Claudio Monteverdi
The job of maestro (director of music) at San Marco (Saint Mark’s church) in Venice was perhaps the most important job for a church musician in the whole of Europe. However, the music was in a bad state because previous directors of music had not been very good. Monteverdi started to reorganize the music there: he bought new music for the library and got some new musicians. He had to compose music for many special feast days during the year. He was doing a good job, and in 1616 his salary was increased to 400 ducats (about 44.28 ounces of gold, worth about US$73,500 today). The duke of Mantua was probably cross that he had lost such a good musician. He still asked Monteverdi to write music for him. Monteverdi probably had to obey, as he was still a Mantuan citizen (Italy did not become one country until more than two centuries later). He wrote music for important events such as weddings and carnivals at Mantua.