Biography
Willaert ranks among music history’s most consequential creators. After training under Mouton he performed in the household of Cardinal Ippolito I d’Este and, following earlier service in Ferrara, apparently accompanied the cardinal to Hungary in 1517. By 1527 he had entered the musical establishment of St. Mark’s in Venice, where he remained for the rest of his life; although the city was not yet regarded as a leading European center, his sustained activity there sustained its artistic prominence. Positioned chronologically between Josquin and the generation of Palestrina and Lassus, he was regarded as “the” composer of that era, producing an extensive body of sacred music, French chansons, and instrumental works across multiple genres. His masses, all dating from his earlier years, display the clear influence of Josquin and Mouton; “Mente tota,” for instance, is a six-voice setting based on a text by Josquin. Several of the editions issued during his lifetime were among the first publications devoted exclusively to one musician. In 1542 he released more than twenty polyphonic hymn settings, and in 1550 he issued a collection of polyphonic psalms written for genuine double choruses together with occasional antiphonal or responsorial pieces. More than one hundred seventy motets survive, among them four-voice works that traverse an unusually wide liturgical range. Five-voice scoring was reserved for commemorative occasions or works honoring his patrons, while six-voice motets were frequently constructed as canons and often dispensed with a cantus firmus. He also composed chansons and madrigals and is counted, together with his close associate Verdelot, among the earliest practitioners of the madrigal. His pupils included de Rore and Zarlino.