http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/476705441

"Un certo che di grandezza" : Nicholas Gombert's First book of four-part motets (1539)

Long recognized as an important feature of the musical landscape of the 1530s and 40s, the music of Nicolas Gombert (1500?-1556?) has received less than its due of critical appreciation and interpretation. Though he was also a composer of masses and chansons, it is in the motet that his contribution can be most readily assessed, thanks in part to the Venetian publication of several collections of his motets for four and five voices in the years following 1539. The first of these, the First Book for Four Voices, was reprinted several times over the following decade--a testament both to its success in the musical marketplace and to the appreciation won by the composer's works. Contemporaries credit Gombert with being the first to cultivate the densely imitative style that came to dominate Continental polyphony in the middle of the century; the First Book includes at least one motet that appears to predate this new style, the earliest of his few datable works in this style, and many other, undated works representing this new style as he had developed it by 1539.

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