Teodoro Riccio (1540 - 1603)

Teodoro Riccio

Teodoro Riccio was an Italian composer and Kapellmeister of the second half of the 16th century, who worked in Germany for most of his life.

Educated in church music, Riccio first worked as a Kapellmeister in the church of his hometown in Lombardy, where he composed his first madrigals. In 1575 he arrived at the court of Margrave Georg Friedrich of Ansbach-Brandenburg, to whom he dedicated a famous canon, and moved with the rest of the court musicians to Königsberg when the margrave became governor of the Duchy of Prussia in 1578. In 1585 Riccio was appointed Kapellmeister for life at the margrave's court.

Riccio's works are known mainly from printed sources, although several works survive in manuscripts in the Kremsmünster Abbey, the Koninklijke Bibliothek (Brussels), and the Nuremberg Archives.