Claudio Merulo was born in Correggio, near Parma, in 1533, and studied with Girolamo Donato. In 1556 he became organist at Brescia Cathedral, but a year later, at the comparatively young age of twenty four, he achieved a considerable coup, for he won a competition for the job of organist at St. Mark’s Venice, defeating no less a figure than Andrea Gabrieli in the process. He stayed in Venice for some thirty years, combining his considrable performing and composing duties with a publishing business of his own. In 1586 he moved back down to Parma, where a year later he became the organist at the cathedral. He died in that city in 1604.