Girolamo Kapsberger

Girolamo Kapsberger
(b ?Venice, c1580; d Rome, Jan 1651). Italian composer, lutenist, theorbist and guitarist of German descent.

(He seems to have used the spelling ‘Kapsperger’ rather than the ‘Kapsberger’ favoured by German scholars.) His father, Colonel Guglielmo Kapsperger, was a noble military official with the Imperial House of Austria and may have settled in Venice. Kapsperger was in Rome soon after 1605, where through his reputation as a virtuoso and his status as a nobile alemano he moved in the circles of powerful families such as the Bentivoglio and the Barberini. Other supporters in Rome included the Orders of S Stefano and S Giovanni and the academies of the Umoristi and the Imperfetti whose members arranged for the publication of his works; the academies Kapsperger organized in his house were described as among the ‘wonders of Rome’. Around 1609 he married the Neapolitan Gerolima di Rossi, by whom he had at least three children. In 1612 his Maggio Cantata, dedicated to the Grand duchess Maria Maddalena, was performed in Florence at the Palazzo Pitti.