studied law at New York University, graduating in 1921. Though he was admitted to the New York State Bar, he opted to re-enroll and pursue a bachelor's of music from NYU, which he received in 1930. In 1927, however, he was already teaching classes at the university in medieval and Renaissance music. He continued teaching there intermittently until 1974, and he became Professor Emeritus in 1973. He also served as a visiting professor at a number of universities, including Harvard, Duke, UCLA, USC, Michigan, Oxford and Juilliard School of Music. He was a founder-member of the American Musicological Society (AMS) from 1934, serving as its first secretary (1934-1946). He became vice-president in 1946 and president of the organization in 1950. He has also held positions in the International Musicological Society(IMS), the Renaissance Society of America, and the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society.
  
  wn.com/Gustave_Reese
• Heinrich Glarean
  Heinrich Glarean (also Glareanus) (June 1488 – 28 March 1563) was a Swiss music theorist, poet and humanist. He was born in Mollis (in the canton of Glarus, hence his name) and died in Freiburg.
  After a thorough early training in music, he enrolled in the University of Cologne, where he studied theology, philosophy, and mathematics as well as music. It was there that he wrote a famous poem as a tribute to Emperor Maximilian I. Shortly afterwards, in Basle, he met Erasmus and the two humanists became lifelong friends.
  Glarean's first publication on music, a modest volume entitled Isogoge in musicen, was in 1516. In it he discusses the basic elements of music; probably it was used for teaching. But his most famous book, and one of the most famous and influential works on music theory written during the Renaissance, was the Dodecachordon, which he published in Basle in 1547. This massive work includes writings on philosophy and biography in addition to music theory, and includes no less than 120 complete compositions by composers of the preceding generation (including Josquin, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Isaac and many others). In three parts, it begins with a study of Boethius, who wrote extensively on music in the sixth century; it traces the use of the musical modes in plainsong (e.g. Gregorian chant) and monophony; and it closes with an extended study of the use of modes in polyphony.
  
  wn.com/Heinrich_Glarean
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  Heinrich Isaac
  Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin des Prez, Isaac influenced the development of music in Germany. Several variants exist of his name: Ysaac, Ysaak, Henricus, Arrigo d'Ugo, and Arrigo il Tedesco among them. (Tedesco means "Flemish" or "German" in Italian.)
  Little is known about Isaac's early life (or indeed his real name), but it is probable that he was born in Flanders, likely in Brabant. During the late 15th century, standards of music education in the region were excellent, and he likely was educated in his homeland, although the location is not known. Sixteenth-century Swiss music theorist and writer Heinrich Glarean claimed Isaac for Germany by dubbing him "Henricus Isaac Germanus", but in his will Isaac called himself "Ugonis de Flandria". A writer in the Milanese Revista critica della literatura italiana, June 1886, speculated that this 'Hugo' might be connected to 'Huygens' and discovered the name "Isaacke" in the town archives of Bruges.
  
  wn.com/Heinrich_Isaac
• Hernando Franco
  Hernando Franco (1532 – November 28, 1585) was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance, who was mainly active in Guatemala and Mexico.
  Franco was born in Galizuela (now part of Esparragosa de Lares, Badajoz Province) in Extremadura, a source region for many people who came to the New World in the 16th century. He was trained in music as a choir boy, and later apprentice and journeyman, at Segovia cathedral by Gerónimo de Espinar, who may also have been a teacher of Tomás Luis de Victoria. While a youth he met and befriended Lázaro del Álamo, who was to precede him as maestro de capilla in Mexico City.
  Most likely Franco went to Nueva España in the 1550s, though there is no record of his activities until 1571 when he appears in the records as maestro de capilla of the cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala, which had been elevated to cathedral rank in 1534. That magnificent building had been newly constructed in the new site in the valley of Panchoy, present-day Antigua Guatemala, after the city had to be moved from the previous site in Almolonga, beginning in 1542.
  
  wn.com/Hernando_Franco
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  Jacob Obrecht
  Jacob Obrecht (1457/8 – late July 1505) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous composer of masses in Europe in the late 15th century, being eclipsed by only Josquin des Prez after his death.
  What little is known of Obrecht's origins and early childhood comes mostly from his motet Mille quingentis. He was the only son of Ghent city trumpeter Willem Obrecht and Lijsbette Gheeraerts. His mother died in 1460 at the age of 20, and his father, in 1488 in Ghent.
  Details of his early education are sparse, but he likely learned to play the trumpet, like his father, and in so doing learned the art of counterpoint and improvisation over a cantus firmus. There is a good chance he knew Antoine Busnois at the Burgundian court; at any rate he certainly knew his music, since his earliest mass shows close stylistic parallels with the elder composer.
  Scholar, composer and clergyman, Obrecht seems to have had a succession of short appointments, two of which ended in less than ideal circumstances. There is one interesting record of his compensating a shortfall in his accounts by donating choirbooks he had copied. Throughout the period he was held in the highest respect both by his patrons and by the composers who were his peers.Tinctoris, who was writing in Naples, singles him out in a short list of the master composers of the day—all the more significant because he was only 25 at the time Tinctoris made his list, and on the other side of Europe.Erasmus served as one of Obrecht's choirboys around the year 1476.
  
