Stylistically, his sacred music is more closely related to the contemporary Franco-Flemish idiom of pervasive, dense, complex polyphony than to the relatively clear and succinct style of his fellow French composers.
By this method the composer retains control of the symphony's architecture and the realisation of the performance, while simultaneously creating complex and somewhat unpredictable polyphony.
That change facilitated complex polyphony, which required that they develop notation.
Although it figures in certain European music from the Middle Ages, hocketing goes back much further, to hunter-gatherer societies like the pygmies of central Africa, whose traditions of complex vocal polyphony are almost entirely hocket-based.
It is one of many stories that render a complex human polyphony in voices that are entirely distinct.
The musical style is characteristic of the composer in the 1950s, combining rigorous, complex polyphony with lyrical radiance and simplicity.
By the early 16th century it was in common use as meaning a simple setting of strophic poetry; melodic madrigals, free of complex polyphony, were known as madrigale arioso.
Most of this music is harmonically simple and makes little use of complex polyphony (indeed, the polyphonic passages frequently feature reduction of parts).
His professionally crafted scores are distinguished by an individual style, rigorous structural clarity, dense textures and complex polyphony.
He was partially reacting to the strictures of the Council of Trent, which discouraged excessively complex polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text.