In 1514, Festa visited Ferrara, bringing some motets with him; he seems to have been an established composer by this time, as indicated by the reception he received. This motet appears in a manuscript copied between 1516 and 1519, which also contains music by Sebastiano Festa, his possible relative; since the manuscript is thought to have been copied in northeast Italy, one or more of the motets it contains may have been those he brought to Ferrara. Most likely after his visit to Ferrara, but certainly between 1510 and 1517 he lived on Ischia, an island in the bay of Naples, where he served as a music teacher to the aristocratic d'Avalos family. In 1517 he moved to Rome and began employment with Pope Leo X as a singer, and his association with the Sistine Chapel choir was to continue uninterrupted for almost 30 years. In September 1536, he wrote to Filippo Strozzi, his patron, to help him find a Venetian printer willing to print a book of his liturgical music similar to the ones being printed in Rome by Andrea Antico; he wanted the sum of 200 "scudi" for the job, but was unsuccessful. During this era, printers more often demanded money from composers for the privilege of publication than the other way around.