Gerolamo Boschetti

Gerolamo Boschetti was an Italian composer and singer born in Mantua, active in the second half of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century. His reputation rests above all on the documentation of his ecclesiastical posts in Rome and Loreto, although his complete biography has not survived, so the chronology of his life has to be reconstructed from archival records.

His first documented appointment was as maestro di cappella at the church of Madonna dei Monti in Rome in 1591, a post he also held between 1593 and 1594. Between May 1594 and April 1595 he directed the music of the Holy House of Loreto. Some years later, from November 1608 until July 1611, he is recorded as a contralto in the Cappella Giulia in Rome. During his Roman period he enjoyed the support of the churchman Carlo Trotti, to whom he dedicated his second book of madrigals, which also includes a piece in his honour, Ornasti voi signor.

His surviving output includes madrigals published in Venice in 1593 and liturgical motets, such as the Modulationum sacrarum of 1594, printed in Rome. The first book of madrigals, from 1591, is now considered lost, and knowledge of it comes from early sources such as Fétis. Boschetti is, therefore, a witness to the musical life of the Roman chapels of his time.