The most distinguished pupil of Willaert was Cipriano di Rore (b. _ca._ 1516 at Mechlin or Antwerp). After leaving Willaert’s tutelage in Venice he went to the court of Hercules II at Ferrara in 1542, where, in the same year, his first book of madrigals was brought out. After sundry travels in his native country, he was made _maestro di capella_ to Duke Ottavio Farnese at Parma, returning to Venice as Willaert’s successor upon the latter’s death. He enjoyed great distinction as a composer of originality--of his ecclesiastical works we shall speak in Chapter X. As a composer of madrigals and _ricercari_ (see Chap. XI, p. 356) he followed in his master’s footsteps. Eight books of four to five-part madrigals, published from 1542 to 1565, of which the four-part ones were issued in score form in 1577 as an aid to the study of counterpoint, constitute the bulk of his secular works. It will be well to mention here that Monteverdi, a half century later, acclaimed 'the divine Cipriano di Rore’ as the founder of the new art, because of his endeavors in establishing the supremacy of melody.[111]
Luca Marenzio (b. near Brescia, 1550-1560) was probably the most distinguished of all the madrigalists, though he by no means limited himself to this field. His contemporaries called him _il piu dolce cigna_ (the sweetest swan), _divino compositore_, etc., and he enjoyed the highest musical eminence. About 1584 he was _maestro_ to Cardinal d’Este, later at the court of Sigismund III of Poland received the unusual salary of 1,000 _scudi_, and was organist of the papal chapel in Rome from 1585 till his death in 1594, caused, it was said, by a broken heart because of his love for a relative of Cardinal Aldobrandini whom he could not marry. His printed compositions comprise no less than eighteen books of madrigals (4 to 6 voices) and many ecclesiastical works.
Of further names we need only mention Constanzo Porta, of Padua (1530-1601); Giovanni Croce, of Venice (1557-1609); Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli (of whom we shall speak in a later chapter); Claudio Merulo, of Correggio (1553-1604), and Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa (1560-1614), 'the most daring and most genial harmonist of the sixteenth century,’, and finally the princely Lassus and the great Palestrina himself, as a few of the endless host of madrigal writers. Not thousands, but tens of thousands of madrigals were composed in this period; it was the accepted medium for the expression of every poetic idea, every pretty sentiment. People sang madrigals at home and abroad, in society and for private pastime; in short, its popularity has not been surpassed even by the modern song.