During Okeghem’s supremacy--a matter of forty years or so--some of the more interesting forms, which had been cultivated in the time of Dufay, disappeared. We look in vain for the mediæval rondo, the ballad, the accompanied secular art song, and the paraphrased church song, with instrumental accompaniment. The contribution of Okeghem and his followers was the development of technical resources and a greater freedom, both in range and style, in vocal composition. His unremitting, thoughtful search for fundamental rules established the art of polyphony on a firm basis, and provided a safe starting point for the utterance of truth and passion. It is the fate, however, of work depending on a passing taste to grow old quickly, and Okeghem himself probably outlived his popularity. But his pupils spread over Europe and perpetuated his learning, and some of them, at least, enriched the art by a fresher genius. Unlike the old French and Gallo-Belgian masters, who stayed at home, these writers overflowed into Italy and Germany, established schools of instruction, and founded choruses for the production of vocal works. Among them, moreover, was one genius who exercised the strongest influence on the art of music, and deserves to rank as one of its greatest masters. That genius was Josquin des Prés. III Josquin des Prés is almost the last in the long list of Netherland composers, and overtops them all, with the exception of Lassus. The year of his birth is uncertain, but has been placed at about 1450, since he was a singer in the papal chapel under Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84). He has been claimed as a countryman by Italian writers, because his name was modified into _del Prato_; by German, because, ethnologically and geographically, the Low Countries are a part of Germany; by the French, because the Netherlands became a political dependency of France about two hundred years after Josquin’s death; and naturally the Belgians claim some share in the fame of the man who represents the glory of Belgian music. The towns of Condé, Tours, and Cambrai, the home of Dufay, and of others, have all been candidates for the honor of his birth; but scholars are now agreed that he was born at least in the province of Hainault, which belonged, during the middle and later fifteenth century, to the dominions of Philip the Good of Burgundy. Josquin had been chapel singer at Milan before entering the papal choir (1484), and afterward he is found in the service of Louis XII of France, with whom he was a great favorite. Like some of his predecessors, he received an appointment to a canonry, but seems not to have kept the office very long. In the year 1515 the Netherlands became German, and, according to Konrad Peutinger, Josquin left France for a position in the Netherland chapel of Maximilian I. It seems probable, therefore, that he spent the latter part of his life at Condé, in his native country, where he died in 1521.