| Marco Da Gagliano |
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Life He was born in Florence and lived most of his life there. After early study both with a religious confraternity and with Luca Bati , he was employed beginning in 1602 at the church of S Lorenzo for six years as a singing instructor. In 1607 he went to Mantua , where he wrote music for the Gonzaga family, including his impressive operatic setting of ''Dafne'', and in 1609 returned to Florence to become ''maestro di cappella'' at the Compagnia Dell'Arcangelo Raffaello , the organisation at which he had received his boyhood musical training. Later that same year the Medici made him ''maestro di cappella'' of their court, a position he held for 35 years. Music and influence Gagliano wrote an enormous quantity of music, both sacred and secular, for the Medici, and in addition he was a singer and instrumentalist who entertained them privately. His works include the opera, ''Dafne'' ( 1608 ) which was praised as the best setting of the libretto by Rinuccini —even by Jacopo Peri , the first to write an opera on the text. Peri indicated that Gagliano's way of setting text to music came closer to actual speech than any other, therefore accomplishing the aim of the Florentine Camerata of decades before, who sought to recapture that (supposed) aspect of Ancient Greek Music . Other music by Gagliano includes secular '' style of the previous century, while other pieces show influence of the Venetian School . Gagliano was extremely influential in his time, as could be expected of the Medici's own appointed head of all musical activities at their court; however his popularity waned after his death, and his music has since been overshadowed by contemporaries such as Monteverdi. References and further reading
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