Photo: Helvio ricina · CC BY-SA 4.0 · credits
Tier 3 · vertical & regional
Bartolomeo Tromboncino
Person · male · Republic of Venice · Verona · born 1470 · died 1535 · recording since 1982
Italian composer
Listen on SpotifyYouTube Music
Also known as Bartolomeo Trombocino · バルトロメオ・トロンボンチーノ
Timeline
5 events▣ Album 2◦ Birth 1† Death 1★ Debut release 1
1470s
1530s
1980s
· Debut release
Debut release: La Favola di Orfeo
First documented Album in the MusicBrainz discography.
source: musicbrainz
1990s
Biography
English biography558 words · 3 sectionssource: wikipedia-en · licence CC BY-SA 4.0 · revision 1369333012
Biography
Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470 – 1535 or later) was an Italian composer of the middle Renaissance. He is mainly famous as a composer of frottole; he is principally infamous for murdering his wife. He was born in Verona and died in or near Venice.
Life
There is little information on his early life, as is common for most composers of the time. He mentions in a letter that he was originally from Verona, and it is most likely that he grew up in Mantua. Until around 1500 he lived and worked in Mantua, though he made occasional trips to adjacent cities such as Ferrara, Este, Vicenza, Milan, and Pavia, especially when he was in trouble. He fled Mantua in 1495 for unknown reasons, returning later that same year. In 1499 he murdered his wife when he discovered her in flagrante delicto but, unlike Gesualdo a hundred years later, he may have spared the man (the sources are contradictory on this detail). Curiously, he seems to have been pardoned again and again for his misdeeds, but he left Mantua again "without permission, and for despicable reasons", as recorded in a letter from one of the Gonzaga family, his employers. His skill as a composer probably endeared him to Isabella d'Este, one of the great patrons of the arts of the time, and this connection may have assisted him in attaining pardons for his various murders and misdemeanors.
From 1502 Tromboncino was employed by the even more infamous Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, where he wrote music for the famous intermedi of her opulent court, and most significantly for her wedding to Alfonso d'Este. Sometime before 1521 he moved to Venice, where he most likely spent the remainder of his life, seemingly in rather more placid circumstances.
Music and influence
In spite of his stormy, erratic, and possibly criminal life, much of his music is in the light current form of the frottola, a predecessor to the madrigal. He was a trombonist, as shown by his name, and sometimes employed in that capacity; however he apparently wrote no strictly instrumental music (or none survives). He also wrote some serious sacred music: seventeen laude, a motet and a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Stylistically, the sacred works are typical of the more conservative music of the early 16th century, using non-imitative polyphony over a cantus firmus, alternating sectionally with more homophonic textures or with unadorned plainsong. His frottolas, by far the largest and most historically significant part of his output (176 in all) are more varied than those of the other famous frottolist, Marchetto Cara, and they also tend to be more polyphonic than is typical for most frottolas of the time; in this way they anticipate the madrigal, the first collections of which began to be published near the very end of Tromboncino's life, and in the city where he lived (for example Verdelot's Primo libro di Madrigali of 1533, published in Venice). The major differences between the late frottolas of Tromboncino and the earliest madrigals were not so much musical as in the structure of the verse they set.
The poetry that Tromboncino set tended to be by the most famous writers of the time; he set Petrarch, Galeotto, Sannazaro, and others; he even set a poem by Michelangelo, Come haro dunque ardire, which was part of a collection Tromboncino published in 1518.
Discography & profile
Normalised profile
Percentiles are computed over every artist in the database, so a tier-3 artist can still sit in the 95th percentile on a single axis.
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 17 | 76.4th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 2 | 75.7th |
| Studio albums | 2 | 78.8th |
| Awards recorded | 0 | 0th |
| Timeline events | 5 | 78.8th |
| Recording span (years) | -447 | 0.4th |
| Genres | 0 | 0th |
Percentiles are computed at render time; missing values mean the artist has no data on that axis.