  wn.com/Jacob_Obrecht
• Jean Mouton
  Jean Mouton (c. 1459 – 30 October 1522) was a French composer of the Renaissance. He was famous both for his motets, which are among the most refined of the time, and for being the teacher of Adrian Willaert, one of the founders of the Venetian School.
  He was born Jean de Hollingue either in 1459 or earlier, but records of his early life, as is so often the case with Renaissance composers, are scanty. Most likely he was from the village of Haut-Wignes (now Wirwignes), near Boulogne-sur-Mer. He probably began his first job, singer and teacher at the collegiate church in Saint Omer, then moved to Nesle (southeast of Amiens) in 1477, and in 1483 was made maître de chapelle there. Sometime around this time he became a priest, and in 1500 he was in charge of choirboys at the cathedral in Amiens. In 1501 he was in Grenoble, teaching choirboys, but he left the next year, most likely entering the service of Queen Anne of Brittany, and in 1509 he was granted a position again in Grenoble which he could hold in absentia. Mouton was now the principal composer for the French court. For the remainder of his life he was employed by the French court in one capacity or another, often writing music for state occasions—weddings, coronations, papal elections, births and deaths.
  
  wn.com/Jean_Mouton
• Johannes Nucius
  Johannes Nucius (also Nux, Nucis) (c. 1556 – March 25, 1620) was a German composer and music theorist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Although isolated from most of the major centers of musical activity, he was a polished composer in the style of Lassus and penned an extremely influential treatise on the rhetorical application of compositional devices.
  Nucius was born in Görlitz, in Lower Silesia. He studied at the Gymnasium in Görlitz with Johannes Winckler, who was so influential in his development that he referred to him reverentially in his later writings. In 1586 he became a monk in the monastery in Rauden, in Upper Silesia; there he received a humanistic education to supplement the considerable musical training he had received under Winckler. He rose in the hierarchy at the monastery, becoming a deacon, and later an abbot at Himmelwitz; however in 1598 he turned over most of his duties to his assistants in order to compose and write his musical treatise.
  He died at Himmelwitz (now Jemielnica, Poland), near the town of Strehlitz, in Upper Silesia (now Strzelce Opolskie, Poland).
  
  wn.com/Johannes_Nucius
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  Johannes Ockeghem
  Johannes Ockeghem (also Jean de, Jan; surname Okeghem, Ogkegum, Okchem, Hocquegam, Ockegham; other variant spellings are also encountered) (1410/1425 – February 6, 1497) was the most famous composer of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most influential composer between Dufay and Josquin des Prez. In addition to being a renowned composer, he was also an honored singer, choirmaster, and teacher.
  The spelling of Ockeghem's name comes from a supposed autograph of his which survived as late as 1885, and as reported by E. Giraudet, a historian in Tours; the document has since been lost. In 15th century sources, the spelling "Okeghem" predominates.
  Ockeghem is believed to have been born in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium. His birthdate is unknown; dates as early as 1410, and as late as 1430 have been proposed. The earlier date is based on the possibility that he knew Binchois in Hainaut before the older composer moved from Mons to Lille in 1423. Ockeghem would have to have been younger than 15 at the time. This particular speculation derives from Ockeghem's reference, in the lament he wrote on the death of Binchois in 1460, to a chanson by Binchois dated to that time. In this lament Ockeghem not only honored the older composer by imitating his style, but also revealed some useful biographical information about him. The comment by the poet Guillaume Crétin, in the lament he wrote on Ockeghem's death in 1497, "it was a great shame that a composer of his talents should die before 100 years old", is also often taken as evidence for the earlier birthdate for Ockeghem.
  
  wn.com/Johannes_Ockeghem
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  Johannes Tinctoris
  Johannes Tinctoris (c. 1435 – 1511) was a Flemish composer and music theorist of the Renaissance. He is known to have studied in Orléans, and to have been master of the choir there; he also may have been director of choirboys at Chartres. Because he was paid through the office of petites vicars at Cambrai Cathedral for four months in 1460, it has been speculated that he studied with Dufay, who spent the last part of his life there; certainly Tinctoris must at least have known the elder Burgundian there. Tinctoris went to Naples in c. 1472 and spent most of the rest of his life in Italy.
  Tinctoris published many volumes of writings on music. While they are not particularly original, borrowing heavily from ancient writers (including Boethius, Isidore of Seville, and others) they give an impressively detailed record of the technical practices and procedures used by composers of the day. He wrote the first dictionary of musical terms (the Diffinitorium musices); a book on the characteristics of the musical modes; a treatise on proportions; and three books on counterpoint, which is particularly useful in charting the development of voice-leading and harmony in the transitional period between Dufay and Josquin. The writings by Tinctoris were influential on composers and other music theorists for the remainder of the Renaissance.
  
