João Lourenço Rebelo

João Lourenço Rebelo, or João Soares Rebelo (1610 – 16 November 1661) was the only Portuguese composer to adopt the Venetian polychoral style. Despite his closeness to King John IV of Portugal (1603–1656), and despite what is traditionally said, Rebelo never held any office in the royal household. Life Rebelo was born in Caminha in 1610, the son of João Soares Pereira and Maria Lourenço Rebelo. In 1624, he became a choir boy at the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Braganza, while his older brother, Father Marcos Soares Pereira (?-1655) was admitted as chaplain-singer. In keeping with the aristocratic patterns of behavior of the 17th century, and as a sign of pre-eminence, Teodósio II, the 7th Duke of Braganza (1568-1630) had created an academy for court musicians, the Colégio dos Santos Reis Magos (College of the Three Wise Kings), where Rebelo studied under Robert Turner (c.1578-1629), an Irish musician who himself had been a student of the Flemish composer Géry de Ghersem, and mestre de capela of the ducal chapel from 1616, and possibly also under Friar Manuel Cardoso, In 1646 Rebelo was made a nobleman, Fidalgo de juro e herdade, of the Royal House