Josquin des Prez

Born around 1450 somewhere along the French-Flemish border, Josquin des Prez spent his life moving between the great courts and chapels of Europe: René of Anjou's choir by 1477, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza's retinue through Italy in the 1480s, the papal chapels in Rome under Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, then service to Louis XII and a brief stint with Ercole I d'Este in Ferrara. He wrote masses, motets, and chansons - works like Ave Maria ... Virgo serena and the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae - building on Ockeghem's foundation to create a complex, expressive polyphony where independent voices imitated and answered each other in tighter, repeated motifs rather than long melismatic sweeps. Ottaviano Petrucci printed his music widely, and in his final years in Condé he produced some of his most admired pieces: Benedicta es, Pater noster-Ave Maria, Plus nulz regretz. Martin Luther praised him, theorists like Glarean and Zarlino elevated him, and he became what scholars call the first Western composer to hold posthumous fame - though the Baroque shifted attention to Palestrina, and modern arguments still ask whether he's been placed too high above his peers.