Although his surname was actually
Melcarne, he was referred to by his home town
Montesardo, a small town in the
Province of Lecce. He worked as a singer at the
San Petronio Basilica in
Bologna, as a
maestro di cappella at
Fano and at
Ancona. His earliest extant work was published in Florence in 1606. His guitar book ''Nuova inventione d'intavolatura per sonare li balletti sopra la Chitarra Spagniuola'' is the earliest to have been printed using alphabet notation of chords for
rasgueado playing a five-course guitar. This had been in use in Italy and possibly Spain for some time before 1606. Montesardo does not claim to have invented this form of notation. His 'Nuova inventione' refers to his system for indicating the
metre and
note values with which the music is played. This involves using upper case and lower case letters to represent the minim and the crotchet respectively. A dot after the letter has the same function as it does in modern staff notation; it increases the value of the note by half its original value. This style of music printed in
alfabeto became very popular in Italy during the 17th century.
Nuova inventione includes versions of some of the most popular dance-songs and harmonic patterns of the time, including the
Ruggiero, bergamasca, folia, and
Ballo del gran duca, and was the first Italian publication to include the
ciaccone and
passacaglias. In terms of original music, Montesardo mainly composed
polyphonic sacred music and
madrigals. Montesardo also experimented with
monody and published a collection of monody, which included his own experiments and works by
Jacopo Peri and
Giulio Caccini. He may be the same person as
Gervasio Melcarne (Geruasio), two of whose madrigals appear in
Pomponio Nenna's eighth book of madrigals for five voices (1618) alongside madrigals by Nenna and
Carlo Gesualdo. ==Bibliography==