Francesco Portinaro

Francesco Portinaro (c. 1520 – ?1578) was an Italian composer and humanist of the Renaissance, active both in northern Italy and in Rome. He was closely associated with the Ferrarese Este family, worked for several humanistic Renaissance academies, and was well known as a composer of madrigals and dialogues.

He was born in Padua around 1520. While he published a book of motets in Venice in 1548, no biographical details are available for the period before 1550. He was the son of a Paduan official, was married to Laura d'Este, and was resident in the Este palace in Padua. In 1555 he applied unsuccessfully for the post of maestro di cappella, music director, at the city's cathedral, and failing in this enterprise, spent the rest of the decade in humanistic as well as musical pursuits. In particular, he had an active life working for four secular groups: a group of musicians in Padua, and three humanistic academies in Vicenza, Padua, and Verona. Such academies were becoming common in the late 16th century, as a part of the Renaissance rebirth of humanistic thought; in music they were the location of the first experiments with monody and multi-voice dramatic vocal forms, the strands of which would eventually coalesce into opera.

The first of Portinaro's associations was an unnamed group he founded himself, which existed to further the musical careers of its members, which he created on 21 June 1555. Upon the dissolution of this fraternity he moved to Vicenza, where he joined the Accademia dei Costanti in that city, a society of humanists to which he dedicated his 1557 book of madrigals. In March 1557 he was back in Padua, for the newly formed Accademia degli Elevati. Of this group, some records survive of its specific activities, and his role in them. There were approximately forty members of the academy; unlike the original Accademia Filarmonica in Verona, the members themselves did not seem to do most of the music-making. Portinaro was hired as maestro, and he was to find professional assistants to perform for the academy members. Their sessions, which involved lectures, speeches, and discussions about secular and Latin poetry and other humanistic topics, frequently began and ended with musical performances by Portinaro and his group. In addition, Portinaro and his assistants, of which there were three listed in the records, were required by the terms of his employment to teach singing, instrumental performance, and other aspects of music to any of the members who wished it. The organization did not survive long – in 1560 it dissolved, for reasons unknown. Portinaro dedicated a book of madrigals for them that year.

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