  wn.com/Johannes_Tinctoris
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  John Dowland
  John Dowland (1563 – buried 20 February 1626) was an English Renaissance composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has been a source of repertoire for lutenists and classical guitarists during the twentieth century.
  Very little is known of John "the Bard" Dowland's early life, but it is generally thought he was born in London. Irish historian W. H. Grattan Flood claimed that he was born in Dalkey, near Dublin, but no corroborating evidence has ever been found either for that statement or for Thomas Fuller's claim that he was born in Westminster. In 1580 Dowland went to Paris, where he was in service to Sir Henry Cobham, the ambassador to the French court, and his successor, Sir Edward Stafford. He became a Roman Catholic at this time. In 1584, Dowland moved back to England where he was married. In 1588 he was admitted Mus. Bac. from Christ Church, Oxford. In 1594 a vacancy for a lutenist came up at the English court, but Dowland's application was unsuccessful - he claimed his religion led to his not being offered a post at Elizabeth I's Protestant court. However, his conversion was not publicized, and being Catholic did not prevent some other important musicians (such as William Byrd) from having a court career in England.
  
  wn.com/John_Dowland
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  John Taverner
  John Taverner (c. 1490 – 18 October 1545) was an English composer and organist, regarded as the most important English composer of his era.
  Nothing is known of Taverner's activities before 1524. He appears to have come from south Lincolnshire, but there is no indication of his parentage. According to one of his own letters, he was related to the Yerburghs, a well-to-do Lincolnshire family. The earliest information is that in 1524 Taverner travelled from Tattershall, Lincolnshire, to the Church of St Botolph in nearby Boston as a guest singer. A couple years later, in 1526, Taverner became the first Organist and Master of the Choristers at Christ Church, Oxford, appointed by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The college had been founded in 1525 by Cardinal Wolsey, and was then known as Cardinal College. Immediately before this, Taverner had been a clerk fellow at the Collegiate Church of Tattershall, Lincolnshire. In 1528 he was reprimanded for his (probably minor) involvement with Lutherans, but escaped punishment for being "but a musician". Wolsey fell from favour in 1529, and in 1530 Taverner left the college.
  
  wn.com/John_Taverner
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  Josquin des Prez
  Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] (French pronunciation: [ʒɔskɛ̃ depʁe]; c. 1450/1455 – 27 August 1521), often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He is also known as Josquin Desprez and Latinized as Josquinus Pratensis, alternatively Jodocus Pratensis, although he himself expressed his preferred spelling of his name, Josquin des Prez, in an acrostic in his motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix. He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime.
  
  wn.com/Josquin_des_Prez
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  Leonel Power
  Leonel Power (1370 to 1385 – 5 June 1445) was an English composer of the late Medieval and early Renaissance eras. Along with John Dunstaple, he was one of the major figures in English music in the early 15th century.
  Very little is known about Power's life. Documents dating from early 1440s refer to him as a native of Kent. Stylistic analysis of his music, as well as his probable age during his known appointments, show that he may have been born between 1370 and 1385. A suggestion that Power was of Irish origin, which appeared in W.H.G. Flood's 1905 A History of Irish Music, is usually discounted by modern scholars, since Flood is not known to have had any other sources on Power's life than are currently available.
  The earliest dated reference to Power refers to him as instructor to the choristers of the household chapel of Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence. The duke died in 1421; the next reference to Power is from 1423: on 14 May he joined the fraternity of Christ Church, Canterbury. He almost certainly served as choirmaster of the cathedral, and may also have been employed by John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford. He died at Canterbury on 5 June 1445 and was buried the next day; several notices of his death survive.
  
  wn.com/Leonel_Power
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  Loyset Compère
  Loyset Compère (c. 1445 – 16 August 1518) was a French composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italianate Renaissance style to France.
  His exact place of birth is not known, but documents of the time assign him to a family from the province of Artois (in modern France), and suggest he may have been born in Hainaut (in modern Belgium). At least one source from Milan indicates he described himself as coming from Arras, also in Artois. Both the date and probable place of birth are extremely close to those of Josquin des Prez; indeed the area around the current French-Belgian border produced an astonishing number of excellent composers in the 15th and 16th centuries, composers whose fame spread throughout Europe. Often these composers are known as the Franco-Flemish, or as the Dutch School.
  In the 1470s Compère worked as a singer in Milan at the chapel of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza, during the time that composers such as Johannes Martini and Gaspar van Weerbeke were also singing there. The chapel choir in the early 1470s grew into one of the largest and most famous singing ensembles in Europe. After the murder of the duke in 1476, Compère appears to have been "laid off" from the chapel, and he may have returned to France at this time. Sometime during the next ten years he began to work at the French court, and he accompanied Charles VIII on his invasion of Italy in 1494 (in what capacity is not known). He was in Rome in early 1495 during the occupation of the city by Charles and his army.
  
