Josquin des Prez was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous European composer between Guillaume Dufay and Palestrina, and is usually considered to be the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime. During the 16th century, Josquin gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. Writers as diverse as Baldassare Castiglione and Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame; theorists such as Heinrich Glarean and Gioseffo Zarlino held his style as that best representing perfection. He was so admired that many anonymous compositions were attributed to him by copyists, probably to increase their sales. At least 374 works are attributed to him; it was only after the advent of modern analytical scholarship that some of these mistaken attributions have been challenged, on the basis of stylistic features and manuscript evidence. Yet in spite of Josquin's colossal reputation, which endured until the beginning of the Baroque era, and was revived in the 20th century, his biography is shadowy, and we know next to nothing about his personality.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1836: Texas Revolution: At a convention in Washington-on-the-Brazos, the Mexican state of Texas adopted a declaration of independence from Mexico, establishing the Republic of Texas. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Declaration_of_Independence)

1865: Second Taranaki War: Protestant missionary Carl Sylvius Völkner died at the hands of Hauhau militants in Opotiki for working as an agent for George Grey, Governor-General of New Zealand. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkner_Incident)

1943: World War II: Australian and American air forces attacked and destroyed a large convoy of the Japanese Navy at the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in the Bismarck Sea north of the island of Papua New Guinea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bismarck_Sea)

1970: Rhodesia formally broke its links with the British crown and declared itself a republic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia)

1978: Aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 28 (insignia patch pictured), Czech Vladimír Remek became the first person not from the Soviet Union or the United States to go into space. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_28)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

pedagogic: Relating to teaching, pedagogy. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pedagogic)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends! ... So, on beyond Z! It's high time you were shown That you really don't know All there is to be known. (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss)