Editing Loyset Compère (section)

==Works==

Unlike his contemporaries, Compère seems to have written few [[mass (music)|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 [[chanson]]s and [[motet]]s. 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 [[frottola]]s (the light and popular predecessor to the [[madrigal (music)|madrigal]]). Compère had a gift for melody, and many of his chansons became popular; later composers used several as [[cantus firmus|cantus firmi]] for masses. Occasionally he seems to have given himself a formidable technical challenge and set out to solve it, such as writing [[quodlibet]]s (an example is ''Au travail suis'', which combines no less than six different tunes written to the same text by different composers).

Compère wrote several works in a unique form, sometimes called a free motet, which combines some of the light elegance of the Italian popular song of the time with the [[counterpoint|contrapuntal]] technique of the Netherlanders. Some mix texts from different sources, for instance a rather paradoxical ''Sile fragor'' which combines a supplication to the [[Blessed Virgin Mary|Virgin Mary]] with a drinking song dedicated to [[Dionysus|Bacchus]]. His choice of secular texts tended towards the irreverent and suggestive.

His chansons are his most characteristic compositions, and many scholars of Renaissance music consider them to be his best work.  They are for three or four voices, and are in three general categories: Italianate, light works for four [[a cappella]] voices, very much like frottolas, with text set syllabically and often [[homophony|homophonically]], and having frequent cadences; three-voice works in the Burgundian style, rather like the music of [[Guillaume Dufay|Dufay]]; and three-voice [[motet-chanson]]s, which resemble the [[Medieval music|medieval]] motet more than anything else. In these works the lowest voice usually sings a slow-moving cantus firmus with a [[Latin]] text, usually from chant, while the upper voices sing more animated parts, in French, on a secular text.

Many of Compère's compositions were printed by [[Ottaviano Petrucci]] in [[Venice]], and disseminated widely; obviously their availability contributed to their popularity. Compère was one of the first composers to benefit from the new technology of [[printing]], which had a profound impact on the spread of the Franco-Flemish musical style throughout Europe.

Compère also wrote several settings of the [[Magnificat]] (the hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary, from the first chapter of the [[Gospel of Luke]]), as well as numerous short motets.