Sources disagree about Corteccia’s birthplace . . . Arezzo or Florence . . . but records show he was baptized in the Baptistry of S Giovanni Battista, Florence in July of 1502, and Florence was his home all his life.  As a madrigalist he would have been exposed to the work of all three of the most prominent early madrigalists–Festa, Verdelot and Arcadeldt–all of whom worked in Florence at some time during their careers.  Florence’s struggle to be an independent republic finally ended when the City capitulated to the forces of the Emperor, Charles V, in 1530.  Corteccia began his professional life as organist at S. Lorenzo, the family church of the returned rulers of Florence, the Medici in 1531.  He was the principle composer of the music at the wedding of Duke Cosimo dei Medici and Eleanora of Toledo in 1539.  Shortly after that Corteccia was made ‘maestro di cappella’ of the Ducal Chapel, where he stayed until his death in 1571.

Much of this biographical material and the musical examples from the entertainments at the wedding of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora of Toledo in 1539, are to be found in ‘A Renaissancs Entertainment” by Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell (University of Missouri Press).