Biography
Ludovico Balbi (c. 1545 – 1604)
Ludovico Balbi was a Venetian singer, composer, and maestro di cappella active across the Veneto in the later 16th century. Born in Venice around 1545, he studied in Padua with Costanzo Porta, then entered the professional world of elite church music as a singer at San Marco in Venice from about 1570 to 1578. Around the end of that period he became maestro di cappella at S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, and over the next two decades he held a sequence of prominent chapel posts: Cappella Antoniana in Padua (1585–1591), Feltre Cathedral (1593–1597), and Treviso Cathedral (1597–1598), before returning to the Frari until his death in 1604. His output spans the expected liturgical genres of a major church musician—Masses, motets, and psalm settings—alongside secular pieces such as madrigals, reflecting both the devotional and the civic-musical cultures of late Renaissance Venice and its hinterland.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.