A collection of polyphonic hymns and Magnificats by Costanzo Festa; this is the earliest surviving such collection by a single composer in the Vatican archive

Costanzo Festa (c. 1485 to 1490 – April 10, 1545) was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. Events 879 - Louis III becomes King of the Western Franks. 1407 - the lama Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600 While he is best known for his madrigals, he also wrote sacred vocal music. A madrigal is a type of Secular vocal music composition written during the Renaissance and early Baroque eras SACRED was a Cubesat built by the Student Satellite Program of the University of Arizona. Vocal music is Music performed by one or more Singers with or without non-vocal instrumental accompaniment He was the first native Italian polyphonist of international renown. In Music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent Melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice ( Monophony

Life

Not much is known about his early life. He was probably born in the Piedmont near Turin, but the evidence for this is not certain, being based mainly on later documents referring to him as a clericis secularibus, i. Piedmont ( Piemonte; Piedmontese and Occitan: Piemont; French: Piémont) is one of the 20 Regions of Italy. e. not a monk, from that region. His birth date has been given as early as 1480 and as late as 1495, but recent discoveries have tended to close in on dates in the late 1480s. In 1514 Festa visited Ferrara, bringing some motets with him; he seems to have been an established composer by this time, as indicated by the reception he received. In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions Also sometime between 1510 and 1517 he lived on an island in the bay of Naples, where he served as a music teacher to the d'Avalos family. In 1517 he moved to Rome and began employment with Pope Leo X as a singer. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Pope Leo X, born Giovanni de' Medici (December 11 1475 – December 1 1521 was Pope from 1513 to his death A communication from 1543 indicates that he was too sick to travel with the Pope to Bologna, and he died in 1545. Bologna (boloɲa from Latin Bononia, Bulåggna in Bolognese dialect is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy He evidently lived in Rome most of the second half of his life, serving in the Papal Choir much of the time. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2

Music and influence

Festa was one of the few Italians in the Papal Choir. He was a master of the Netherlands contrapuntal technique, however, and his importance to music history is as the one who first brought the two musical styles, the Italian and the Netherlandish, together. The Netherlands ( Dutch:, ˈnedərlɑnt is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which consists of the Netherlands the Netherlands In Music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and Rhythm, and interdependent in Harmony In addition, he was an obvious influence on Palestrina, who modeled many of his early works after his. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526 - 2 February 1594 was an Italian Composer of the Renaissance.

Most of Festa's madrigals are for three voices (in contrast to the other early madrigalist, Verdelot, who preferred five or six). Philippe Verdelot (1480 to 1485 &ndash c 1530 to 1532? was a French composer of the Renaissance, who spent most of his life in Italy. He liked quick, rhythmically active passages in his madrigals; this may reflect an influence from the contemporary vocal form of the villanesca. In addition he wrote extended homophonic sections, showing somewhat less an influence from the contemporary motet, in contrast to the motet-like imitative passages found in Verdelot. In Music, homophony (hoʊˈmɒfəni from Greek "homófonos" where ομοιο = the same and φωνή = a sound tone is a texture in which two or more In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions

In addition to his madrigals, published mostly between 1543 and 1549, several collections of his sacred works were published during his lifetime, among them four masses, over forty motets, a set of Lamentations, and numerous Magnificats and Marian Litanies (for two choruses, each with four voices). For other uses see Mass (disambiguation The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet have been set by various composers The Magnificat (also known as the Song of Mary) is a Canticle frequently sung (or spoken liturgically in Christian church services The style of his sacred music matches that of his secular: he is less fond of imitation and complex counterpoint for its own sake, and often writes purely homophonic passages. Secularity ( adjective form secular) is the state of being separate from Religion. Since Rome was musically conservative compared to the rest of Italy (and Europe) at the time, and there was a strong reaction against 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. The Council of Trent was the 19th Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church.

References and further reading

• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. Gustave Reese ( November 29 1899, New York City – – September 7 1977, Berkeley California) was an American New York, W. W. Norton & Co. , 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 0-02-872416-X
• James Haar: "Costanzo Festa", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 1, 2005), (subscription access)
• Crawford, David. "A Review of Costanzo Festa's Biography. " Journal of the American Musicological Society. vol. XXVIII, No. 1. Page 102.

External links

• Costanzo Festa free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Costanzo Festa in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• [[1]] A picture of Costanzo at mid age

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