Abstract
Willaert's music was much celebrated in its own time. Today, however, musicologists find little to praise outside of its sonorous richness and sen-sitivity to text. Its seamlessness and contrapuntal density seem to be re-spected but not loved. Michele Fromson writes that in spite of
widespread and continued historical interest in his music, individual pieces have had a difficult time entering the musical mainstream. With the exception of a handful of especially tuneful chansons, madrigals and motets, few compositions have gained favor with modern performers or listeners, raising perplexing questions about the aesthetic quality of his music that still await satisfactory answers.
In the following pages, I propose that the powerful expressive poten-tial of this music lies beneath the apparently seamless surface in the details of its contrapuntal complexity. Singling out a handful of "especially tune-ful pieces" is a dead end-most ofWillaert's music is melodically very uniform.