Biography
Living between the time of Josquin and Palestrina, Festa ranked among the foremost composers in both sacred and secular realms. He produced a large body of motets and madrigals that paved the way for Italian music to assume a leading position across Europe. His work first gained notice through service at the Medici court under the papacy of Leo X, coinciding with Lorenzo’s wedding. Evidence also points to an earlier post at the court of Louis XII, where he supplied music marking the death of the king’s consort, Anne of Brittany. Amid the charged politics of his day, Festa turned his pen to topical statements, most notably the motet “Florentia,” composed between 1527 and 1529 to praise Clement VII and urge the Medici restoration in Florence. The breadth of his output is confirmed by its wide circulation: prints issued in Venice, Rome, Nuremberg, Lyons, Paris, and Munich, together with numerous manuscripts preserved in the Vatican library. Several pieces appeared in “Madrigali de diversi musici libro primo,” the earliest anthology to employ the term “madrigal.” He also fashioned a madrigal on a text supplied by Michelangelo. Stylistically, his music displays variety, polyphony—one of the earliest uses of settings spanning all eight tones of the scale—imitation, pictorial word treatment, and a complete range of affective expression.