born March 22, 1517, Chioggia, Rep. of Venice
died Feb. 14, 1590, Venice
Italian music theorist and composer.
In 1541 he was ordained a deacon and moved to Venice to study music with Adrian Willaert ( 0441; 14901562). He later took over as chapel master at San Marco Basilica. His influential treatise Le institutioni harmoniche (1558) argued for more stringent control of dissonance (while accepting several previously dissonant intervals as consonances) and stricter adherence to unity of mode in a composition. In Dimonstrationi harmoniche (1571) he renumbered the church mode s, starting with C instead of the traditional A, thus acknowledging the growing relevance of tonality .