The Master's Apprentice | The Renaissance Singers

The inspired, poignant and powerful sacred music of Cipiano de Rore is infused with the spirit of his predecessor Josquin. He frequently paid tribute to the Flemish master by referencing and reworking Josquin’s music to rhapsodic and rhetorical effect.

In his secular music, de Rore was the greatest innovator of the mid-16th century: his chansons are suavely emotional and his madrigals are vivid and startling. Monteverdi regarded him as the originator of the seconda prattica.

2015 marks the 500th anniversary of de Rore’s birth and the 450th anniversary of his death. To mark the occasion we sing a selection of his powerful madrigals and chansons, plus motets and music for the Mass, along with a few Josquin ‘originals’ that inspired them.