Jacobus Clemens (non Papa) (jan 1, 1510 – jan 1, 1556)

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"Fantastically prolific", according to Taruskin. Wrote 15 Latin Masses and 233 motets. On the other end of the spectrum, he wrote Souterliedekens (Little Psalter Songs), which are three-voice polyphonic settings of all 150 Psalms paraphrased into Dutch verse.
He was chosen to be the maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Basilica.

To Zarlino, he was the "perfecter of music", as his music had all the characteristics of ars perfecta without any of the idiosyncracies.

Willaert was a super famous teacher, and taught many italian students including Andrea Gabrielli. "It was Willaert's supremacy in Venetian music and his success as a teacher that finally overcame the Franco-Flemish dominance of ITalian music. Inmeed, by the ened o the sixteenth century Italy would become the great training center for musicians.

One of the traits that made him a model of established excellence was his stylistic moderation and lack of idiosyncrasy. Moderation and a certain impersonalism are traits commonly associated with classicism. He achieved the balance, clarity, and refinement identified with perfection while avoiding the density and conceits associated with some of his contemporaries. He deliberately restored some basic elements of Josquin's earlier style, as idealized and spread by the humanists.

"The publication of metrical psalms, as they are generally called, in vernacular languages became a virtual craze in the wake of the Reformation, even in countries that did not immediately participate in the rise of Protestantism.

The psalm translations had been issued in 1540 by an Antwerp printer named Simon Cock (lol), who made it more marketable by including popular or folk tunes, including love songs, ballads, drinking songs, and familiar hymns--to which each of the metrical paraphrases could be sung. One of these tunes was printed above each psalm. But the whole purpose of their inclusion was that they were widely known by heart.

This kind of appropriation from oral tradition is known as "contrafactum" (literally, a makeover or counterfeit). The idea is to get everyone singing familiar tunes together as quickly as possible, without any special instructions. These simple domestic psalms are not examples of ars perfecta but an alternative to it. This reminds us that the ars perfecta, despite Zarlino's claims and the undeniable quality of the music he espoused, was never truly a universal style. It also shows that even as the ars perfecta was being perfected, there were forces at work that would compromise and eventually supplant it. The popularization of religious art in the name of reform was just one of these forces.

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