Perissone Cambio

Perissone Cambio (c.1520 – c.1562) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance, active in Venice. He was one of the most prominent students and colleagues of Adrian Willaert during the formative years of the Venetian School, and published several books of madrigals in the 1540s. Life Nothing is known about his early life except that he was either from Flanders or the immediately adjacent French-speaking areas. Two competing mentions of his origin exist in the historical record, one naming him as French and one as Flemish, with the Flemish mention coming from the Venetian Senate; the latter is considered more reliable. By the early 1540s he had come from his homeland to Venice, probably to study with Willaert, who was renowned as a teacher. This was near the end of the period during which musicians who received their early training in the Netherlands and adjacent areas left their homelands, going to Italy and other locations where demand for composers and singers was greatest. Perissone became one of Willaert’s students, and part of a close group which included Girolamo Parabosco, Baldassare Donato, Jacques Buus, Jacques Du Pont, and Cipriano de Rore; in addition he