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Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi
1554 - January 9, 1609
born in Caravaggio, Italy, composed during the Renaissance period
Biography
Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi is particularly known for his dance songs, or balletti. These dance songs, however, share their attractive, light, and rhythmically alert character with his madrigals and even some of his sacred music.

Caravaggio is a small town between Brescia and Milan which, about 15 years after the birth of this composer, also produced Michelangelo Amerighi, the painter who took the name of Caravaggio and immortalized the town. Since it is known that Gastoldi was a subdeacon and then a deacon at the ducal chapel of Santa Barbara in Mantua, it is considered likely that he was a boy choral singer there. As an adult, he also sang in that choir, which was under the direction of Giaches de Wert, a leading composer imported from the Low Countries. It is likely that he took over Wert's duties for a time in 1582, when the latter was ill. Gastoldi was already experienced as a leader, for he had been the music teacher and director for the young priests at Santa Barbara from 1579 to 1587. In 1591, he published his first set of balletti. When Wert died in 1592, Gastoldi succeeded him at Santa Barbara. In the same year, he contributed some choruses for a production of Giovanni Guarini's Il pastor fido, some motets for a book dedicated to Palestrina, and a madrigal for Il trionfi di door, a wedding collection.