[1] Agresta's only surviving book of madrigals, Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo, was published in Naples in 1617 by Costantino Vitale, and dedicated to Don Roderico di Salazar.
While composers in the northern Italian peninsula were beginning to move away from what was regarded as the old-fashioned polyphonic madrigal without continuo, Naples remained the most important centre for its composition and publication.
Melchior Borchgrevinck was court organist to King Christian IV of Denmark, and in 1599 led a party of Danish musicians to Venice to study with Giovanni Gabrieli, returning there in the winter of 1601–2.
He was greatly respected by his contemporaries, being praised by Orazio Vecchi in the dedication to Christian IV of Le veglie di Siena (1604), who also added that Gabrieli considered Borchgrevinck 'one of the most outstanding musicians of our time'.
However, there are a number of works by composers who may not unfairly be deemed minor figures, including Giovanni Paolo Nodari, Curtio Valcampi and Grisostomo Rubiconi, and which Lewis suggests may not previously have been printed.
[11] In the mid-1990s Alfred Noe completed a comprehensive study of the contents of the library of Albert Fugger (of the famous Augsburg banking family), which was purchased by Mathias Mauchter in 1655 for Emperor Ferdinand III and now forms part of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.
In the catalogue made by Mauchter at the time of purchase, there is an entry on the last page of the music section which reads 'Il Primo lib.° de Madrigali a 5. di Agostino Agresta'.
Thibault' of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the other in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella in Naples; both are in good condition, and each is identical to the other.