Biography
Lucrezio Quinziani, also printed as Lucretio Quintiani, was a Cremonese Cistercian monk and composer active in the final decades of the sixteenth century. His earliest surviving publications place him in the lively musical world of Cremona, Venice, and the young Monteverdi generation: Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci appeared in Venice in 1588, followed by Le vaghe canzonette a tre voci in 1589, where the title page identifies him as “cremonese.”
His five-voice madrigals include pieces such as Monte, selvi, fontane, Di lauri e mirti il tuo bel tempio, Non può tanto l’amore, Se la virtù ch’in voi, and Creschin a gara sin al ciel. Several of these works travelled beyond Italy: three madrigals entered Thomas Yonge’s Second Book of Musica Transalpina in 1597, joining the English taste for Italian madrigals in translation.
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After his early secular publications, Quinziani’s output turned toward sacred music. His Cistercian identity is explicit in the title page of the Psalmi ad chorum accomodati, and later prints include Magnificat settings, vesper psalms, masses, and introits. By 1598 he was described as responsible for music at Sant’Ambrogio Maggiore in Milan, giving his career a firm Milanese ecclesiastical anchor.
His music belongs to a sober but cultivated late-Renaissance world: Cremonese madrigal culture, Cistercian liturgical discipline, and Milanese sacred practice. He remains a comparatively obscure figure, but not a ghost; his works survive in print records, manuscript copies, English madrigal transmission, and ecclesiastical repertory.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.