Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona, Italy, in 1567. He was a boy chorister at the Cremona Cathedral, where he studied music with Marc' Antonio Ingegneri, and published his volume of three-voice motets. He had issued a volume of three-part canzonettas and his first three volumes of madrigals from 1587 to 1592. In 1589 he travelled to Milan in hope of obtaining post as director of music at the Cathedral. In 1590, Monteverdi became a viol player and a madrigal singer at the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, and in 1602, he assumed there the post of Maestro di Cappella. It was not until 1595, when he travelled to Vienna, Prague, and Whyserad in a campain fighting the Turks, where he married Claudia Cattaneo, a singer at the court. Her premature death in 1607 left him with two infant sons. Between 1603 and 1605, Monteverdi had issued two more volumes of madrigals, and in 1607, he issued a volume of three-voice Scherzi musicali and his first opera, La Favola d'Orfeo. A year later, he completed a second opera, Arianna, of which only a single fragment had survived. In 1608, Monteverdi went to Cremona to be with his father. His father wrote to the Duke asking for his son to be honourably dismissed on the grounds of ill health and because of his poor salary. Monteverdi wrote an anguished letter on being summoned back to Mantua. His pay then increased. Throught the rest of his life, Monteverdi served as Maestro di Cappella at the St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. Monteverdi died Novermber 29, 1643, and was buried in church of Santa Maria Gloriosa del Frari.