Loyset Compère (c. 1445 ? August 16, 1518) was a French composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italianate Renaissance style to France. Unlike his contemporaries, Compère seems to have written few masses (at least very few survive). By temperament he seems to have been a miniaturist, and his most popular and numerous works were in the shorter forms of the day?primarily chansons and motets. Two stylistic trends are evident in his music: the style of the Burgundian School, which he seems to have learned in his early career before coming to Italy, and the lighter style of the Italian composers current at the time, who were writing frottolas (the light and popular predecessor to the madrigal). Compère had a gift for melody, and many of his chansons became popular; later composers used several as cantus firmi for masses. Occasionally he seems to have given himself a formidable technical challenge and set out to solve it, such as writing quodlibets (an example is Au travail suis, which combines no less than six different tunes written to the same text by different composers). Text source : Wikipedia (Hide extended text) ... (Read all)
