Gioseppe Caimo

Gioseppe Caimo (also Giuseppe) (c. 1545 – between September 6, 1584 and October 31, 1584) was an Italian composer and organist of the Renaissance, mainly active in Milan.

No biographical details about his early life are known, but he was evidently a precocious composer, for his first publication was a book of four voice madrigals in 1564, written when he was probably in his late teens, and one of his compositions was probably performed for Emperor Maximilian when he was in Milan in 1563.

During the 1570s he acquired a connection with Wilhelm V's ducal court in Bavaria, which had one of the most distinguished musical establishments north of the Alps, but they never succeeded in persuading Caimo to leave Milan.

"[4] Other music of his is more adventurous, such as three chromatic madrigals in terza rima, referred to by musicologist Iain Fenlon as "gloomy ... [and] entirely appropriate texts for a city suffering from exorbitant taxation, economic depression and violence caused by Spanish oppression.

"[5] Caimo's chromaticism is most extreme in his fourth book of madrigals, which was for five voices and published the year of his death (1584).