Michelagnolo Galilei (sometimes spelled Michelangelo; 18 December 1575 – 3 January 1631) was an Italian composer and lutenist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, active mainly in Bavaria and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Most likely he was destined for a career in Florence, but when his father died in 1591, the sixteen-year-old lutenist was put in the charge of his older brother Galileo Galilei, who was in Padua.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had several sophisticated musical establishments at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, especially at Kraków: Luca Marenzio, one of Italy's most famous madrigal composers, went there for a time, as did lutenists Diomedes Cato and Valentin Bakfark.
[3][4] Most of Galilei's music was for ten-course lute, and most was published in his first book, Il primo libro d'intavolatura di liuto (Munich, 1620), which used tablature notation.
[4] Stylistically they are written in the most modern manner of the time, with dissonances, ornaments, and functional tonal progressions indicative of the developing early Baroque style.