Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450 – 26 March 1517) was a Netherlandish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs (in French, German and Italian), and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin des Prez, Isaac influenced the development of music in Germany. Several variants exist of his name: Ysaac, Ysaak, Henricus, Arrigo d'Ugo, and Arrigo il Tedesco among them. (Tedesco means "Flemish" or "German" in Italian.)

Little is known about Isaac's early life (or indeed what he called himself), but it is probable that he was born in Flanders, probably in Brabant. During the late 15th century, standards of music education in the region were excellent, and he was probably educated in his homeland, although the location is not known. Sixteenth-century Swiss music theorist and writer Heinrich Glarean claimed Isaac for Germany by dubbing him "Henricus Isaac Germanus", but in his will Isaac called himself by the patronymic "Ugonis de Flandria", 'Hugo's [son] from Flanders'. A writer in the Milanese Revista critica della literatura italiana, June 1886, speculated that this patronymic might be connected to 'Huygens' and discovered the name "Isaacke" in the town archives of Bruges.

Heinrich Isaac's career spanned well over thirty years and allowed him to travel far from his homeland of Flanders into Germany, Italy, and Austria, as well as other parts of central Europe. While the absence of plentiful primary sources makes it hard for us to map out Isaac's life, piecing together the sources we do have along with the works he wrote gives us a good picture of just how popular this Franco-Flemish composer was in his time. Isaac was probably writing music by the 1470s, and the first document mentioning his name dates back to 15 September 1484, placing him in Innsbruck as a singer for Duke Sigismund of Austria, of the House of Habsburg. The following year Isaac migrated to Florence, since documents show that by July 1485 Isaac had become employed as a singer at the church Santa Maria del Fiore. By the middle of 1491, he was designated as a singer at Santissima Annunziata, a position that he held until 1493.

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