Living between the eras of Josquin and Palestrina, Festa was among the highest order of artists, particularly in reference to both sacred and secular music. He composed numerous motets and madrigals and helped to set the stage which would project Italian music into the forefront of the European landscape. Festa's contributions were not noted until his appearance in the court of the Medici's during Leo X's papacy and Lorenzo's wedding. It is also probable that he was employed in the court of Louis XII as he composed the music for the commemoration of Anne of Brittany, Louis' wife, upon her death. Living in a ripe political milieu it is not surprising that Festa wrote music to that end. Between 1527 and '29 he wrote the motet "Florentia" which acclaimed Clement VII and sought the return of the Medici rule over Florence. The merits of his compositions, in toto, are demonstrated by their distribution. Copies of his work appeared in Venice, Rome, Nuremburg, Lyons, Paris, Munich, and numerous manuscripts are found in the Vatican library. Some of his works appear in "Madrigali de diversi musici libro primo" which was the first collection to employ the word "madrigal". Festa even composed a madrigal from a text by Michelangelo. His music is characterized by diversity, polyphony (one of the first to employ arrangements for all eight tones of the scale), imitation, word-imaging, and full expression of the humors. ~ Keith Johnson, Rovi