Adrian Willaert

[micrologus]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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.

Life

He was probably born at Bruges, although a secondary source has suggested Roulaers. 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.
In July 1515, Willaert entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este of Ferrara. Ippolito was a traveler, and Willaert likely accompanied him to various places, including Hungary, where he likely resided from 1517 to 1519. When Ippolito died in 1520, Willaert entered the service of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara. In 1522 Willaert had a post at the court chapel of Duke Alfonso; he remained there until 1525, at which time records show he was in the employ of Ippolito II d'Este in Milan.
Willaert's most significant appointment, and one of the most significant in the musical history of the Renaissance, was his selection as maestro di cappella of St. Mark's at Venice. Music had languished there under his predecessor, Pietro de Fossis, but that was shortly to change. The Venetian Doge Andrea Gritti had a rather large hand in Willaert’s appointment to the position of maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s.
From his appointment in 1527 until his death in 1562, he retained the post at St. Mark's. Composers came from all over Europe to study with him, and his standards were high both for singing and composition. During his previous employment with the dukes of Ferrara, he had acquired numerous contacts and influential friends elsewhere in Europe, including the Sforza family in Milan; doubtless this assisted in the spread of his reputation, and the consequent importation of musicians from foreign countries into northern Italy. In Ferrarese court documents, Willaert is referred to as "Adriano Cantore". In addition to his output of sacred music as the director of St. Mark's, he wrote numerous madrigals, a secular form; he is considered a Flemish madrigal composer of the first rank.

Musical style and influence

Willaert was one of the most versatile composers of the Renaissance, writing music in almost every extant style and form. In force of personality, and with his central position as maestro di cappella at St. Mark's, he became the most influential musician in Europe between the death of Josquin and the time of Palestrina. Some of Willaert’s motets and [[chanzoni franciose a quarto sopra doi]] (double canonic chansons) had been published as early as 1520 in Venice. Willaert owes much of his fame in sacred music to his motets. According to Gioseffo Zarlino, writing later in the 16th century, Willaert was the inventor of the antiphonal style from which the polychoral style of the Venetian school evolved. As there were two choir lofts, one of each side of the main altar of St. Mark's, both provided with an organ, Willaert divided the choral body into two sections, using them either antiphonally or simultaneously. Rore, Zarilino, Andrea Gabrieli, Donato, and Croce, Willaert’s successors, all cultivated this style. The tradition of writing that Willaert established during his time at St. Mark’s was continued by other composers working there throughout the 1600s. He then composed and performed psalms and other works for two alternating choirs. This innovation met with instantaneous success and strongly influenced the development of the new method. In Venice, a compositional style, established by Willaert, for multiple choirs dominated. In 1550 he published Salmi spezzati, antiphonal settings of the psalms, the first polychoral work of the Venetian school. Willaert’s work in the religious genre established Flemish techniques firmly as an important part of the Italian Style. While more recent research has shown that Willaert was not the first to use this antiphonal, or polychoral method — Dominique Phinot had employed it before Willaert, and Johannes Martini even used it in the late 15th century — Willaert's polychoral settings were the first to become famous and widely imitated.
With his contemporaries, Willaert developed the canzone (a form of polyphonic secular song) and ricercare which were vital forerunners of modern instrumental forms. Willaert also arranged 22 four-part madrigals for voice and lute written by Verdelot. Willaert was the first to extensively use chromaticism in the madrigal. Looking forward, we are given an image of early word-painting in his motet Mentre che’l cor. Willaert, who was fond of the older compositional techniques such as the canon, often placed the melody in the tenor of his compositions, treating it as a cantus firmus. Willaert, with the help of de Rore, standardized a five-voice setting in madrigal composition. Willaert also pioneered a style that continued until the end of the madrigal period of reflecting the emotional qualities of the text and the meanings of important words as sharply and clearly as possible.
Willaert was no less distinguished as a teacher than as a composer. Among his disciples are: Cipriano de Rore, his successor at St. Mark's; Costanzo Porta; Francesco Dalla Viola; Gioseffo Zarlino; and Andrea Gabrieli. Another one influenced by Willaert was Lassus. These composers, except for Lassus, formed the core of what came to be known as the Venetian school, which was decisively influential on the stylistic change that marked the beginning of the Baroque era. Among Willaert's pupils in Venice, one of the most prominent was Cipriano de Rore from the Low Countries (possibly Antwerp).
The Venetian school flourished for 150 years in the hands of the Gabrielis and others. Willaert also probably influenced a young Palestrina. Willaert left a large number of compositions — 8 masses, over 50 hymns and psalms, over 150 motets, about 60 French chansons, over 70 Italian madrigals and several instrumental (ricercares).

