Paolo Virchi (also known as ''Targhetta''; 1551 – 2 May 1610) was an Italian composer and instrumentalist. He was born in

Brescia Brescia (, locally ; lmo, link=no, label= Lombard, Brèsa ; lat, Brixia; vec, Bressa) is a city and ''comune'' in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Garda and Iseo ...

and his father was Girolamo Virchi, an instrument maker. He joined the court of Alfonso II d'Este between 1579 and 1580. On the court rolls, he is referred to as a singer, but in his publications he refers to himself as an organist and instrumentalist. He taught members of the court to sing, play the

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

, and was one of few musicians at the court to receive a salary raise during his tenure there. Upon the dissolution of the court in 1597, he immediately joined the Gonzaga court in

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

.Newcomb Virchi had several publications based all in

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

, including a book of

cittern The cittern or cithren ( Fr. ''cistre'', It. ''cetra'', Ger. ''Cister,'' Sp. ''cistro, cedra, cítola'') is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is d ...

tablature Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches. Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...

and many

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

s, which

Anthony Newcomb Anthony Newcomb (August 6, 1941 - November 18, 2018) was an American musicologist. He was born in New York City and studied at the University of California, Berkeley where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1962. He then studied with Gustav Le ...

praised as being of equal skill as those of

Luca Marenzio Luca Marenzio (also Marentio; October 18, 1553 or 1554 – August 22, 1599) was an Italian composer and singer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the most renowned composers of madrigals, and wrote some of the most famous examples of the fo ...

Publications

References

*Anthony Newcomb. "Paolo Virchi", '' Grove Music Online'', ed. L. Macy (accessed August 15, 2006)
grovemusic.com
(subscription access). http://test.kotta.info/ http://www.kil.hu/kiadvanyok/index.php?mid=14e663204965df&f_from=0&f_to=10&pmid=14e663210c3c77 http://test.kotta.info/hu/product/5757/VIRCHI-PAOLO-Saltarelli-Canzoni-e-Fantasie http://search.onb.ac.at/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&vl%281UI0%29=contains&tab=default_tab&srt=rank&ct=search&mode=Basic&dum=true&tb=t&indx=1&vid=ONB&fn=search&search=1&vl%28freeText0%29=virchi

Notes

1551 births 1610 deaths 16th-century Italian composers 17th-century Italian composers Italian male composers Date of birth unknown 17th-century male musicians {{Italy-composer-stub