Costanzo Festa

[2] In early 1514, Festa wrote a motet, Quis dabit oculis, on the occasion of the death of the Queen of France (Anne of Brittany) (9 January 1514).

Most likely after his visit to Ferrara, but certainly between 1510 and 1517, he lived on Ischia, an island in the bay of Naples, where he served as a music teacher to the aristocratic d'Avalos family.

[1] In 1517, he moved to Rome and began employment with Pope Leo X as a singer, and his association with the Sistine Chapel choir was to continue uninterrupted for almost 30 years.

[1][4] While he was unsuccessful in his attempted sale to the Venetian printer in 1536, a Roman firm produced a book of madrigals in 1538, as a result of the privilege granted, but most of it has been lost.

In addition, he wrote extended homophonic sections, showing somewhat less influence from the contemporary motet, in contrast to the motet-like imitative passages found in Verdelot.

The style of his sacred music matches that of his secular: he was less fond of imitation and complex counterpoint for its own sake, and often wrote purely homophonic passages.

Since Rome was musically conservative compared to the rest of Italy (and Europe) at the time, and there was a strong reaction against elaborate counterpoint within two decades after his death (expressly stated by the Council of Trent), his stylistic bent may represent a foreshadowing of that event; perhaps he was responding to the taste and needs of his papal employer.

His most famous instrumental output is the monumental scholastic counterpoint study on La Spagna on which he wrote 125 variations using it as cantus firmus.

The studies on La Spagna showed that he also used musica ficta and a lot of Christian and ancient symbolics (numerology) as well as hidden or obvious symmetrical structures in his counterpoints.

In the song Festa and others sing, Priapus boasts to the gods on Mount Olympus of his method of deflowering a new bride with a wooden mallet.