di cappella in Ferrara for Duke Ercole II d'Este. Fiesco's compositions in this book are for four voices, and include madrigals in the classic style, chromatically experimental works (for example Bacio soave, which shows also the influence of Nicola Vicentino, who actively encouraged such experiments), as well as music likely intended for performance at dramatic events staged for the Este family. His poetry settings include works by Boccaccio, Giovanni Batista Strozzi, Bernardo Tasso, Sannazaro, Ludovico Ariosto, and Petrarch. Fiesco's last book of madrigals, the Musica nuova, for five voices, is his most famous, for it is the first appearance of the poetry of Guarini set to music. Fourteen out of the fifteen poems in the collection are sonnets, and the style matches the elegance of the language, attaining considerable virtuosity in text setting. Some of the settings are innovative harmonically and rhythmically, with one madrigal, S'armi pur d'ira disdegnoso ed empio, foreshadowing the Baroque stile concitato of rapid declamation over a homophonic texture. Not all of Fiesco's works are madrigals. He published a few secular songs in lighter current forms such as the greghesca and the napolitane, forms of Venetian and Neapolitan origin respectively. References David Nutter, "Giulio Fiesco", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 21, 2008), (subscription access) Lewis Lockwood/Murray Steib, "Ferrara", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 21, 2008), (subscription access) Allan W. Atlas, Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe, 1400–1600. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1998. Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal. Three volumes. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1949. Notes 16th-century births 16th-century deaths Renaissance composers Italian classical composers Italian male classical composers Madrigal composers Musicians from Ferrara