Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500–October 7, 1553) was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance. He is generally considered to be the most influential Spanish composer before Victoria. Events Europes population was ~60 million. ... October 7 is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years). ... Events June 26 - Christs Hospital in London gets a Royal Charter July 6 - Edward VI of England dies July 10 - Lady Jane Grey is proclaimed Queen of England - for the next nine days July 18 - Lord Mayor of London proclaims Queen Mary as the rightful Queen - Lady Jane Grey... The Kingdom of Spain or Spain (Spanish and Galician: Reino de España or España; Catalan: Regne dEspanya; Basque: Espainiako Erresuma) is a country located in the southwest of Europe. ... Renaissance music is classical music written during the Renaissance period, approximately 1400 to 1600 CE. Defining the end of the period is easier than defining the beginning, since there were no revolutionary shifts in musical thinking at the beginning of the 15th century corresponding to the sudden development of the...

Life

He was born in Seville, and after an exceptional early education there, which included a rigorous training in the classics as well as musical study with some of the foremost composers of the time, he held posts at Avila and Plasencia. By 1535 he had moved to Rome, where he was a singer in the papal choir, evidently due to the interest of Pope Paul III who was partial to Spanish singers. He remained in Rome until 1545, in the employ of the Vatican; then, after a period of unsuccessfully seeking other employment in Italy (with the emperor, as well as with Cosimo de' Medici) he returned to Spain, where he held a succession of posts, many of which were marred by financial or political difficulties. While he was renowned by this time as one of the greatest composers in Europe, he seems to have been unpopular as an employee, for he began to have difficulty finding and keeping positions. He died in Marchena. This article is about the city in Spain. ... vila is a town in the south of Castile, the capital of the province of the same name, now part of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon, Spain. ... Plasencia Cathedral Plasencia is a walled market city in the province of Cáceres, in Western Spain. ... Events January 18 - Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro June 24 - The Anabaptist state of Münster is conquered and disbanded. ... Pope Paul III, (1543) portrait by Titian (Tiziano Vecelli), Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples Paul III, né Alessandro Farnese (February 29, 1468 - November 10, 1549) was pope from 1534 to 1549. ... Events December 13 - Official opening of the Council of Trent (closed 1563) Births Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Italian (Ferrarese) composer of madrigals, also an organist and influential teacher Giulio Caccini, Italian (Florentine) composer, sometimes called the founder of opera Deaths October 18 - John Taverner, composer... The coat of arms of the Holy See The term Holy See (Latin: Sancta Sedes, lit. ... The Italian Republic or Italy (Italian: Repubblica Italiana or Italia) is a country in southern Europe. ... Cosimo di Giovanni de Medici ( April 10, 1389 – August 1, 1464), was the first of the Medici political dynasty, rulers of Florence during most of the Italian Renaissance; also know as Cosimo the Elder and Cosimo Pater Patriae. ...

Music and influence

Almost all of his music is sacred, and all of it is vocal, though instruments may have been used in an accompanying role in performance. He wrote many masses, some of spectacular difficulty, most likely written for the expert papal choir; he wrote over 100 motets; and he wrote 18 settings of the Magnificat, and at least five settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah (one of which survives from a single manuscript in Mexico). The Magnificats alone set him apart from other composers of the time, and they are the portion of his work most often performed today. Stylistically, his music has much in common with other middle Renaissance work of the Iberian peninsula, for example a preference for harmony heard as functional by the modern ear (root motions of fourths or fifths being somewhat more common than in, for example, Gombert or Palestrina), and a free use of harmonic cross-relations rather like one hears in English music of the time, for example in Thomas Tallis. Some unique characteristics of his style include the rhythmic freedom, such as his use of occasional three-against-four polyrhythms, and cross-rhythms where a voice sings in a rhythm following the text but ignoring the meter prevailing in other voices. Late in life he wrote in a sober, heavily homophonic style, but all through his life he was a careful craftsman who considered the expression and understandability of the text to be the highest artistic goal. This article discusses the Mass as a standard form of classical music composition. ... In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions. ... Magnificat is the Latin name of the canticle of Mary, the mother of Jesus, which she speaks to Elisabeth, the wife of Zechariah. ... Tonality is the character of music written with hierarchical relationships of pitches, rhythms, and chords to a center or tonic. ... Nicolas Gombert (c. ... Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Born in Palestrina (Praeneste) or Rome, 1525, latest February 1, 1526 – February 2, 1594 in Rome) was an Italian composer of Renaissance music. ... Thomas Tallis Thomas Tallis (ca. ... Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. ... In music, the word texture is often used in a rather vague way in reference to the overall sound of a piece of music. ...

Morales was the first Spanish composer of international renown. His works were widely distributed in Europe, and many made the journey to the New World. Many music writers and theorists in the hundred years after his death considered his music to be among the most perfect of the time.

References and further reading

• Article "Cristóbal de Morales," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304

Gustave Reese (November 29, 1899 – September 7, 1977) was an American musicologist and teacher. ...

Recording

• Cristóbal de Morales, Missa mille regretz. Paul McCreesh, Gabrieli Consort & Players. CD Archiv 474 228-2.