MONTE, PHILIPPE de. - Flemish polyphonist, born at Malines in 1521 and died at Prague in the summer of 1603. He was first in Naples, Rome, Antwerp, Genoa, and finally, on 1 May 1568, went to Vienna as director of the Imperial Chapel.
At the age of seventy-nine (in 1600) he published his last collection (VII) of motets for five voices, and at eighty he was still contributing, with a madrigal, Il verno, to a collection by various authors (I diporti della villa, Venice 1601). In his vast output, besides the madrigals, the motets and masses stand out, animated by efforts to save languishing polyphony during a transitional period between the ancient Belgian polyphonic school and the new Italian monodic school, between which he forms a felicitous link. Among the masses, harmonious and vigorous, in an elevated and rich style, those entitled Emitte Domine, Si ambulavero, Quomodo dilexi, Ad modum, Benedictis et are particularly worthy of mention. De M. was greatly esteemed by contemporaries and posterity. Many of his books of motets and masses were printed during his lifetime in Venice, Rome, Antwerp, etc. Many works still remain unpublished in the principal libraries of Europe. New reprints of individual compositions by him are found in recent collections.
ivi 1921; J. van Nuffel, Ph. de M., in Proceedings of the Mat. Assoc., Session 57 (1931); Cg. van den Borren, Ch. de M., in Revue musicale, 1934. Luisa Cervelli