Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Netherlandish composer of south Netherlandish origin during the Renaissance era. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin des Prez, Isaac influenced the development of music in Germany. Several variants exist of his name: Ysaac, Ysaak, Henricus, Arrigo d’Ugo, and Arrigo il Tedesco among them. (Tedesco means “Flemish” or “German” in Italian.) Early life Little is known about Isaac’s early life (or indeed what he called himself), but it is probable that he was born in the Brabant. During the late 15th century, standards of music education in the region were excellent, and he was probably educated in his homeland, although the location is not known. Sixteenth-century Swiss music theorist and writer Heinrich Glarean claimed Isaac for Germany by dubbing him “Henricus Isaac Germanus”, but in his will Isaac called himself by the patronymic “Ugonis de Flandria”, ‘Hugo’s son from Flanders’. A writer in the Milanese Revista critica della letteratura italiana, June 1886, speculated that this patronymic might be connected to ‘Huygens’ and discovered the name “Isa