Alexander Agricola (; born Alexander Ackerman; – 15 August 1506) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance writing in the Franco-Flemish style. A prominent member of the Grande chapelle, the Habsburg musical establishment, he was a renowned composer in the years around 1500, and his music was widely distributed throughout Europe. He composed music in all of the important sacred and secular styles of the time. Life Agricola was the son, born out of wedlock, of Lijsbette Naps, a wealthy female merchant who lived in Ghent. He was probably born sometime in the late 1450s and had a brother named Jan. A commemorative motet first published in 1538 gave his age as 60 at the time of his death in 1506, but that may be due to a medieval convention concerning the number 60. He may have received his musical training from the parish church of St Nicolas in Ghent, as his mother made a substantial donation to its musical establishment in 1467. In 1476 he is known to have been in Cambrai, in the Low Countries, where he was employed as a petit vicaire or singer from February to May. Most of his life he spent in posts in Italy, France and the Low Countries, though there are gaps where his activities are not known, and he seems to have left many of his posts without permission. Agricola was previously identified as the Alessandro d'Alemagna who served as a singer for Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan from 1471 to 1474, during the period when the Milanese chapel choir grew into one of the largest and most famous ensembles in Europe; Loyset Compère, Johannes Martini, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and several other composer-singers were also in Milan during those years. In 1474 Duke Galeazzo Maria wrote a letter of recommendation for a certain "Alexander de Alamania" to Lorenzo de' Medici. That identification has since been questioned because the Milanese documents do not record the surname of this Alessandro d'Alemagna, and Agricola is from Flanders, not Germany. The earliest unambiguous references to Agricola remain the documents at Cambrai. For the long period from 1476 to 1491 nothing definite is known except that he spent part of the time in the French royal chapel, and he must have been building his reputation as a composer during this time, for he was much in demand in the 1490s, with France and Naples competing