ISAAC, HEINRICH  

It would be impossible to single out works from the enormous quantity of music written by the great Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac, a musician whose career took him to Florence, under the patronage of the Medici, and to Vienna, where he served the Emperor Maximilian, exercising a decisive influence on the music of the German part of the empire. He died in Florence in 1517. In addition to a quantity of church music, Isaac wrote a considerable amount of secular music, much of it vocal, including the well-known Insprugk, ich muss dich lassen (‘Innsbruck, I must leave you’), a reference to the time he spent in Innsbruck in the service of the Emperor.