Artusi, Giovanni Maria (c. 1540–1613)

Italian composer and theorist. His four-part canzonets appeared in 1598, and his L'arte del contrapunto in 1586–89. Apart from his polemical works against Zarlino, Galilei, and Bottrigari, his L'artusi, overo delle imperfettioni della musica moderna (1600) singles out nine as yet unpublished madrigals by Monteverdi for special attack, to which the composer replied in the preface to his fifth book of madrigals (1605). Here he promised a treatise, never completed, to be entitled Seconda prattica overo delle perfettioni della moderna musica, in contradistinction to the ‘Prima prattica’ of the conservatives. The controversy was continued in two more works by Artusi, published under a pseudonym (1606 and 1608), and by Monteverdi's brother Giulio Cesare in the preface to the Scherzi musicali of 1607.