Bartolomeo Tromboncino

Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470 – 1535 or later) was an Italian composer of the middle Renaissance. He is mainly famous as a composer of frottola; he is principally infamous for murdering his wife. He was born in Verona and died in or near Venice.

Details of his early life are sketchy, as is common for most composers of the time, but most likely he grew up in Mantua, and he mentions in a letter that he was originally from Verona. 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 the city 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 stated 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; 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.

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