A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Willaert, Adrian

by Reginald Lane-Poole

WILLAERT, Adrian, the founder of the Venetian school of musicians, was born in Flanders about the year 1480. His birthplace has been generally given as Bruges, a statement which, according to Fétis, rests on the authority of Willaert's own pupil Zarlino: but this reference appears to be an error; while on the other hand we have the express assertion of a contemporary, Jacques de Meyere (1531), that he was born at Roulers, or Rosselaere, near Courtrai.^[1] Willaert was bred for the law and sent to Paris for the purpose of study; but his energies were soon turned aside into their natural channel, and he became the pupil^[2] either of Jean Mouton or of Josquin des Prés—which, it is not certain—in the theory of music. He returned to Flanders for a while, then went to Venice, Rome, and Ferrara. It was during this visit to Rome, when Leo X was Pope, that Willaert heard a motet of his own ('Verbum dulce et suave') performed as the work of Josquin. As soon, it is added, as the choir learned its real authorship, they refused to sing it again. Willaert's name evidently had not yet become that power which it was soon to be, under the naturalised form of 'Adriano,' among Italian musicians. From Ferrara he went northward, and became cantor to King Lewis of Bohemia and Hungary; and as on December 12, 1527, he was appointed chapel-master of St. Mark's at Venice by the doge Andrea Gritti, it is ^[3]presumed that he returned to Italy at the king's death in the previous year. His career at Venice, where he lived until his death, Dec. 7, 1562,^[4] is associated principally with the foundation of the singing-school which was soon to produce a whole dynasty of musicians of the highest eminence in their day. Among the first of these may be named Willaert's own pupils, Zarlino and Cyprian de Rore; the latter was Willaert's successor at St. Mark's.

Willaert's compositions are very numerous.^[5] Those published at Venice include (1) three collections of motets, 1539–1545; (2) two of madrigals, 1548 and 1561; (3) a volume of 'Musica nova,' 1559, containing both motets and madrigals; (4) several books of psalms and of hymns; (5) Canzone, 1545; (6) Fantasie e Ricercari, 1549. Besides these a variety of his works may be found in different musical collections published during his lifetime at Antwerp, Louvain, Nuremberg, Strassburg, and other places. Willaert holds a remarkable position among those Flemish masters whose supremacy in the musical world made the century from 1450 to 1550 distinctively 'the century of the Netherlands.'^[6] He did not merely take up the tradition of Josquin des Prés; he extended it in many directions. From the two organs and the two choirs of St. Mark's he was led to invent double choruses; and this form of composition he developed to a perfection which left little even for Palestrina to improve upon. His motets for 4, 5, and 6 voices are of the pure Belgian style, and written with singular clearness in the different parts. In one instance he advanced to the conception of an entire narrative, that of the history of Susannah, set for five voices.^[7] It would be absurd to describe such a work as an oratorio, yet the idea of it is not dissimilar. Indeed, in departing to some extent from the severity of his predecessors and creating for himself a richer style of his own, Willaert ventured to be more distinctively declamatory than any one before him. The complexion, therefore, of his writing, though it might appear 'dry' to M. Fétis, is markedly more modern than that of his masters. He has also a good claim to be considered the veritable father of the madrigal, and it is his compositions in this field which are probably the best remembered of all he wrote. To contemporaries, however, if we may believe Zarlino, his church-music appealed most strongly; his psalms, and in particular a Magnificat for three choirs, being peculiarly admired.

[ R. L. P. ]

1. See the opposite views in Fétis. viii. 470 (2nd ed., 1867), and E. vander Straeten, 'La Musique aux Pays-bas,' i. 249–257. Sweertius, 'Athenæ Belgicæ,' p. 104 (Antwerp, 1628. folio), also describes Willaert as of Bruges. Very possibly the discrepancy is to be explained by supposing Bruges to have been the seat of Willaert's family, and Boulers that of his actual birth.
2. See A. W. Ambros, 'Geschichte der Musik,' iii. 502: Breslau 1868.
3. Fétis, viii. 471.
4. A fine portrait of the musician is given by M. vander Straeten i. 258.
5. See the lists in Fétis, l.c., and, for those published in the Netherlands, M. Goovaert's 'Historie et Bibliographie de la Typographie musicale dans les Pays-bas,' under the different years.
6. Ambros, i. 3. See this writer's excellent criticism of Willaert, vol. iii. 503–509.
7. Compare Fétis, viii. 471.