  wn.com/Loyset_Compère
• 
  Luca Marenzio
  Luca Marenzio (also Marentio) (October 18? 1553? – August 22, 1599) was an Italian composer and singer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the most renowned composers of madrigals, and wrote some of the most famous examples of the form in its late stage of development, prior to its early Baroque transformation by Monteverdi. In all, Marenzio wrote around 500 madrigals, ranging from the lightest to the most serious styles, packed with word-painting, chromaticism, and other characteristics of the late madrigal style. Marenzio was influential as far away as England, where his earlier, lighter work appeared in 1588 in the Musica Transalpina, the collection that initiated the madrigal craze in that country. Marenzio worked in the service of several aristocratic Italian families, including the Gonzaga, Este, and Medici, and spent most of his career in Rome.
  According to biographer Leonardo Cozzando, writing in the late 17th century, Marenzio was born at Coccaglio, a small town near Brescia, as one of seven children to a poor family. His father was a notary clerk in Brescia. A birthdate of October 18, 1553 has been proposed, based his father's stating in 1588 that his son was 35, and a suggestion that he may have been named after St. Luke, whose feast day is on October 18. He may have had some early musical training under Giovanni Contino, who was maestro di cappella at Brescia Cathedral from 1565 to 1567. He may also have gone with Contino to Mantua in 1568 when Contino began serving the Mantuan Gonzaga family; later in his life, Marenzio mentioned having spent several years in Mantua in the service of the Gonzaga family, but was unspecific as to which years.
  
  wn.com/Luca_Marenzio
• Luzzasco Luzzaschi
  Luzzasco Luzzaschi (c. 1545 – September 10, 1607) was an Italian composer, organist, and teacher of the late Renaissance. He was born and died in Ferrara, and despite evidence of travels to Rome it is assumed that Luzzaschi spent the majority of his life in his native city. He was a skilled representative of the late Italian madrigal style, along with Palestrina, Wert, Monte, Lassus, Marenzio, Gesualdo and others.
  As a pupil of Cipriano de Rore, Luzzaschi developed his craft and eventually came to be an influential pedagogue himself. Anthony Newcomb writes:
  In 1564, Luzzaschi was appointed as principal organist to the d'Este court. His facility as a keyboard player must have been paramount, for his competence on Nicola Vicentino's microtonal archicembalo was actively documented throughout his career.
  Luzzaschi is widely remembered due to his association with the famous Concerto delle donne, a private female vocal ensemble founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. In addition to his duties as court organist, as director for the ensemble he composed expert madrigals that required virtuosic vocal skill and advanced musicianship. Expressing a highly ornamented soprano line, his famous publication, Madrigali…per cantare, et sonare, a uno, e doi, e tre soprani of 1601 contained repertory performed by this expert troupe.
  
  wn.com/Luzzasco_Luzzaschi
• Manuel de Zumaya
  Manuel de Zumaya or Manuel de Sumaya (c. 1678 – 1755) was perhaps the most famous Mexican composer of the colonial period of New Spain. His music was the culmination of the Baroque style in the New World; of Spanish, French, Dutch, British, and Portuguese colonial composers, none stand out as much as Zumaya did. He was the first person in the western hemisphere to compose an Italian-texted opera, entitled Partenope (now lost).
  Manuel de Zumaya was born in Mexico and was a mestizo (of mixed Native American and European descent).
  In 1715, he was appointed chapelmaster of Mexico City's cathedral, and was one of the first Americans to become one. He served there until 1738 when he moved to Oaxaca, where he followed his close friend Bishop Tomas Montaño against the vigorous and continuous protests of the Mexico City Cathedral Chapel Council for him to stay.
  Manuel de Zumaya died on December 21, 1755, in Oaxaca, where he had resided since 1738.
  His works are a multiplicity of his talents and styles. He was a master of the older Renaissance style and of the newer Baroque style.
  
