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Artist
Francesco Portinaro
1+ albums
16th centuryitalian
about
Francesco Portinaro (c. 1520 – ?1578) was an Italian composer and humanist of the Renaissance, active both in northern Italy and in Rome. He was closely associated with the Ferrarese Este family, worked for several humanistic Renaissance academies, and was well known as a composer of madrigals and dialogues. He was born in Padua around 1520. While he published a book of motets in Venice in 1548, no biographical details are available for the period before 1550. He was the son of a Paduan official, was married to Laura d'Este, and was resident in the Este palace in Padua. In 1555 he applied unsuccessfully for the post of maestro di cappella, music director, at the city's cathedral, and failing in this enterprise, spent the rest of the decade in humanistic as well as musical pursuits. In particular, he had an active life working for four secular groups: a group of musicians in Padua, and three humanistic academies in Vicenza, Padua, and Verona. One of his master was Lorenzo Barozzi. Such academies were becoming common in the late 16th century, as a part of the Renaissance rebirth of humanistic thought; in music they were the location of the first experiments with monody and multi-voice dramatic vocal forms, the strands of which would eventually coalesce into opera. The first of Portinaro's associations was an unnamed group he founded himself, which existed to further the musical careers of its members, which he created on 21 June 1555. Upon the dissolution of this fraternity h