wife had been having an affair, and he murdered her lover (unlike Gesualdo, who in similar circumstances murdered them both, Fontanelli spared his wife); as a punishment he was stripped of his possessions and banished from the Este lands. He found refuge with the opulent Roman household of Cardinal Alessandro d’Este, the younger brother of Duke Cesare who had banished him from Modena, and continued his musical life in Rome. By 1605 he had repaired his ties with Duke Cesare, and became the official representative of the Este family in Rome. Whether he repented of the murder, or was retained because of his exceptional skill as a diplomat, is not known. During the next ten years he traveled widely, including a stay in Florence to try to mediate conflicts among the Medici court musicians, and a sojourn in Spain in 1611 and 1612 as the Este representative. By 1615 he evidently had settled in Rome, becoming prominent in the musical life there; however no works of his from these years seem to have survived. Many surviving letters between members of the Roman aristocracy and church hierarchy however survive, giving many details of the musical life there, and Fontanelli's prominent position within it. Fontanelli became a priest in 1621, and died in early 1622 from an insect bite while in the Oratorio della Chiesa Nuova. Music and influence Along with Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Carlo Gesualdo, Fontanelli was one of the leaders of the Ferrarese school of madrigal composition in the last decade of the 1590s. His music was long neglected, coming again to light again towards the end of the 20th century. Gustave Reese, in his encyclopedic Music of the Renaissance, never mentions him, yet Alfred Einstein, in his comprehensive The Italian Madrigal, praised him as being the finest of the nobleman-composers at the end of the 16th century, a category that would include Gesualdo as well as Alessandro Striggio. Fontanelli apparently wrote only madrigals; neither sacred music nor specifically instrumental music has survived, even though he seems to have written some sacred music for the Oratorio dei Filippini at the Chiesa Nuova towards the end of his life. He published two books of madrigals, both for five voices: the first in Ferrara in 1595 printed by Vittorio Baldini, and the second in Venice in 1604 by Angelo Gardano. In addition, 16 other madrigals, some of which are of uncertain authorship,