  wn.com/Manuel_de_Zumaya
• Martin Agricola
  Martin Agricola (6 January 1486 – 10 June 1556) was a German composer of Renaissance music and a music theorist.
  He was born in Schwiebus in Lower Silesia. His German name was Sohr or Sore.
  From 1524 until his death he lived at Magdeburg, where he occupied the post of teacher or cantor in the Protestant school. The senator and music-printer Georg Rhau, of Wittenberg, was a close friend of Agricola, whose theoretical works, providing valuable material concerning the change from the old to the new system of notation, he published.
  Among Agricola's other theoretical works is Musica instrumentalis deudsch (1529), a study of musical instruments, and one of the most important works in early organology; and one of the earliest books on the Rudiments of music.
  Agricola was also the first to harmonize in four parts Martin Luther's chorale, Ein feste Burg.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Martin_Agricola
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  Michael Praetorius
  Michael Praetorius (probably February 15, 1571 – February 15, 1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to make better the relationship between Protestants and Catholics.
  He was born Michael Schultze, the youngest son of a Lutheran pastor, in Creuzburg, in present-day Thuringia. After attending school in Torgau and Zerbst, he studied divinity and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt (Oder). After receiving his musical education, from 1587 he served as organist at the Marienkirche in Frankfurt. From 1592/3 he served at the court in Wolfenbüttel, under the employ of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He served in the duke's State Orchestra Brunswick first as organist and later (from 1604) as Kapellmeister.
  His first compositions appeared around 1602/3. Praetorius had begun writing some of them when Regensburg was the parliamentary seat of the Holy Roman Empire. Their publication primarily reflects the care for music at the court of Gröningen. The motets of this collection were the first in Germany to make use of the new Italian performance practices; as a result, they established him as a proficient composer.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Praetorius
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  Nicola Vicentino
  Nicola Vicentino (1511 – 1575 or 1576) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most visionary musicians of the age, inventing, among other things, a microtonal keyboard, and devising a practical system of chromatic writing two hundred years before the rise of equal temperament.
  Little is known of his early life. Born in Vicenza, he may have studied with Adrian Willaert in Venice, which was close by, and he acquired an early interest in the contemporary humanistic revival, including the study of ancient Greek music theory and performance practice (about which little was known, but was then being uncovered, through the work of scholars such as Girolamo Mei and Giangiorgio Trissino).
  At some time in the 1530s or early 1540s he went to Ferrara, which was to become the center for experimental secular music in Italy from the middle to the end of the 16th century. Apparently he served as a music tutor to the Duke of Este as well as some of his family members, and some of Vicentino's music was sung at the court of Ferrara.
  
  wn.com/Nicola_Vicentino
• Nicolas Gombert
  Nicolas Gombert (c. 1495 – c. 1560) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most famous and influential composers between Josquin des Prez and Palestrina, and best represents the fully developed, complex polyphonic style of this period in music history.
  Details of his early life are sketchy, but he was likely born around 1495 in southern Flanders, probably between Lille and Saint-Omer, possibly in the town of La Gorgue. German writer and music theorist Hermann Finck wrote that Gombert studied with Josquin; this would have been during the renowned composer's retirement in Condé-sur-l'Escaut, sometime between 1515 and 1521.
  
  wn.com/Nicolas_Gombert
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  Orlande de Lassus
  Orlande de Lassus (also Orlandus Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Roland de Lassus, or Roland Delattre) (1532 (possibly 1530) – 14 June 1594) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance. He is today considered to be the chief representative of the mature polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school, and one of the three most famous and influential musicians in Europe at the end of the 16th century (the other two being Palestrina and Victoria).
  Lassus was born in Mons in the County of Hainaut (modern day Belgium). Information about his early years is scanty, although some uncorroborated stories have survived, the most famous of which is that he was kidnapped three times because of the singular beauty of his singing voice. At the age of twelve, he left the Low Countries with Ferrante Gonzaga and went to Mantua, Sicily, and later Milan (from 1547 to 1549). While in Milan, he made the acquaintance of the madrigalist Spirito l'Hoste da Reggio, a formative influence on his early musical style.
  
  wn.com/Orlande_de_Lassus
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  Orlando Gibbons
  Orlando Gibbons (baptised 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. He was a leading composer in the England of his day.
  Gibbons was born in Cambridge and christened at Oxford the same year – thus appearing in Oxford church records.
  Between 1596 and 1598 he sang in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, where his brother Edward Gibbons (1568–1650), eldest of the four sons of William Gibbons, was master of the choristers. The second brother Ellis Gibbons (1573–1603) was also a promising composer, but died young. Orlando entered the university in 1598 and achieved the degree of Bachelor of Music in 1606.James I appointed him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he served as an organist from at least 1615 until his death. In 1623 he became senior organist at the Chapel Royal, with Thomas Tomkins as junior organist. He also held positions as keyboard player in the privy chamber of the court of Prince Charles (later King Charles I), and organist at Westminster Abbey. He died at age 41 in Canterbury of apoplexy, and a monument to him was built in Canterbury Cathedral. A suspicion immediately arose that Gibbons had died of the plague, which was rife in England that year. Two physicians who had been present at his death were ordered to make a report, and performed an autopsy, the account of which survives in The National Archives:
  
  wn.com/Orlando_Gibbons
• Philippe Rogier
  Philippe Rogier (c. 1561 – 29 February 1596) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active at the Habsburg court of Philip II in Spain. He was one of the last members of the Franco-Flemish school, in the closing days of the Renaissance period in music history, and was a prolific composer; however most of his music was lost in the destruction by fire of the library of John IV during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
  He was born in Arras, in present-day France, around 1561. Presumably he received his early training there or nearby, and his talent was sufficient for him to be brought in 1572 to Spain to sing in the choir of Philip II in Madrid. Boys were often recruited from the Low Countries to become singers in the imperial chapel; the numerous cathedral schools in the towns of northern France and the Netherlands provided a rich environment from which the Habsburgs could cherry-pick the best musicians. Rogier became assistant director of the capilla flamenca in 1584, chaplain by 1586, and director of music at the court of Philip in 1586 on the death of the previous director, George de La Hèle. Sometime before 1595 he also become a priest.
  