Discography (2 release groups · 2 studio albums)
Albums · 2
1982 · studio album
Search SpotifySearch YouTube Music
Tracklist · 9 tracks · 1:36:06
Disc 11La Favola di Orfeo: Introduction and Prologue4:402La Favola di Orfeo: 1st Scene: Dialogue Mopsus – Aristus11:373La Favola di Orfeo: 2nd Scene: Scene of the Shepherds Mopsus, Tirsus and Aristeus13:314La Favola di Orfeo: 3rd Scene: Scene Orpheus and Announcement of the Death of Euridice12:155La Favola di Orfeo: 4th Scene: Lamentation of Orpheus (Part 1)6:07Disc 21La Favola di Orfeo: 4th Scene: Lamentation of Orpheus (Conclusion) / Dialogue Pluto – Minor10:552La Favola di Orfeo: 5th Scene: Invocation of the Gods by Orpheus / Dialogue Proserpina – Pluto16:123La Favola di Orfeo: 6th Scene: Orpheus Song of Triumph / Parting from Euridice / Lamentation of Orpheus14:234La Favola di Orfeo: 7th Scene: Scene of the Bacchantes6:261998 · studio album
Search SpotifySearch YouTube Music
Tracklist · 38 tracks · 1:36:10
Disc 11LA FAVOLA DI ORFEO [text by Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494)] - Introdutto (instrumental) [Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c.1470-1535)]2:462Choir: “Silenzio! Udite!” [Anonymous]1:543Mopso: “Ha' tu veduto un mio vitellin bianco” [Michele Pesenti (c.1475-after 1521)]0:444Aristeo: “Caro mio Mopso, a piè di questo fonte” [Michele Pesenti]2:035Mopso: “Aristeo mio, questa amorosa face” [Michele Pesenti]1:096Aristeo: “Mopso, tu parli queste cose a' morti” [Michele Pesenti]1:247Choir: “Udite, selve mie dolce parole” [Anonymous]6:148Intromessa (Instrumental) [Filippo de Lurano (c.1475-after 1520)]2:219Mopso: “E' non è tanto il mormorio piacevole” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]2:0310Tirsi and Choir: “Si ho!” [Marco Cara (c.1460-after 1525)]1:2511Aristeo: “Rimanti, Mopso!” [Anonymous]0:3512Aristeo: “O mi convien” [Anonymous]1:5413Mopso: “O Tirsi, che ti par del tuo car sire?” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]1:0414Aristeo and Choir: “Non mi fuggir, Donzella” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]2:5915Intromessa (Instrumental) [Anonymous]1:1216Orfeo and Choir: “O meos longum” [Michele Pesenti]7:4417Un Pastore: “Crudel novella ti rapporto, Orfeo” [Anonymous]1:5218Intromessa (Instrumental) [Marco Cara]2:4019Orfeo: “Dunque piangiamo” [Anonymous]6:07Disc 21Orfeo and Choir: “Pietà, pietà! del misero” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]5:092Plutone: “Chi é costui che con si dolce nota” [Marco Cara]1:573Minos: “Costui vien contro le legge de' Fati” [Marco Cara]1:094Intromessa (Instrumental) [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]2:435Orfeo and Choir: “O regnator di tutte quelle genti” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino / Serafino dall'Aquilano (1466-1500)]10:376Proserpina: “I' non credetti” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]1:507Plutone: “Io te la rendo” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]2:308Intromessa (Instrumental) [Marco Cara]1:149Orfeo: “Ite triumphales” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino / Marco Cara]1:1710Euridice: “Oimè, chè 'l troppo amore” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino / Marco Cara]1:2311Orfeo: “Oimè! Se' mi tu tolta” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino / Marco Cara]1:1912Una furia: “Più non venire avanti” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino / Marco Cara]0:3213Orfeo: “Qual sarà mai sí miserabil canto” [Serafino dall'Aquilano]3:5214Choir: “Quanto è misero l'uom” [Serafino dall'Aquilano]1:2715Orfeo: “Fanne di questo Giove intera fede” [Serafino dall'Aquilano]1:5116Intromessa (Instrumental) [Anonymous]2:4317Baccante: “Ecco quel che l'amor nostro dispreza!” [Bartolomeo Tromboncino]2:4018Intromessa (Instrumental) [Anonymous]0:5819Choir: “Ognun segua, Bacco, te!” [Michele Pesenti]2:49
Stats & PK
Percentile within all 23,672 published artists.Put Bartolomeo Tromboncino head-to-head →
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 17 | 76.4th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 2 | 75.7th |
| Studio albums | 2 | 78.8th |
| Awards recorded | 0 | 0th |
| Timeline events | 5 | 78.8th |
| Recording span (years) | -447 | 0.4th |
| Genres | 0 | 0th |
Awards & honours
Where this record comes from
portrait—Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caricatura_del_tromboncino.jpgaliases/urls—musicbrainz · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/ed6be8e4-8976-4c83-b770-d75d1d40b3abdiscography—musicbrainz · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/ed6be8e4-8976-4c83-b770-d75d1d40b3abcore—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q809518seed-list—wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeo_Tromboncinobiography—wikipedia-en · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeo_Tromboncino
Why this artist is in the database
- List of composers by name
Tier rule: curated genre/region list
Image: Helvio ricina · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Wikidata: Q809518 · MusicBrainz: ed6be8e4-8976-4c83-b770-d75d1d40b3ab