About Adriano Banchieri

Adriano Bologna, (3 September 1568 – Bologna, 1634) was an Italian composer, organist, theorist and poet of the late
Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He founded the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna. He died in Bologna (then in the
Papal States). In 1587 he became a monk of the Benedictine order, taking his vows in 1590, and changing his name to
Adriano (from Tommaso). One of his teachers at the monastery was Gioseffo Guami, who had a strong influence on his
style. Like Orazio Vecchi he was interested in converting the madrigal to dramatic purposes. Specifically, he was one of the
developers of a form called "madrigal comedy", unstaged but dramatic collections of madrigals which, when sung
consecutively, told a story. Formerly, madrigal comedy was considered to be one of the important precursors to opera, but
most music scholars now see it as a separate development, part of a general interest in Italy at the time in creating
musico-dramatic forms. In addition, he was an important composer of canzonettas, a lighter and hugely popular alternative
to the madrigal in the late 16th century. Banchieri disapproved of the monodists with all their revolutionary harmonic
tendencies, about which he expressed himself vigorously in his Moderna Practica Musicale (1613), while systematizing the
legitimate use of the monodic art of figured bass. In several editions beginning in 1605 (reprinted at least six times before
1638), Banchieri published a series of organ works entitled l'Organo suonarino. Banchieri's last publication was the
Trattenimenti da villa of 1630. According to Martha Farahat, he wrote five madrigal comedies between 1598 and 1628 with
"plot and character development", starting with La pazzia senile of 1598, the last of them La saviezza giovenile.