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The name of the vocal ensemble Cinquecento refers to the 16th century in Italian, and true to the name, Cinquecento has focused on the music of that time. The group has pursued a special focus on the court vocal ensembles of the period.

Cinquecento was formed in 2004. It has been based in Vienna, but its five members -- Achim Schulz, Terry Wey, Tim Scott Whiteley, Tore Tom Denys, and Ulfried Staber -- all come from different countries (Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, and Switzerland). This is not a coincidence but reflects an ideal of the European courts of the time, which would seek to employ the best musicians they could, regardless of nationality. Cinquecento quickly gained recognition for its vocal talents and for its unique programming, which examined lesser-known works of the 16th century and focused closely on the music of individual courts. Cinquecento's repertory has been mostly drawn from music between 1450 and 1610 but has lately expanded to include contemporary music after several composers expressed interest in writing for the group. Just three years after its founding, the ensemble was signed to the Hyperion label and has remained on that roster, issuing about one album a year.

Cinquecento has performed all over Europe, as well as in North America and South Korea. The group built its repertory in the 2000s decade as artists-in-residence at the Church of St. Rochus and Sebastian in Vienna, performing a new polyphonic setting of the mass each week. The group's albums have won major awards, including the Diapason d'Or and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and have earned several Gramophone award nominations. Many have contained performances of neglected music from the Hapsburg court and its many close relatives around Europe, for example, Philipp Schöndorff, a Flemish employee of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. In 2019, Cinquecento issued a recording on Hyperion of Palestrina's Lamentations. The group remained active through the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing albums devoted to the composers Johannes van Cleve, Heinrich Isaac, Jacob Regnart, and, in 2023, Ludwig Daser. By that time, Cinquecento's recording catalog comprised some 15 items. ~ James Manheim

"Master of the notes," Martin Luther called him. To contemporary prelates, Josquin was an adornment worthy of a world-class court; to music publishers, his was the name that assured sales; and other composers claimed his tutelage to improve their own image. Josquin's music is regarded as one of the great treasures of Western culture. Furthermore, in his compositions, music historians have seen a crucial link in the development of the Renaissance "Central Musical Language." And yet, a reliable biography of this pivotal figure has remained maddeningly elusive. As of the year 2000, the edifice of the textbook biography was overthrown by new archival discoveries. At least three prominent musicians of his time were called "Josquin"; the presence of another in Milan has bewildered "our" Josquin's biographers by suggesting a 1440 birth date and a surprisingly mediocre early career in Italy. (Similar confusion would ensue from the discovery of two Elizabethan playwrights named William Shakespeare.)

The Josquin who would cast his mythic shadow across the centuries was born in the 1450s, in northern France or Hainaut (present-day Belgium), son of Gossard Lebloitte. Despite strong family ties and, later, an inheritance in Condé, Josquin's path took him south to Aix-en-Provence, where he joined King René d'Anjou's court as a singer. The young musician began his career as early as 1475 in a prosperous (and Italophile) court establishment, surrounded by a supportive courtiers' "network." After René's death in 1480, most of his singers were retained by his nephew, King Louis XI of France; Josquin may have served Louis from 1480/81 to 1483. This position may have provided an opportunity for Josquin to meet to the King's renowned Premier chapellain, Johannes Ockeghem. By 1484, Josquin had become a commensural familiar (personal servant, as well as singer) to Ascanio Sforza, brother to the Duke of Milan. Not only did this bring Josquin into the orbit of one of the most splendid courts of Quattrocento Italy, but Ascanio's elevation to the Cardinalate likely brought his familiar to Rome (August 1484 until 1487, returning to Milan in 1488-1489). Josquin's relationship to this generous and well-connected patron continued into the next century as attested by printed attributions of music to "Josquin d'Ascanio" in 1504 and 1509. His next musical appointment, however, was to the Papal Choir in Rome, from June of 1489 until at least 1495. Two new expectative benefices in Thérouanne and Cambrai, close to his homeland, were among his immediate compensations. His location around the turn of the century is currently unknown, though this period saw a surge in the dissemination of his music, in manuscripts from centers such as Rome, Milan, and Brussels/Mechlin, but also in Petrucci's revolutionary musical press in Venice. After a brief, but highly lucrative, tenure as Maestro di cappella for the Duke of Ferrara from 1503-1504, the aging Josquin-hero passed into semi-retirement back in Condé. The collegiate church of Notre-Dame in Condé accepted him as provost in May 1504, and he purchased a new house in August, remaining until his death in 1521. During this time, he was an ordained priest and maintained some level of activity as a composer; as late as 1520, he presented a volume of chansons to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Josquin's will bequeathed his home to the collegiate church, to endow his stipulated obituary services: Marian "Salve" services on Saturdays throughout the year and on Marian feast days, and the singing of his own Pater noster and Ave Maria in front of his house during all general liturgical processions. And with the profuse laments of his contemporaries, the creation of his legend began. ~ Timothy Dickey

The most influential Franco-Flemish composer of the so-called "Post-Josquin" generation, and the founder of the Venetian school at San Marco that would shine well into the next century, Adrian Willaert was born in historical obscurity, somewhere near the end of the fifteenth century. Even the location of his birth remains uncertain, with conflicting information given by two contemporary witnesses. His pupil, the music theorist Giuseffo Zarlino, claims Willaert went from the Netherlands to Paris as a young man to enroll in a course of law at the famed University, but instead began musical training under the composer Jean Mouton, member of the French Royal Chapel. Zarlino relates another charming anecdote about Adrian's precocious talent: apparently on the occasion of Willaert's first visit to the Papal Chapel (possibly in 1514 or 1515), the singers were performing a motet of Willaert's, and assuming it to be the work of the great Josquin Desprez.

