Pierre Certon (d. 1572) was a French composer active chiefly at the Sainte chapelle du Palais from 1532 until his death. Closely associated with the French royal court and with its official printer Attaingnant, he is credited with over three hundred chansons in the publications of Attaingnant, Du Chemin, and Le Roy et Ballard. Du Chemin issued an important retrospective collection of his work, Les Meslanges, in 1570. Works issued by Le Roy et Ballard starting in 1552 speak to his currency with the new vogue for short and syllabic chansons, but his works found in the Du Chemin chansons nouvelles reveal a wide range of musical styles, albeit a limited vocabulary of melodic invention. Aimé Agnel and Richard Freedman, “Certon, Pierre,” New Grove 2, V, 382-84. See also Edward Kovarik, “The Parody Chansons of Certon's Meslanges,” in Music and Context, Essays for John M. Ward, ed. A. D. Shapiro (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 317-51.