Pierre Certon

Active at Notre Dame in Paris along with Sainte-Chapelle and Chapelle du Roy, French composer Certon concentrated his efforts on masses, motets, and a magnificat. His stature rests on the inventive revisions he brought to the chanson, most notably by expanding the number of voices from four to eight and thereby spanning the complete range of human vocal timbres. He further introduced frequent metric shifts that displaced accents away from the primary pulse.