Name: Adrian Willaert [Adriano Willaert]
Birth: c.1490 in Roulers or Bruges in modern-day Belgium Death: 1562-12-07 in Venice.
Willaert was perhaps the most import composer in early modern Europe in the generation after the death of Josquin. He briefly studied law in Paris, and musical composition there under Jean Mouton, before moving to Italy in the mid 1510s, working for the d'Este family of Ferrara. In 1527 he became the maestro di cappella at San Marco, among the most celebrated musical offices in Europe throughout the 16th century.
Willaert contributed to nearly every existing musical style during his life-time, from masses, motets and hymns (including the first polychoral motets associated with San Marco), to madrigals, chansons, lute songs, villanesche (in dialect), and instrumental ricecari (for keyboard or ensemble).
His first madrigal collection was a set of lute entabulations of Verdelot madrigals as accompaniment for one singer. From the 1540s on, his madrigals appeared frequently in anthologies, especially in the books of Cipriano de Rore, associated with Willaert in the 1540s and 50s and possibly his student. In 1559 a large and expensive folio edition of his most serious motets and madrigals was issued by Antonio Gardano, printed in Venice, with the title Musica Nova (though most of the madrigals in the book were likely written 20 years before, but only circulated among the conosciuti in Venice and Ferrara. There is ample evidence of Willaert's participation in the salons of the most learned music lovers in those cities. All but one of the madrigals of Musica nova are based on serious sonnets by Petrarca, marking a turning point for the madrigal away from somewhat lighter poetry that had been popular in the birthplace of the madrigal, Florence.
Though most of his works ceased to be widely printed or performed after his death, the musical theorist Gioseffo Zarlino took Willaert's compositions as models for the perfection of counterpoint and expressive text setting, which kept them well-known for decades to come. When Monteverdi's brother Giulio Cesare wrote his famous essay on the prima prattica and seconda prattica in 1607, Willaert's madrigal compositions were held up as the ideal, the height of the prima prattica.