des Préz, Josquin

The greatest of early Renaissance composers, who renewed and developed composition techniques in his time, and won great revere. Operated in the forms customary in his era - masses, motets and chansons, yet unlike his colleagues' sophisticated, somewhat mathematical writing, he developed a technique of word-pictures (affects). This methodology allowed him express, in music, the emotion in the song's words, thus making music an instrument of expressing feelings, a concept taken for granted in later periods. He is the composer who brought the Renaissance to music, after the Middle Ages. His works, like "Miserere" and the Mass on "The Armed Man" (Missa "L'homme Armé") are based on combining sections from the Bible in order to express profound emotions.

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