Claudio Maria Veggio (born c. 1510) was an Italian composer of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

, principally of

secular music Non-religious secular music and sacred music were the two main genres of Western music during the Middle Ages and Renaissance era. The oldest written examples of secular music are songs with Latin lyrics.Grout, 1996, p. 60 However, many secular s ...

. He was born in Piacenza, and must have spent most of his life there. Little is known about his life except for a brief period during the 1540s, when he was employed as a composer and

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

ist for Count Federico Anguissola of Piacenza, at the

Castell'Arquato Castell'Arquato (; Piacentino: or ) is an Italian town located on the first hills of Val D’Arda in the province of Piacenza, in Emilia-Romagna, approximately from Piacenza and from Parma. Places nearby include Bacedasco, Vigolo Marchese, ...

. After this period of activity he vanishes from history; nothing further is known about him. Veggio was an early composer of

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number o ...

s, of which two books have survived, published in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

in 1540 (the first to formally feature

note nere Note nere (English: black note) was a style of madrigal composition, which used shorter note values than usual and had more black note-heads. The style was introduced around 1540, and had a short vogue among composers publishing in Venice includi ...

under the name ''misura breve'') and 1544, for four and eight voices respectively. He was also a prolific

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

composer of ''

ricercar A ricercar ( , ) or ricercare ( , ) is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term ''ricercar'' derives from the Italian verb which means 'to search out; to seek'; many ricercars serve a preludial functi ...

s'' which alternate

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

and highly ornamented passages. Stylistically they represent an intermediate stage between the early keyboard style of

Marco Antonio Cavazzoni Marco Antonio Cavazzoni (c. 1490 – c. 1560) was an Italian organist and composer. He was the father of composer Girolamo Cavazzoni. All of his extant music is contained in the print ''Recerchari, motetti, canzoni ..libro primo'', which was pub ...

and the style of his son

Girolamo Cavazzoni Girolamo (''Hieronimo'') Cavazzoni (c. 1525 – after 1577) was an Italian organist and composer, son of Marco Antonio Cavazzoni. Little is known about his life except that he worked at Venice and Mantua, and published two collections of organ mu ...

, who composed ''ricercars'' in the more modern sense of the word — i.e., as a series of imitative sections. Of greatest significance to musicologists is a manuscript by Veggio which survived in the archives of Castell'Arquato. It appears to be a rough copy of his draft compositions, containing numerous sketches, strikeouts and revisions; it is one of the earliest such music manuscripts to survive, and provides a rare window into compositional procedures of the time. Many of the compositions are transcriptions for keyboard of vocal compositions, now lost, probably by other composers.

References and further reading

*Articles "Claudio Veggio," "Ricercar," in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. {{DEFAULTSORT:Veggio, Claudio Italian classical composers Italian male classical composers Renaissance composers 1510s births Year of death missing Madrigal composers