Henricus Isaac

Often confused as of German nationality and called Heinrich, Isaac was born around 1450 in Flanders. Glarean, the 16th century Swiss music writer called him Henricus Isaac Germanus. Isaac, living up to his reputation, wrote a tremendous amount of music . . . probably more than any of his generation. ‘Choralis constantinus’—settings of the Propers of the church year runs to about 300 motets . . . 36 settings of the Ordinary survive, along with scores of secular works in French, German, Italian, and Flemish. He was and is often compared, generally not positively, with his close contemporary, Josquin Desprez. His curriculum vitae, however, shows that his music was able to please some of the great discriminating leaders of the Renaissance World.

The first position recorded for Isaac is that of singer at the court of Duke Sigismund of Austria in 1484 at Innsbruck. The following year he is listed as a singer at the Cathedral in Florence. It is speculated that Lorenzo de’ Medici was instrumental in bringing Isaac to Florence since a number of his compositions are related to Lorenzo and his Court, including the famous lament on Lorenzo’s death in 1492: “Quis dabit capiti”. Piero, Lorenzo’s heir, took the Medici musical establishment to Rome to participate in the coronation of Pope Alexander VI, September of that year . . . it is possible that the two greatest musicians of the age, Josquin (still a member of the Papal Chapel?) and Isaac met on that occasion.

In 1494 the King of France, Charles VIII, invaded Italy and drove the Medici out of Florence. Three years later Isaac became court composer to Emperor Maximilian I and traveled with the Imperial Court to Vienna, Innsbruck, Torgau, and it was at the 1507 Reichstag in Constance that Isaac was commissioned by the Cathedral there to write music for the Propers of the Mass for the whole of the church year . . . a huge undertaking. Isaac never quite completed this task but in 1509 he delivered his incomplete ’Choralis Constantinus’ to the Cathedral.

As he approached his 70th year it was to Florence he was drawn. Fortunately, that music aficionado, Medici Pope Leo X, interceded with a pension for Isaac in Florence–an honorary position as chief of the Chapel of Polyphonic Music at Santa Maria del Fiore in 1514, where he had been a singer 30 years earlier.  Just 3 years later Henricus Isaac fell ill and died.