Philippe Verdelot was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composer of the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, who spent most of his life in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. He is commonly considered to be the father of the Italian madrigal

Madrigal (music)

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....

, and certainly was one of its earliest and most prolific composers; in addition he was prominent in the musical life of Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 during the period after the recapture of the city by the Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 from the followers of Girolamo Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar, Scholastic, and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and what he thought the Renaissance—which began in his...

.

Life

Verdelot was born in Les Loges, Seine-et-Marne

Seine-et-Marne

Seine-et-Marne is a French department, named after the Seine and Marne rivers, and located in the Île-de-France region.- History:Seine-et-Marne is one of the original 83 departments, created on March 4, 1790 during the French Revolution in application of the law of December 22, 1789...

, France. Details of his early life are obscure. He probably came to Italy at an early age, spending the first decade or two of the 16th century at some cities in northern Italy, most likely including Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

. A painting of 1511, described by Vasari but never positively identified, is believed by many musicologists to show Verdelot in Venice with an Italian singer.

Verdelot is known to have been maestro di cappella at the Baptisterium San Giovanni in Florence from 1523 to 1525; and he seems also to have been employed at the Cathedral there, from 1523 until 1527. In 1526 he collaborated with Niccolò Machiavelli on a production of Machiavelli's famous cynical comedy La Mandragola. While the play was written in 1518, the 1526 performance in Florence was dedicated to the Medici pope, Clement VII. Both Machiavelli, expelled from Florence by the Medici, and Verdelot, generally sided with the Florentine Republic against the Medici, but attempted to play the delicate political game of pleasing both sides. The several pieces which Verdelot wrote for Machiavelli's play, while called canzone, are considered to be the earliest madrigals.

In addition to siding with the Florentine Republic, Verdelot was most likely a supporter of martyred reformer Girolamo Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar, Scholastic, and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and what he thought the Renaissance—which began in his...

. This is shown by several of his works: his setting of In te domine speravi, based on the psalm which was the subject of that man's last writing before he was burned at the stake; and the use of the tune most closely associated with the monk, Ecce quam bonum, the song which unified his followers during his final conflict, and which appears in the inner voices in Verdelot's motet Letamini in domino.

Verdelot may have been killed in the siege of Florence (1529–1530) or in the simultaneous plague that ravaged the city, since there is no definite evidence that he was alive after 1530. That he was there during the siege has been considered likely on the evidence of one of his motets, composed around that time, Congregati sunt inimici nostri. In this work, texts from Ecclesiasticus are woven together with the Antiphon for Peace, "Da pacem Domine", which is used as a cantus firmus.

Some scholars infer that Verdelot was alive until about 1540, based on some ambiguous references to contemporary events in his works published during the 1530s. Several books of madrigals

Madrigal (music)

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....

 published in Venice in the late 1530s include his work; one of these books is devoted entirely to him. Possibly he moved to Venice after the siege to escape the notoriously vengeful, and victorious, Medici. He is known to have been dead by 1552, when writer Ortenzo Landi mentioned him as being deceased.

Music and influence

Verdelot, along with Costanzo Festa

Costanzo Festa

Costanzo Festa was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. While he is best known for his madrigals, he also wrote sacred vocal music...

, is considered to be the father of the madrigal, an a cappella

A cappella

A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

 vocal form which emerged in the late 1520s from a convergence of several previous musical streams (including the frottola

Frottola

The frottola was the predominant type of Italian popular, secular song of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. It was the most important and widespread predecessor to the madrigal...

, the canzone

Canzone

Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal...

, the laude

Laude

The lauda or lauda spirituale was the most important form of vernacular sacred song in Italy in the late medieval era and Renaissance. Laude remained popular into the nineteenth century....

, and also including some influence from the more serious style of the motet

Motet

In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...

).

Verdelot's style balances homophonic

Homophony

In music, homophony is a texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords. This is distinct from polyphony, in which parts move with rhythmic independence, and monophony, in which all parts move in parallel rhythm and pitch. A homophonic...

 with imitative textures, rarely using word-painting, which was largely a later development (though a few interesting foreshadowings can be found). Most of his madrigals are for five or six voices.

Verdelot's madrigals were hugely popular, as can be inferred from their frequency of reprinting and their wide dissemination throughout Europe in the 16th century. He also composed motets and masses.

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