  wn.com/Philippe_Rogier
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  Philippe Verdelot
  Philippe Verdelot (1480 to 1485 – c. 1530 to 1532?) was a French composer of the Renaissance, who spent most of his life in Italy. He is commonly considered to be the father of the Italian madrigal, and certainly was one of its earliest and most prolific composers; in addition he was prominent in the musical life of Florence during the period after the recapture of the city by the Medici from the followers of Girolamo Savonarola.
  Verdelot was born in Les Loges, Seine-et-Marne, France. Details of his early life are obscure. He probably came to Italy at an early age, spending the first decade or two of the 16th century at some cities in northern Italy, most likely including Venice. A painting of 1511, described by Vasari but never positively identified, is believed by many musicologists to show Verdelot in Venice with an Italian singer.
  Verdelot is known to have been maestro di cappella at the Baptisterium San Giovanni in Florence from 1523 to 1525; and he seems also to have been employed at the Cathedral there, from 1523 until 1527. In 1526 he collaborated with Niccolò Machiavelli on a production of Machiavelli's famous cynical comedy La Mandragola. While the play was written in 1518, the 1526 performance in Florence was dedicated to the Medici pope, Clement VII. Both Machiavelli, expelled from Florence by the Medici, and Verdelot, generally sided with the Florentine Republic against the Medici, but attempted to play the delicate political game of pleasing both sides. The several pieces which Verdelot wrote for Machiavelli's play, while called canzone, are considered to be the earliest madrigals.
  
  wn.com/Philippe_Verdelot
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  Pierre de La Rue
  Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452 – 20 November 1518), called Piersson, was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, and a long associate of the Habsburg-Burgundian musical chapel, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as one of the most famous and influential composers in the Netherlands polyphonic style in the decades around 1500.
  La Rue was probably born at Tournai, in modern Belgium, and likely educated at the Notre-Dame Cathedral there, which had a substantial musical establishment. He may have been the son of Jean de la Rue, a master enlumineur of the town of Tournai.
  While no records remain of his childhood, a Peter vander Straten (the Flemish equivalent of his name) is mentioned in the archives of the cathedral of Ste. Gudule in Brussels in 1469-1470, as an adult (tenor) singer; this is considered very likely to have been him. In 1471 he was in Ghent at the Jacobskerk as a part-time singer, paid from the cathedral's miscellaneous fund, suggesting he was brought in for special performances of polyphony. Subsequently he was employed in Nieuwpoort in 1472, at the church of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, probably initially as a temporary arrangement, but by the end of the year the church authorities hired him on a more permanent basis. He was no longer employed there by 1477/8 for his name had vanished from the account-book.
  
  wn.com/Pierre_de_La_Rue
• Pietro Aron
  Pietro Aron, also known as Pietro Aaron (1489 – after 1545), was an Italian music theorist and composer. He was born in Florence and probably died in Bergamo (other sources state Florence or Venice).
  Little is documented of Aron's early life, but it is known that he was of Jewish origin, and was educated in Italy. Musically he seems to have been largely self-taught. He makes the claim in his writings that he was personally familiar with Obrecht, Josquin, Heinrich Isaac, and others while he was in Florence; if true, this would have had to have been in the late 1480s to mid 1490s. Between 1515 and 1522 he was cantor at the cathedral of Imola, and in 1516 he became a priest there. By February 1523 he had gone to Venice, was cantor of Rimini Cathedral and worked for Sebastiano Michiel, who was Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. In 1525 he was "maestro di casa" in a Venetian house. In 1536, after the death of Michiel, he joined a monastery in Bergamo where he remained until the end of his life; at least one publication dates from this time.
  
  wn.com/Pietro_Aron
• Pietro Cerone
  Pietro Cerone (1566 – 1625) was an Italian music theorist, singer and priest of the late Renaissance. He is most famous for an enormous music treatise he wrote in 1613, which is useful in the studying compositional practices of the 16th century.
  Cerone was born in Bergamo. While Italian, he spent most of his life in Spanish-dominated Naples, Sardinia, and later in Spain: he did most of his writing in Spanish. He was unusual in being an Italian musician in Spain; far more often in the 16th century, Spanish musicians went to Italy, as in the case of Victoria. In 1603 he returned to Naples, where he was a priest and singer until his death. It was in Naples that he wrote his two most famous treatises.
  The first of these, in Italian, was Le regole più necessarie per l'introduzione del canto fermo, which he published in 1609. It was a didactic and practical work on singing plainsong, which he probably used in his work at the Neapolitan church of Ss Annunziata. Four years later, however, he published a monumental volume on music theory, El melopeo y maestro: tractado de música theorica y pratica; en que se pone por extenso; lo que uno para hazerse perfecto musico ha menester saber, which consisted of 22 volumes, 849 chapters, and 1160 pages in the original Spanish.
  
