The life and works of Jean Mouton

Lucie Skeaping takes a look at the life and works of the remarkable early 16th-Century French composer Jean Mouton, compared only to the great master of the Renaissance polyphony, Josquin des Prez. Mouton excelled in writing especially elegant and deep religious motets, as well as other religious pieces for the French court, where he spent most of his career. He was also a teacher and had among his pupils no other than Adrian Willaert, who went on to create the Venetian school in Italy. So great was Mouton's popularity that the Medici Codex of 1518, one of the most famous and elaborate compilations of music from all Europe at the time, prepared for the pope, included some of his best work, which prompted a scholar in the 1960s to argue that the book had actually been edited by Mouton himself - but did he work on it? And how did his pieces end up in this celebrated Italian collection? All will be revealed in this programme!