Monteverdi's father was a chemist who also worked as a physician, which may explain why he was such a modernist. The Italian maestro was born as an only child in Cremona in 1567. ¹⁾

Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, the maestro at his native cathedral, taught him from an early age. He had already written his first composition when he was 15 years old.²⁾

Monteverdi was constantly chastised by his contemporaries. However, he suffered the most from widely publicized criticisms by conservative music scholar Giovanni Maria Artusi. In many of his compositions, particularly the harmonies in the Fourth Book of Madrigals, Artusi chastised Monteverdi's unique harmonic vocabulary.³⁾

To response to Artusi's critique, Monteverdi wrote in the preface to his new publication, the Fifth Book of Madrigals, that what he had publicly denounced was simply a new method of thinking, or seconda practica.⁴⁾