  wn.com/Pietro_Cerone
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  Thomas Campion
  Thomas Campion (sometimes Campian) (12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.
  Campion was born in London, the son of John Campion, a clerk of the Court of Chancery, and Lucy (née Searle – daughter of Laurence Searle, one of the queen's serjeants-at-arms). Upon the death of Campion's father in 1576, his mother married Augustine Steward, dying soon afterwards. His step-father assumed charge of the boy and sent him, in 1581, to study at Peterhouse, Cambridge as a "gentleman pensioner"; he left the university after four years without taking a degree. He later entered Gray's Inn to study law in 1586. However, he left in 1595 without having been called to the bar. On 10 February 1605 he received his medical degree from the University of Caen.
  Campion is thought to have lived in London, practicing as a physician, until his death March 1620 – possibly of the plague. He was apparently unmarried and had no children. He was buried the same day at St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Campion
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  Thomas Crecquillon
  Thomas Crecquillon (c. 1505 – probably early 1557) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He is considered to be a member of the Netherlands school. While his place of birth is unknown, it was probably within the region loosely known at the time as the Netherlands, and he probably died at Béthune.
  Very little is known about his early life. He was a member of the chapel of Emperor Charles V, but whether he was maître de chapelle or merely a singer there is still a matter of dispute; the surviving documents are contradictory. Later he seems to have held positions at Dendermonde, Béthune, Leuven, and Namur. Unlike many of the composers of the Netherlandish school he seems never to have left his home region for Italy or other parts of Europe. Most likely he died in 1557, probably a victim of the serious outbreak of plague in Béthune that year.
  Crecquillon's music was highly regarded by his contemporaries, and shows a harmonic and melodic smoothness which prefigures the culminating polyphonic style of Palestrina. He wrote twelve masses, over 100 motets and almost 200 chansons. Stylistically he uses points of imitation, rather in the manner of Josquin des Prez, in almost all of his sacred works (the masses and motets), following the contemporary trend towards pervading imitation and polyphonic complexity. Unlike Josquin, however, Crecquillon rarely varies his texture for dramatic effect, preferring smoothness and consistency.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Crecquillon
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  Thomas Tallis
  Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 23 November 1585) was an English composer. Tallis flourished as a church musician in 16th century Tudor England. He occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of England's early composers. He is honoured for his original voice in English musicianship. No contemporary portrait of Tallis survives: the earliest, painted by Gerard van der Gucht, dates from 150 years after Tallis died, and there is no certainty that it is a likeness.
  Little is known about Tallis's early life, but there seems to be agreement that he was born in the early 16th century, toward the close of the reign of Henry VII. Little is known about Tallis's childhood and his significance with music at that age. However, there are suggestions that he was a child of the chapel royal St. James's palace, the same singing establishment which he later went to as a man. His first known appointment to a musical position was as organist of Dover Priory in 1530–31, a Benedictine priory at Dover (now Dover College) in 1532. His career took him to London, then (probably in the autumn of 1538) to the Augustinian abbey of Holy Cross at Waltham until the abbey was dissolved in 1540. Tallis acquired a volume at the dissolution of the monastery of Waltham Holy Cross and preserved it; one of the treatises in it was by Leonel Power, and the treatise itself prohibits consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Tallis
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  Tobias Hume
  Tobias Hume (possibly 1569 – 16 April 1645) was a Scottish composer, viol player and soldier.
  Little is known of his life. Some have suggested that he was born in 1569 because he was admitted to the London Charterhouse in 1629, a pre-requisite to which was being at least 60 years old, though there is no certainty over this. He had made his living as a professional soldier, probably as a mercenary. He was an officer with the Swedish and Russian armies.
  His published music includes pieces for viols (including many solo works for the lyra viol) and songs. They were gathered in two collections, The First Part of Ayres (or Musicall Humors, 1605) and Captain Humes Poeticall Musicke (1607). He was a particular champion of the viol over the then-dominant lute, something which caused John Dowland to publish a rebuttal of Hume's ideas.
  Hume was also known as a prankster, as some of his somewhat unusual compositions illustrate. His most notorious piece was "An Invention for Two to Play upone one Viole". Two bows are required and the smaller of the two players is obliged to sit in the lap of the larger player. This work was notated in tablature and is indeed technically possible to play.^{[citation needed]} His instructions to "drum this with the backe of your bow" in another piece, "Harke, harke," from the First Part of Ayres, constitute the earliest known use of col legno in Western music.
  
