Giulio Cesare Bianchi

Giulio Cesare Bianchi, known as 'dal Cornetto', was an Italian cornettist and composer born in Cremona around 1576 or 1577. His career unfolded in the musical circle of the Gonzaga court in Mantua, where he overlapped with Claudio Monteverdi, also a native of Cremona and the court's maestro di cappella.

Between 26 March 1602 and June 1612 he was in the service of the Gonzaga. He was responsible for the wind band, a post that included recruiting instrumentalists. He supplemented his income with a position in the paymaster's office. He was dismissed before 8 June 1612, during a period of reorganisation of court music following the arrival of Duke Francesco Gonzaga; apparently he annoyed the new duke by seeking, unsuccessfully, a post with Cardinal Borghese in Rome. By around 1620 he had returned to Cremona, from where he published two books of motets in Venice, with four pieces by Monteverdi included in the first. He probably entered a religious order, and in 1631 he was living in Piacenza with Countess Hieronima Terzi, for whom he celebrated Mass. In 1637, at the age of sixty, he rented Monteverdi's house in Cremona.

His legacy rests mainly on his motets for voices and basso continuo, representative of the small-scale concertato sacred music that spread through Italy in the early seventeenth century, with an expressive melodic line and contrasts between imitative passages and homophonic tutti. A canzonetta also survives, published in a anthology of 1605.