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs3SX7Jftgc"]YouTube - Willaert : Ave Maria[/ame]

[Philidor]

[haydnguy]

Absolutely beautiful.

Willaert also probably influenced a young Palestrina.

Wow!!

[Jeff]

!!
Yay! Always good to see early music discussion here. I love Adrian Willaert. I have sung pieces of his on several occasions, and have some lovely recordings of his music.

He was also part of the fascinating lineage at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, the first to develop the Venetian polychoral style, which grows into something quite magnificent by Monteverdi's and Gabrieil's time!! Willaert, the foreigner, really helped spark, with others, the great High Renaissance Italian Madrigal movement, and greatly influenced the next generation of native Italian composers such as Marenzio, and others with his madrigal works. Willaert had a lasting effect on a wide range of Italian music, and was a true master of the Renaissance.

Check this out for some more general info about St. Mark's...

I desperately want to go there!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Basilica

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Jeff

Check this out for some more general info about St. Mark's...

I desperately want to go there!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Basilica

It is breathtaking, isn't it?

Isn't that also where Vivaldi had his all-female choir from some sort of young women's hostel singing from behind screens in the gallery so men didn't think inappropriate thoughts?

[micrologus]

Originally Posted by Jeff

!!
Yay! Always good to see early music discussion here. I love Adrian Willaert. I have sung pieces of his on several occasions, and have some lovely recordings of his music.

He was also part of the fascinating lineage at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, the first to develop the Venetian polychoral style, which grows into something quite magnificent by Monteverdi's and Gabrieil's time!! Willaert, the foreigner, really helped spark, with others, the great High Renaissance Italian Madrigal movement, and greatly influenced the next generation of native Italian composers such as Marenzio, and others with his madrigal works. Willaert had a lasting effect on a wide range of Italian music, and was a true master of the Renaissance.

Check this out for some more general info about St. Mark's...

I desperately want to go there!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Basilica

[micrologus]

Me too! I've been in Florence and Rome but Venice is something very special and unique!

[micrologus]

Originally Posted by micrologus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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.

Life

He was probably born at Bruges, although a secondary source has suggested Roulaers.

He wasn't born at Bruges but at Rumbeke, near Roeselare (Roulaers)
By the way, this year we commemorate the 450th Anniversary of his death. More informations on this site:

http://www.adriaenwillaert.be/talen/taal_engels.html

[micrologus]

Adriaan Willaert was a flemish composer of the 4th generation of Franco-Flemish polyphonists. He was one of the most important and influential composers and teachers of his time.
There is no absolute certainty about the place and the time of birth, but recent research shows that he was native of Rumbeke (now a part of the municipality of Roulers), where his father and other relatives owned property. He probably was born about 1490, maybe a little earlier. Nothing is known about his earlier years although it must be that he had a very good education preparing him to study at the university.

[micrologus]

The little that is known about his musical training and early maturity has come from his pupil Gioseffo Zarlino, in whose writings on music theory Willaert played a major role.
According to Zarlino, Willaert went to Paris to study law at the university but, turning his attention to music, studied with Jean Mouton, then a member of the royal chapel under Louis XII and François I.

In his monumental treatise “Le institiutioni harmoniche” (Venice, 1558), Zarlino recounts an anecdote about his teacher. As the story is indicative of Willaert”’s early career, it is worth quoting in full:

“ I shall now relate what I have heard said many times about the most excellent Adriaan Willaert, namely, that a motet for six voices, Verbum bonum et suave, sung under the name of Josquin in the Papal Chapel in Rome almost every feast of Our Lady, was considered one of the most beautiful compositions sung in those days. When Willaert came from Flanders to Rome at the time of Leo X and found himself at the place where this motet was being sung, he saw that it was ascribed to Josquin. When he said that it was his own, as it really was, so great was the malignity or (to put it more mildly) the ignorance of the singers, that they never wanted to sing it again.”

