Indications are that Ingegneri was a string player and probably an organist as well. He was a pupil of Ruffo and probably Rore both to whom he dedicated some of his compositions. The works which survive, some only in reprints from decades after their composition, include both sacred and secular genres. He was in service to the Duke of Parma, and the Cremona Cathedral. Ingegneri was also a close friend to the reforming bishop Nicolo Sfondrato who later became Pope Gregory XIV. As a musician Ingegneri was not concerned about the intelligibility of the text. He did not dote upon extended melismatic phrases over one or more syllables but rather preferred sustained syllabic writing. Accordingly, his masses and other vocal pieces were often short and succinct using homophonic treatment with no repetition of the textual material. His best known work was a collection of twenty seven responses for Holy Week that were performed well into the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, these works were mis-attributed to Palestrina until 1898 when an original print (1588) was discovered by Haberl. With his madrigalian compositions Ingegneri was concerned with the structure of the music more than any thing else. Regardless of their retrospection his madrigals were quite popular for thier simple motifs, formal structures, and his matching of each line of a text to a separate and distinct musical phrase. Ingegneri's influence on Monteverdi can be ascertained from this emphasis on patterns and symmetry. ~ Keith Johnson, Rovi