Italian composer and theorist, father of Galileo Galilei the astronomer. He studied with Zarlino in Venice and with Girolamo Mei, a philosopher, in Rome. He was a capable lutenist, publishing a treatise on lute playing (Fronimo), but is better known as a champion of Greek music who condemned modern music, especially the conventional madrigal, and as spokesman of the Florentine Camerata in the writings of his Dialogoof 1581. His Book II of madrigals includes two motets, and in his Fronimothere is a transcription for voice and lute of a part of his lost setting of In exitu Israel,the voice being assigned the bass part.