Portal:Belgium/Selected article/2007/August

Josquin des Prez (c. 1450 to 1455 – August 27, 1521) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime.

During the 16th century, Josquin gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. He was so admired that many anonymous compositions were attributed to him by copyists, probably to increase their sales; at least 374 works are attributed to him; it was only after the advent of modern analytical scholarship that some of these mistaken attributions have been challenged, on the basis of stylistic features and manuscript evidence. Yet in spite of Josquin's colossal reputation, which endured until the beginning of the Baroque era, and was revived in the 20th century, his biography is shadowy, and we know next to nothing about his personality.