Jacques Arcadelt

Jacques Arcadelt (also Jacob Arcadelt; 10 August 150714 October 1568 In addition to his work as a madrigalist, and distinguishing him from the other prominent early composers of madrigals – Philippe Verdelot and Costanzo Festa – he was equally prolific and adept at composing chansons, particularly late in his career when he lived in Paris. Arcadelt was the most influential member of the early phase of madrigal composition, the “classic” phase; it was through Arcadelt’s publications, more than those of any other composer, that the madrigal became known outside of Italy. Later composers considered Arcadelt’s style to represent an ideal; later reprints of his first madrigal book were often used for teaching, with reprints appearing more than a century after its original publication. Life Arcadelt was born in Namur in the Habsburg Netherlands on 10 August 1507. He moved to Italy as a young man, and was present in Florence by the late 1520s, thereby gaining an opportunity to meet or work with Philippe Verdelot, who wrote the earliest named madrigals. Still in Rome, in January 1539, he was probably made a member of the Julian Chapel (the records give his name as “Jacobus flandrus”, sugge