JOSQUIN des Prez
b ?Picardy, c1440
d Condé-sur-l'Escaut, near Valenciennes, 27 August 1521, aged c eighty-one

He was one of the greatest and most prolific composers of the Renaissance. Northern French by birth, he spent some of his life resident in Italy. Little is known of his background and his early days; but from

1459 to 1472 he was a singer at Milan Cathedral, and then went into the service of Galeazzo Maria Sforza. His music was both sacred - motets and masses - and secular, and he wrote many chansons.