Bernardino Bertolotti

Who was Bernardino Bertolotti?

Bernardino Bertolotti was an Italian composer and instrumentalist. He came from a family of instrumentalists and instrument makers, and was the son of Agostino Bertolotti, who was the maestro di cappella at Salò cathedral. Bernardino joint the Este court at Ferrara in 1578, and left when the court dissolved in 1598, at which point he went to the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua, a closely related court, and in 1609 was instrumentalist to the pope at the Castel Sant'Angelo. It seems that he played the violin and trombone as part of his duties.

Bertolotti was a minor composer, and despite the revolutionary musical changes which were occurring in Ferrara during his tenure there, most notably in the work of Luzzasco Luzzaschi, his works remained pedestrian, and were not published even by the court music publisher Vittorio Baldini. He was the uncle of Gasparo da Salò.