Different things can be said about this story, which was long thought to be apocryphal. What is of course most striking, is the claim that Willaert’s six-voice motet went under the name of Josquin des Prez, the princeps musicorum of his time. Needless to say, this serves to underline the extraordinary quality of the piece, which was first printed in Ottaviano Petrucci’s collection Motetti de la corona.
Verbum bonum et suave contains a canon between Tenor and Quintus, the melody of which is based on the eponymous plainchant. The motet displays a dense texture that is only interrupted at the beginning of the ‘secunda pars’: on “Ave,solem genuisti” (the fourth strophe of the Marian hymn) a duet of upper voices is imitated by the lowest ones. The sudden reduction of the voices, the characteristic rising fourth on “Ave” and the general layout of the melody make one wonder whether this passage was meant as a subtle musical and textual reference to Josquin’s “Ave Maria ... virgo serena”, one of the composer’s most popular and best-known pieces.



Since Lenaert’s pioneering research (1945) it has been generally accepted that Willaert’s first post in Italy was as a singer in the Ferrarese court chapel from February 1522, and that he remained in the service of Duke Alfonso I d’Este until 1525. From 1525 to 1527 he was listed in the account books fo the young Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, Archbishop of Milan (which has led some to believe that Willaert was in Milan before moving toe Venice in 1527).
Later archival research permits a new chronology of Willaert’s relationship to the court of Ferrara. References to him can been found in the account books of Cardinal Ippolito I d’Este, the brother of Alfonso and uncle of the second Cardinal Ippolito. ‘Adriano Cantore’, as he is allways called in Ferrarese documents, was in the service of Ippolito I from July 1515 at the latest when he was paid in Rome; hitherto it had been thought that he probably first went to Italy about 1518. On 6 April 1516 he was formally inducted as a singer of the cardinal’s at a stipend of nine lire a month. From April 1516 to October 1517 he remained in italy in the cardinal’s employ. Then Ippolita left Ferrara for Hungary, where he was Achbishop of Esztergom, and Willaert went with him. He evidently remained i Hungary until his return to Ferrara, in August 1519, before that of the cardinal, who returned to Ferrara in march 1520. In the following September Ippolito died suddenly, leaving Willaert free to transfer to the service of Duke Alfonso.

This evidence indicates that Willaert’s association with the d’Este and with Ferrarese patronage extends back considerably longer that had been formerly supposed, and that is was maintained to some degree after he moved to Venice. In addition, his service with the well-travelled and flamboyant Cardinal Ippolito I may have given him a wide range of european contacts; he seems to have had some connection with members of the Sforza family, who are mentioned in some of his motets, with Roman and papal circles (certainly under Leo X and possibly also under Clement VII) and with Hungary. his presence in Hungary may help to explain a reference to hi by de Meyere as ‘Cantor regis Hungariae’.
(the remark may also indicate a relationship between Willaert and the chapel of Ferdinand I, who became King of Hungary in 1527; one of his motets perhaps commemorates the coronation. However, it is unlikely that Willaert became a musician at Ladislas II Jagiello’s court, as Zolnay has suggestged.)
Willaert’s early career in italy explains the inclusion of a number of hus works in italian MSS and anthologies of theperiod published by Petrucci and Antico. A substantial group of willaert’s motets, at least one mass (The Missa “Mente Tota”, based on Josquin’s motet) and some chansons can thus be assigned to the period 1522 or earlier.
The most widely discussed of his early works is the puzzle duo (or quartet) “Quid non ebrietas”, a setting of Horace’s epistle on the miracles of the wine cup and one of the first compositions to make use of so far-ranging a hexachordal modulation that the miece passes through the whole of the circle of 5ths. From a particular point onwards each flat in the lower voice is to be sung a semitone lower that notated, with the result that tha apparent final 7th is really an octave. Lowinsky has interpreted it as a humorous demonstration of the efficacy of the Aristoxenian division of the octave into 12 equal semitones. Evidently written in about 1518 of 1519, it was not published until about 1530, but in a letter of 1524 the Bolognese theorist Spataro mentioned that during the time of Leo X (1513-21), the duo had been performed by the singers fo the papal chapel, ‘but not very successfully’. Nonetheless, it exemplifies not only Willaert’s brilliance and virtuosity as a composer at an early stage of his career, but also his interest in the theoretical issues of the time.