Thread: Favorite Renaissance Composers

Pretty self-explanatory.

Help! I left the one I was going to vote for out! Could one of the admins add Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck to the poll, please?

If you'd got me on another day I might've said Josquin, but today I went with Tallis.

Obrecht was a monster structuralist and would have blown away the competition if he hadn't up and died right when the style of music was changing. Stupid plague.

I had to select 'other' again, multiple choices not being allowed with radio buttons. Josquin is amazing, but I am basically attuned to instrumental music, afflicted with a love for the lute and the viola da gamba, and my guys aren't listed.

Josquin, if only for his Ave Maria. Also a shout out for Luca Marenzio for preemptively ousting Schubert in writing the most eerily gorgeous music in the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_0Nv...eature=related

Caudio Monteverdi, by a mile (although some might argue he's Baroque). You have his magnificent madrigals, including this personal favorite:



And how could you not love this:



And then there's his great Vespers:



To say nothing of the fact that the man invented opera as we know it... and his L'Orfeo is still one of the finest:





After Monteverdi...? Carlo Gesualdo who achieves the most darkly expressive things with his surprising use of stretching the possibilities of tonality. Beside which... how many other Renaissance composers have actually been the subject of a Werner Herzog film?

Obrecht was a monster structuralist and would have blown away the competition if he hadn't up and died right when the style of music was changing. Stupid plague.

Check out Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets:

Wow, this thread reminds me I still have a lot more listening to do in terms of pre-Bach music.

Just a shoutout to Gesualdo.

How come no Ockeghem? His Deo Gratis, as an example, is to die for (or to?).

timbo wrote:

How come no Ockeghem? His Deo Gratis, as an example, is to die for (or to?).

Well, there are an awful lot of people you could mention and the list to choose from is pretty random but I guess that's because the rediscovery of this music is still an ongoing process so there's not really a readily acknowledged canon. Sure Josquin is generally regarded as king (though to the more old fashioned, from earlier in the revival days, that honour might belong to Palestrina) but after that its anybody's tea party really. The worst part is that Monteverdi will probably 'win' and he's most famous for turning away from the renaissance style and being one of the formative figures in the baroque. But hey, us Early Music fans rarely get a playpen like this to fool around in so I'm certainly not complaining.

Originally Posted by StlukesguildOhio

Obrecht was a monster structuralist and would have blown away the competition if he hadn't up and died right when the style of music was changing. Stupid plague.

Check out Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets:

Oh, I agree; definitely monstrous - in a good way, I mean. Dufay pretty much invented the Renaissance style; he bridged two eras and was still cooking up to the end of his life.

This is less straightforward to me than the English composers poll. Dowland is still among my favorites, but then there's also Lassus, Gesualdo, and some instrumental guys I need to hear yet. Anyway, I chose "other."

And who can forget that great composer Anonymous?