This past week I started attending rehearsals for the performance of a Bach cantata shortly before Christmas. I've been reminded of one reason why I'm drawn to early music: certain composers wrote great parts for everyone. Italian madrigals (and quite a few English ones), Renaissance polyphony in general & many of Bach's works contain lines or phrases that allow one part to strut its stuff, and altos generally have a fair share. In fact, polyphonic music of any era tends to have more interesting possibilities for harmonizing parts than does "four-square" (as a friend calls it) music simply because each part is essentially doing its own thing.
Masters of Renaissance polyphony include Palestrina, Lassus, Tallis, Byrd and Sweelinck, among many others. If you're looking for music that lets everyone shine at some point, it would be hard to beat 16th-17th century composers.
