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Francesco da Milano
Life Francesco da Milano was an Italian lutenist and composer born on 18 August 1497 near Milan, in Monza, and died on 2 January 1543. He trained in Milan before joining the papal household in Rome by 1514, becoming a private musician to Pope Leo X in 1516 and remaining closely tied to the papal…
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Girolamo Kapsberger
Life Girolamo Kapsberger, also known as Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger or Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger, was a composer and virtuoso performer of the early Baroque period, born around 1580, probably in Venice, to a family of noble German descent. Nothing certain is known of his early training. After 1605 he moved to Rome, where he quickly earned…
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Marco dall’Aquila
Life Marco dall’Aquila was an Italian lutenist and composer of the Renaissance, born around 1480 in L’Aquila but active for most of his career in Venice, then the center of lute playing and music printing. He performed at gatherings in noble households, and in 1505 he obtained a privilege from the Venetian Signoria to print…
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Thomas Tallis
Life Thomas Tallis was an English composer of High Renaissance church music, born around 1505 and died 23 November 1585. His earliest documented post was as organist at Dover Priory in 1532, after which he worked at Canterbury before becoming a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, a position he held for the remainder of his…
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Luis de Milán
Life Luis de Milán was a Spanish composer, vihuelist, and writer on music who spent most of his life in Valencia, where he was associated with the ducal court of Germaine de Foix until around 1538. In 1536 he published El Maestro, the first printed collection of music for the vihuela de mano, arranging its…
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Bellerofonte Castaldi
Life Bellerofonte Castaldi was an Italian composer, theorbo player, lutenist, guitarist, singer, poet, and artist, born in 1580 in Collegara, near Modena, and died in Modena on 27 September 1649. One of the most colorful musicians of his day, he led an adventurous and often turbulent life; his outspoken, politically charged, and frequently licentious satirical…
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Joachim van den Hove
Life Joachim van den Hove was a Flemish-born Dutch composer and lutenist, born in Antwerp around 1567 to the musician Peeter van den Hove. After the Fall of Antwerp in 1584–85 the family fled north, and by the early 1590s Joachim had settled in Leiden, where he married Anna Rodius in 1594 and worked as…
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Carlo Gesualdo
Life Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman and composer born in 1566 and died on 8 September 1613. He is infamously known for murdering his first wife and her lover after discovering their affair in 1590, an act that has long overshadowed his musical legacy. Carlo Gesualdo spent…
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Alonso Mudarra
Life Alonso Mudarra was a Spanish composer and vihuelist of the Renaissance, born around 1510 and raised in Guadalajara. He likely travelled to Italy in 1529 in the retinue of the Duke of the Infantado before returning to Spain, where he became a priest and, from 1546, canon of Seville Cathedral, directing its musical life…
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Simone Molinaro
Life Simone Molinaro was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, born around 1570 in Genoa and died there in May 1636. He studied music with his uncle, Giovanni Battista Dalla Gostena, maestro di cappella at Genoa Cathedral; after Gostena was murdered in 1593, Simone Molinaro succeeded him in that post in 1599. That same…