As early as October 1514, an agent of Cardinal Ippolito I d'Este, brother of Alfonso the Duke of Ferrara, hired the young Willaert in Rome. He entered service to the Ferrarese ruling family by July 1515 at the latest, and received formal appointment to the Este Cardinal's household in April 1516. In addition to singing in the Cardinal's private chapel, Willaert ably plied his compositional talents -- his music appears in several early Italian manuscripts of the 1510s and 1520s, as well as in printed anthologies by Andrea Antico and Ottaviano Petrucci. Willaert's service to the well-traveled Cardinal also provided him with international contacts. He followed Ippolito on a trip to Hungary in 1517 and may have visited as far as Kraków on this voyage; a later motet may have been intended to honor the coronation of the Emperor Ferdinand I as King of Hungary. After Cardinal Ippolito's death in 1520, Willaert entered the service of his brother the Duke. His patronage by the powerful Este family seems to have cemented the foundations of Willaert's Italian career. This relationship lasted even after his departure for Venice; Duke Alfonso is said to have personally visited Willaert's bed of convalescence (likely from his later chronic attacks of gout) while on a state visit.

Andrea Gritti, the Doge of Venice, intervened in the deliberations at San Marco, urging that Willaert be hired as maestro di capella for the Venetian cathedral. Adrian served in this capacity from December 1527 through the remainder of his life. He encountered there a strong choral establishment of some 16 singers, and built San Marco's music program to one famous throughout Christendom. Among those who came to Venice to learn from Willaert are the eminent theoreticians Zarlino and Nicola Vicentino, and a host of famous composers, including Cipriano de Rore, Constanzo Porta, and Andrea Gabrieli (uncle of Giovanni). Correnspondence written to Willaert by other Italian theorists, important new publication releases, and even cathedral decrees appointing choirboys to the specific tasks of copying and maintaining his compositions for San Marco attest to his continuing compositional life. His salary was significantly increased several times, and his will left the considerable sum of 1,600 ducats to his wife. Contrary to popular myth (fed by Zarlino's adoration of his master, the "Divine Adriano"), Willaert did not "invent" the Venetian antiphonal practice of cori spezzati. He did, however, by the consistent exercise of his musical brilliance in this rich state for 35 years, set the stage for the splendor of Venetian music from Gabrieli to Monteverdi.

He was known while still alive as il divino Cipriano. He directed two of the finest musical chapels in Italy. Aristocrats across Europe -- the Emperor Charles V, the Count of Egmont, Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria -- asked him to compose for them. His music not only provided one of the first single-composer madrigal prints ever, but it was also republished after his death for an astonishing 40 years. A generation of madrigal composers looked to him for inspiration, and no less a figure than Giulio Cesare Monteverdi named him as innovator of the secunda prattica, the foundation of the Baroque style. This was Cipriano de Rore, truly a musical legend in his own time.

Rore was born to a minor noble family in Flemish Ronse (Renaix). Very little information survives about his early education, musical or otherwise. By 1542, however, he had moved from the Low countries to Italy (specifically Brescia), seeking musical fame. He might have studied with Willaert at Venice's San Marco; he quickly became familiar with the man and his "circle." By the early 1540s, he was already composing heavily in both motets and madrigals; the dedications of several works indicate his ambition to serve some great Italian court. In 1546, he won the prestigious job of chapelmaster to Duke Ercole II d'Este of Ferrara. For decades Este Ferrara and nearby Mantua had maintained some of the finest musicians of the Renaissance; Rore's appointment secured him a highly visible position. He rose to the challenge, composing nearly half of all his extant music in the first decade of Ferrarese employment. Fully five books of his madrigals date from this period, including works in which his style shifted toward more radical and chromatic text-painting devices. This later Ferrarese style cemented Rore's European fame, as well as his influence upon a new generation.

In 1558, however, Rore seems to have attempted to resign from court life. He received permission to travel back to his hometown, though the town had been razed during a recent war. He lost his job in Ferrara upon the Duke's death, replaced it briefly with work for the smaller Farnese court of Parma, and finally took over the late Willaert's prestigious Venetian post of maestro di cappella for San Marco in 1563. Unfortunately, this employment failed for unknown reasons, and Rore returned to Parma in 1564. He died shortly thereafter, his reputation happily untarnished. ~ Timothy Dickey