Antwerp, 1576

Shortly before fleeing Antwerp, when the Spanish Fury had broken out, the composer published a chanson volume at the printing office of Phalèse and Bellère on texts by Pierre De Ronsard, which he dedicated to his friend François Le Fort.

De Castro's Ronsard book of 1576

In the seven years following his debut (1569-1576) De Castro stayed in Antwerp. In that period he published seven music volumes which all, except for one, came from the presses of Phalèse and Bellère (see Table IV nrs. 2, 7, 8). The volume of 1576 is entirely devoted to music on texts by Pierre De Ronsard (with the exception of La nuit m'est courte by Joachim Du Bellay).

Initially in the service of the French Court, this French poet (1524-1585) founded a literary group around the 1550s, the Pléiade, which also included Jean-Antoine Du Baïf en Joachim Du Bellay. The first creations of the Pléiade, five volumes of Odes (1550-2) and the sonnet book Les Amours de Cassandre (1552-3), were all from the pen of Ronsard.

From the appearance of his major poetry collections in the 1550s onwards Ronsard's verses enjoyed exceptional popularity among polyphonists. Hundreds of musical settings of his poems were published in France and the Low Countries. In the middle of the 1570s the Ronsard vogue reached its height. De Castro's volume, Chansons, odes et sonetz de Pierre Ronsard, (Louvain-Antwerp, Phalèse-Bellère, 1576) not only illustrates this vogue, but, according to several musicologists, also contains some of the most attractive and varied settings of Ronsard's work.