Cipriano de Rore
His experimental, chromatic, and highly expressive style had a decisive influence on the subsequent development of that secular music form.
Based on a suggestive phrase in a 1559 madrigal dedicated to Margaret of Parma, the illegitimate daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which implied a long association with her, he may have accompanied her when she went to Naples in 1533 before marrying into the Medici family.
This was the beginning of an extraordinarily productive portion of his life; while in the service of Duke Ercole II d'Este he wrote masses, motets, chansons, and of course madrigals, many of which were topical, some involving matters of the court itself.
Also during the Ferrara years, Rore began cultivating his relations with the court of Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich, sending them music, and having 26 motets produced in an elaborately illustrated manuscript with miniatures by Hans Muelich.
The situation in his homeland had deteriorated due to the ravages of the Wars of Independence, and when Rore reached it in autumn 1559, he found that his home town, Ronse, had been destroyed.
Unable to regain his employment in Ferrara, he reentered the service of the House of Farnese, and after a stay in Antwerp, returned to Italy again, this time to Parma, in 1560.
Unhappy there—Parma was not an intellectual and cultural center on the level of Ferrara or Venice—he left in 1563, briefly taking the prestigious position of maestro di cappella at St. Mark's upon Willaert's death.
His 1542 book was an extraordinary event, and recognized as such at the time: it established five voices as the norm, rather than four, and married the polyphonic texture of the Netherlandish motet with the Italian secular form, bringing a seriousness of tone that became one of the predominant trends in madrigal composition all the way into the 17th century.
[10] All the lines of development in the madrigal in the late century can be traced to ideas first seen in Rore; according to Alfred Einstein, his only true spiritual successor was Claudio Monteverdi, another revolutionary.
[11] But in his sacred music, Rore was more backward-looking, showing his connection to his Netherlandish roots: his masses, for example, are reminiscent of the work of Josquin des Prez.
[14] Rore chose not to write madrigals of frivolous nature, preferring serious subject matter, including the works of Petrarch and tragedies presented at Ferrara.
[15] He used all the resources of polyphony as they had developed by the mid-16th century, including imitation and canonic techniques, all in the service of careful text setting.
