Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470-c. 1535); ITA

Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470–after 1534) was an Italian composer and trombonist born in Verona. He worked at several of the most important northern Italian courts, including Mantua, where he served Isabella d’Este, and later Ferrara. His life was unusually turbulent: contemporary records document quarrels, absences from court, and his killing of his wife after discovering her with a lover. Despite these disruptions, he remained a sought-after musician and composer.

Tromboncino was one of the leading composers of the frottola, the principal Italian secular song genre around 1500 and an important precursor of the madrigal. He wrote hundreds of frottole, typically setting Italian poetry in clear, predominantly chordal textures that emphasized the words. Among his surviving works are settings of texts by Petrarch and other poets, as well as sacred music. His direct melodic style and sensitivity to vernacular poetry helped shape the transition from fifteenth-century court song to the sixteenth-century Italian madrigal.

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Read biography at allmusic.com.