Girolamo Parabosco (c. 1524 – April 21, 1557) was an Italian

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

organist An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ (music), organ. An organist may play organ repertoire, solo organ works, play with an musical ensemble, ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumentalist, instrumental ...

, and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

of the Renaissance. He was born in

Piacenza Piacenza (; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Piacenza, eponymous province. As of 2022, Piacenza is the ninth largest city in the region by population, with more ...

, the son of a famous organist, Vincenzo Parabosco. Little is known of his childhood, but he went to Venice early for his musical education and is mentioned as a student of

Adrian Willaert Adrian Willaert ( – 7 December 1562) was a Flemish composer of High Renaissance music. Mainly active in Italy, he was the founder of the Venetian School. He was one of the most representative members of the generation of northern composers ...

, the founder of the Venetian School, near the end of 1541.H. Colin Slim, Grove onlineEinstein, p. 324 In 1546 he visited

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

as a guest of

Francesco Corteccia Francesco Corteccia, ''Hinnarium'', Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Francesco Corteccia (July 27, 1502 – June 7, 1571) was an Italian composer, organist, and teacher of the Renaissance. Not only was he one of the best known of the early compo ...

, musician to the

Medici The House of Medici ( , ; ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first consolidated power in the Republic of Florence under Cosimo de' Medici and his grandson Lorenzo "the Magnificent" during the first half of the 15th ...

and the leading musician of that city. After a period of travels, during which he visited other cities in northern Italy, he returned to Venice and became first organist at St. Mark's, which was at that time becoming one of the most distinguished musical institutions in Italy. He remained employed by St. Mark's for the rest of his life, and died in Venice in 1557. He wrote ''Rime'' and prose comedies, but he is best known by '' I Diporti'', a collection of stories after the model of

Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio ( , ; ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was s ...

's ''

Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's ''Comedy'' "''Divine''"), is a collection of ...

'' supposed to be told by a fowling-party weatherbound on an island in the Venetian lagoons. Of his compositions, a book of

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries) and early Baroque (1580–1650) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the ...

s for five voices, published in Venice in 1546, remains, as well as four other madrigals published in 1541 and 1544, and some instrumental music. The style of the madrigals is similar to that of Willaert, but even more densely polyphonic than that of his teacher; they are more akin to

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...

s than to most of the madrigals being written in Italy in the early 1540s. One of his instrumental works is a

ricercar A ricercar ( , ) or ricercare ( , ) is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term ''ricercar'' derives from the Italian verb , which means "to search out; to seek"; many ricercars serve a preludial func ...

based on "Da Pacem", the antiphon for peace; it may have been written for the end of the war in 1540 between Venice and the

Ottoman Turks The Ottoman Turks () were a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group in Anatolia. Originally from Central Asia, they migrated to Anatolia in the 13th century and founded the Ottoman Empire, in which they remained socio-politically dominant for the e ...

References

*''The Humour of Italy'', A. Werner * H. Colin Slim: "Girolamo Parabosco", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 3, 2008)
(subscription access)
* Alfred Einstein, ''The Italian Madrigal.'' Three volumes. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1949.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Parabosco 1500s births 1557 deaths Italian Renaissance composers Venetian School (music) composers Italian male classical composers