Girolamo Diruta

Girolamo Diruta (c. 1546 – 1624 or 1625) was an Italian organist, music theorist, and composer. He was famous as a teacher, for his treatise Il Transilvano (Venice, 1st part 1593; 2nd part 1609-10 ) on counterpoint, and for his part in the development of keyboard technique, particularly on the organ. He was born in Deruta, near Perugia. Biography Diruta was born in Deruta in 1546 c. He became a friar minor conventual in the convent Perugia in 1566; later, from 1569 to 1574, he was in the convent of Correggio. Around 1578 he moved to Venice, where he met Claudio Merulo, Gioseffo Zarlino and Costanzo Porta (who was also a friar minor conventual), and he probably studied with each of them. Merulo mentioned Diruta in a prefatory letter to the Transilvano (1593), as one of his finest students. From 1580 until 1585 he was organist at the Gubbio cathedral. He returned in Venice at the Frari convent, where he was organist from 1586 until 1589. By 1593 he was organist at Chioggia cathedral. In these year he dedicated the first part of his treatise Il Transilvano to Sigismund Bathory, prince of Transylvania. Later he returned to live in Umbria. He was again organist at the Gubbio cathedral f