Pierre de la Rue: Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes

Pierre de la Rue (c.1460-1518) was the leading composer at the court of Burgundy during the golden age of Franco-Flemish polyphony. La Rue's output forms the third stage of a three-step development of musical form by his generation, following upon the work of Obrecht and then Josquin. While La Rue did not achieve the subsequent fame of Josquin, it was he who perfected the formal innovations of the era, reinjecting them with a refined & subtle sense of variety. La Rue's mass cycles in the fully developed post-Obrecht style dwarf Josquin's in number, and while the priorities of text-setting and simpler expression in Josquin's late output became the rallying cry of the high Renaissance, it was La Rue whose output punctuated the end of the medieval era.
La Rue was the most important composer of his generation not to work in Italy. He worked in the North, outside of the full spotlight of modernity, and was the last major composer to have the most important part of his output preserved in hand-copied manuscripts. Despite being featured by Petrucci, the best sources for La Rue's music are those copied by the famous Pierre Alamire (c.1470-1534) in Burgundy. Given this unity of presentation & the proximity to his work, La Rue's catalog shows the least confusion among major composers of the era. He dominates the Burgundian manuscripts of the period, in both sacred & secular music. In fact, his influence on notation itself can be perceived, as he was the first to regularly use written accidentals and to extend ranges consistently outside the gamut. La Rue's innovations are impressive, despite his conservative reputation, but it is his non-systematic approach to musical development which both limited his subsequent influence and provides such fertile ground for exploration today.
Despite the relatively late date of his compositional activity, and resulting speculation that many early works may be lost, La Rue was one of the most prolific composers of the period. Perhaps due to his late start, or lost early sources, identifying trends in La Rue's compositional development is difficult. His style appears fully mature almost immediately, with a wide variety of techniques evident throughout his output. He used canon extensively, most spectacularly in the six-voice canonic mass Missa Ave sanctissima Maria, as well as imitation, cantus firmus, ostinato, homophony, and word-painting. La Rue was a pioneer of the full-fledged parody mass, and used the technique in increasingly sophisticated settings such as the Missa Incessament mon pauvre (which also incorporates a strict canon). La Rue rarely used cantus firmus technique in a systematic fashion, preferring to vary the melody when restating it, making his sense of melodic variation one of his most distinctive traits. Individual lines tend to eschew direct repetition while maintaining a distinct internal consistency & differentiation between parts, based on range and tonal orientation. The result is a uniquely unified sense of linear melodic ideas within a polyphonic whole.