Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

Because he was so obviously and enthusiastically a perfecter of method, and because like many
methodical types he seems to have had both a flair and a taste for pedagogy, Willaert enjoyed an
enormous celebrity as a teacher. No previous composer left behind so distinguished a list of pupils or so
explicit a technical legacy. The pupils included two famous Flemings. One of them, Cipriano de Rore (ca.
1515–65), was appointed to succeed Willaert as St. Mark’s choirmaster, no doubt owing to the lingering
preference given northerners, like the lingering preference for Europeans as orchestra conductors that can
still be observed in America today. Partly owing to ill health, Rore was unsuccessful in the St. Mark’s
post and withdrew after a couple of years. He died in 1565 and was replaced by Zarlino, a fellow pupil
of Willaert but an Italian, who held it until his death in 1590. Afterward the musical leadership at St.
Mark’s remained in native hands, reflecting a lessened sense that high art music was an imported product.
Largely thanks to Willaert, Venice was full of outstandingly learned Italian musicians: Nicola Vicentino,
Girolamo Parabosco, Costanzo Porta, and above all Andrea Gabrieli, to name only his most famous
Italian pupils. It was Willaert’s very supremacy in Venetian music and his very success as a teacher that
finally overcame the Franco-Flemish hegemony. Indeed, by the end of the century Italy would become the