Italian theorist, composer and lutenist. He spent his life in Naples. Because so few of his compositions have survived, he is known today only as a theorist. As such he was not an innovator, but his writings are important because they throw light on many aspects of musical practice in the early 17th century. He followed a conservative path, presenting the rules of strict, osservato counterpoint and stressing two aspects that were to be important in later contrapuntal treatises - the improvising of choral counterpoint and the invention of ingenious types of canon and invertible counterpoint.
Cerreto subscribed to the traditional religious and philosophic approach to theory but also expanded the scope of this theory by fitting a number of new practices into its framework. For him, instrumental music was as valid as vocal. In Dell'arbore musicale (Naples, 1608) he presented practical music as a tree growing out of the roots of theory, with the branches on one side represent- ing voices and those on the other side instruments. This wider scope is also evident in Della prattica musica vocale et strumentale (Naples. 1601, 1611): in its final chapters he described several instrumental tablatures and gave information about the manner of performance.