Giandomenico Martoretta was a Sicilian Baroque composer. Little is known of his life, but the style of the dedication of the "master of theology" Giovanfrancesco di Chara in the second book indicates that Martoretta may have been minor gentry or member of an academy. but the preface to the third book of madrigal

Madrigal (music)

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....

s reveals that he had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land

Holy Land

The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...

 and stayed in Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

 as guest of a certain noble cavaliere, Piero Singlitico. His first book of madrigals was written in the rapid note nere

Note nere

Note nere was a style of madrigal composition, which used shorter note values than usual and had more black note-heads.The style was introduced around 1540, and had a short vogue among composers publishing in Venice including Costanzo Festa, Giaches de Wert, Cipriano di Rore and many minor...

, black note, style introduced by Constanzo Festa. Theodor Kroyer (1902) believed that Martoretta's madrigals demonstrated chromatic keys.

Edition

• Il primo libro di madrigali cromatici a quattro voci (1548) Gardano, Venice.
• Il secondo libro di madrigali cromatici a quattro voci (1552) edited by Maria Antonella Balsano, Firenze, 1988 (Musiche Rinascimentali Siciliane Vol.11).
• Il terzo libro di madrigali cromatici a quattro voci (1554)