Orazio Vecchi spent much of his career in his native Modena, while enjoying a much wider reputation, notably as a composer of secular music. Of this his madrigal comedy L’Amfiparnaso remains the best known example. Vecchi’s early education was under the Benedictines of San Pietro in Modena and he was an ordained priest, serving from 1581 as maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Salò and from 1584 at Modena Cathedral. Two years later he assumed a similar but better rewarded position at Reggio Emilia and then as a canon at Correggio Cathedral. He returned to his former position at Modena in 1593 and by 1598 had been appointed maestro di corte to the Emperor Rudolph II but he refused on the grounds of ill-health. Vecchi died in Modena in 1605, at a time when he was enjoying some material success.