Unlike it's painters Italian patrons looked for musicians schooled in Northern Europe. When French and Flemish composers blended their complex compositions to the Italian language a new musical style was born. Because of Italy's hunger for new music it became Europe's most important locality for musical innovation in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Two such innovations were the frottola, a ballad like song with refrain, and the madrigal, which defined Italy's national style and became it's greatest musical export since plainchant. Madrigal's popularity was propelled by the poet Petrarch whose poems were perfectly suited for word painting, or the musical depiction of the meaning of the text.