Diego Pisador

Diego Pisador apparently took up the profession of music against his father's wishes, and his career may have suffered because of it. Unlike so many musicians of the Renaissance, his family is known: he was the son of Alonso Pisador and Isabel Ortiz, native of Salamanca. It seems a teenaged Diego began the path toward priestly ordination, though his 1526 Minor Orders are as far as he proceeded. Instead, Diego assumed the political and professional duties of his father as Major-Domo for the city of Salamanca when his father took a promotion to a different town in 1532. But Pisador also pursued his musical interests, composing as a competent amateur on the vihuela -- the Spanish answer to the Italian lute -- for a period of some 15 years starting around 1537. In the year 1550, Diego's mother died and the family broke apart over the settlement of her will. Diego's father wrote him a scathing letter in which he suggested he give up music, get married, and give his younger brother part of his inheritance. Instead, the perhaps headstrong Pisador successfully challenged the will, published his magnum opus Libro de música de vihuela in 1552, and went his own way professionally and personally. By ignoring his father's trenchant advice, Pisador preserved for posterity his some 95 musical arrangements for the vihuela.