  wn.com/Tobias_Hume
• Tomás de Santa María
  Fr. Tomás de Santa María O.P. (also Tomás de Sancta Maria) (ca. 1510 – 1570) was a Spanish music theorist, organist and composer of the Renaissance. He was born in Madrid but the date is highly uncertain; he died in Ribadavia. Little is known about his life except that he joined the Dominican order of friars in 1536, he was employed as an organist in various locales in mid-century, and he published his major work, Arte de tañer fantasía, in Valladolid in 1565.
  This book is a comprehensive work on keyboard technique of the time. Its principal aim is to teach how to improvise in a fugal style, but to get to that point, difficult to the most accomplished musicians of any age, he includes detailed treatments of the rudiments of music, the eight church modes, ornaments, touch, articulation, fingering, and counterpoint, including a categorization of four-note chords, rather similar to what Pietro Aron had written several decades before in Italy (which work he may have used as a source). The classification of chords is especially significant for this is the period in music history during which composers began to think in terms of harmonic progression as a generative mechanism rather than purely the happenstance of intersecting, independent melodic lines. Santa María's book also gives instruction for creating music using the paired imitation technique of Josquin des Prez, who he clearly held to be the master of the style.
  
  wn.com/Tomás_de_Santa_María
• Vicente Lusitano
  Vicente Lusitano (died after 1561) was a Portuguese music composer and theorist of the late Renaissance.
  He was born in Olivença, but little else is known for certain of his life, including the dates of his birth and death. Some information is recorded in the 18th century biography by Barbosa Machado: he came from Olivença, became a priest, and was employed as a teacher both at Padua and Viterbo. Machado also called him a mestizo. Very little of what Machado wrote about him has been verified by any other source, except the date of publication (1561) of a music theory treatise at Venice.
  As a composer he wrote a number of choral works, including motets and a madrigal, but he is better known by far for his work as a theorist. In a 1551 debate in Rome, he espoused traditional views on the role of the three genera in music (diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic) over more radical ones put forward by Nicola Vicentino (Lusitano was deemed to have won the debate). His Introdutione facilissima et novissima de canto ferma (Rome, 1553, and again at Venice, 1561), contains an introduction to music, a section on improvised counterpoint, and his views on the three genera.
  
  wn.com/Vicente_Lusitano
• Vincenzo Galilei
  Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520 – 2 July 1591) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and of the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei. He was a seminal figure in the musical life of the late Renaissance, and contributed significantly to the musical revolution which demarcates the beginning of the Baroque era.
  Vincenzo, in his study of pitch and string tension, produced perhaps the first non-linear mathematical description of a natural phenomenon known to history. This was an extension of a Pythagorean tradition, but went beyond it. Many scholars credit him with directing the activity of his son away from pure, abstract mathematics and towards experimentation using mathematical quantitative description of the results – a direction which was of utmost importance for the history of physics, and natural science in general.
  He was born around 1520 in Santa Maria a Monte (Tuscany), and began studying the lute at an early age. Sometime before 1562 he moved to Pisa, where he married into a noble family. In 1564 Galileo was born, the first of his either six or seven children; another son, Michelagnolo, born in 1575, who also became an accomplished lutenist and composer.
  
  wn.com/Vincenzo_Galilei
• Walter Frye
  Walter Frye (d. 1474?) was an English composer of the early Renaissance.
  Nothing certain is known about his life. He may have been a "Walter Cantor" at Ely Cathedral between 1443 and 1466, and he may have been the Walter Frye who joined the London Parish Clerks in 1456; he also may have been the Walter Frye who left a will at Canterbury in 1474.
  Most of Frye's music survives in manuscripts from the continent, which has suggested to scholars that he spent much of his time there; however stylistically his music is closer to that of other English composers than to that of the Burgundian School, the most notable contemporary movement on the continent. A reason sometimes given for the survival of his music in continental sources is that the few remaining English 15th century manuscripts rarely mention the names of composers; therefore there may be a good deal of his music which is simply anonymous. Survival of music from the period in England is sparse because most of it was destroyed during the ransacking of the monasteries carried out between 1536 and 1540 by Henry VIII.
  
  wn.com/Walter_Frye
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  William Byrd
  William Byrd (1540 or late 1539 – 4 July 1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school) and consort music.
  Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely to the research of John Harley (Harley, 1997). Following the discovery of a document dated 2 October 1598 in which Byrd's age is given as "58 years or there abouts," it now appears that he was born in 1540. The older dating 1542–3 is derived from Byrd's will (endorsed on 22 November 1622) which describes him as 'in the 80th year of my age'. It now becomes clear that it must have been drafted about three years earlier than the date of endorsement. Byrd was born in London, the son of a Thomas Byrd (not Thomas Byrd of the Chapel Royal) about whom little is known. Byrd had two brothers, Symon'd and John, and four sisters. It is clear from a reference in the prefatory material in the Tallis/Byrd Cantiones of 1575 that Byrd was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, then the leading composing member of the Chapel Royal Choir. Byrd also worked in collaboration with two other Chapel Royal singing-men, John Sheppard and William Mundy, on one of his earliest compositions, a contribution to a joint setting of the alternatim psalm In exitu Israel composed for the procession to the font at the Paschal Vigil. As an item for the Sarum liturgy this was presumably composed near the end of the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–1558), whose Catholic beliefs impelled her to revive Sarum liturgical practices during her brief reign. In view of these contacts it is reasonable to speculate that Byrd was a Chapel Royal choirboy, though the surviving records do not name the choristers individually.
  
  wn.com/William_Byrd