Diomedes Cato
Diomedes Cato (1560 to 1565 – d.1627 in Gdansk) was an Italian-born composer and lute player, who lived and worked entirely in Poland and Lithuania. He is known mainly for his instrumental music. He mixed the style of the late Renaissance with the emerging Baroque, and also Italian idioms with Polish folk material; and in addition he was one of the first native-born Italian composers to visit Sweden.
Life
He was born near
In 1593 and 1594 he went with King Sigismund to Sweden, where his fame as a lutenist and composer was evidently large; as late as 1600 he was still the most famous composer of Italian origin known in Sweden. Some of his music, including a few Polish dances, survives from sources only in Sweden. The last tentative record of his life is from 1619, when there is a single unconfirmed reference to him playing the lute during that year.
Music
Cato wrote both vocal and instrumental music, and both sacred and secular: however he was most famous for his works for
Other instrumental music by Cato includes pieces for consorts of viols, as well as solo keyboard.
His vocal works include settings of Polish sacred songs in a collection entitled Rytmy łacińskie dziwnie sztuczne ... for four voices and lute, as well as Pieśń o świętym Stanisławie, for four voices unaccompanied. He also wrote an Italian madrigal, Tirsi morir volea, for five voices, though it only exists in an arrangement for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment: a transcription which could represent a conscious conformance to the new Baroque conception of the solo madrigal.
References
- Piotr Poźniak: "Diomedes Cato", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 8, 2006), (subscription access) Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 0-393-09530-4
- W. Urban: "Notatki źródłowe o muzykach polskich w XVI wieku" [Notes on 16th century Polish musicians], Muzyka, xxxii/1 (1987), 57–63 (in Polish)