Nicolas Gombert, one of the most famous and influential composers between Josquin Desprez and Palestrina, best represents the fully developed, complex polyphonic style of this period in music history.
While most composers of the next generation will not continue to write vocal music using Gombert's method of pervasive imitation, they will continue to use this contrapuntal texture in instrumental works.
Forms such as the canzona and ricercar are directly descended from the vocal style of Gombert; Baroque forms and processes such as the fugue are later descendants.
Gombert's music represents one of the extremes of contrapuntal complexity ever attained in purely vocal music.
Gombert vanishes from chapel records in 1540, during the height of his career.
According to contemporary physician and mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, writing in Theonoston (1560), Gombert had been convicted in 1540 of sexual contact with a boy in his care and was sentenced to hard labor in the galleys.
The exact duration of his service in the galleys is not known, but he was able to continue composing for at least part of the time.
Most likely he was pardoned sometime in or before 1547, the date he sent a letter along with a motet from Tournai to Charles' gran capitano Ferrante I Gonzaga.
The Magnificat settings preserved uniquely in manuscript in Madrid are often held to have been the "swansongs" that according to Cardano won his pardon; according to this story, Charles was so moved by these Magnificat settings that he let Gombert go early.
An alternative hypothesis (Lewis 1994) is that Cardano was referring to the highly penitential First Book of four-part motets; however, in neither case is it clear how Gombert was able to compose while rowing in the galleys as a prisoner.
