The 15th century finds the English composer John Dunstable (c.1390-1453) at the court of Joan of Navarre. The English style, with its use of fuller musical intervals, is followed by the composers associated with the so-called First Netherlands or Burgundian School, Dufay (c.1400-1474), Binchois (c.1400-1460) and then Busnois (c.1430-1492). The Flanders-born Ockeghem (c.1410-1497) serves at the French court, composing Masses, motets and chansons, while Obrecht (1457/8-1505) works in the Burgundian Netherlands. The so-called Second Netherlands School is dominated by Josquin Desprez (c.1440-1521), who, like other northern European compatriots, worked in Italy. The Netherlands school of polyphony is widespread, partly for political and dynastic reasons. By 1500 a system of printing music with movable type had been developed in Venice. In 1527 the Flemish composer Willaert (c.1490-1562) takes charge of the music at St Mark's in Venice, creating a major Italian musical centre with compositions of increasing elaboration. Claudio Merulo (1533-1604) was organist there from 1557, followed by Andrea Gabrieli (c.1510-1586) and his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli (1558-1613). In Rome Palestrina (1525/6-1594) published his first Masses in 1554, setting a standard of church polyphony that was to form the basis of such works for many years. He shares fame with the great Orlando di Lasso (Lassus)(1532-1594) in Munich, the Spanish Tomas Luis de Victoria, and the English William Byrd (1543-1623). Other important English composers of the time include Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) and the lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626). The last quarter of the century brings the development of the madrigal in the form of part-songs, often on pastoral subjects, with the Italian style and form imitated elsewhere, notably in England, with Byrd and his contemporaries, and further developed in Italy by composers such as Monteverdi (1567-1643), then in Mantua, and the uxoricide prince, Gesualdo (c.1561-1613).
