Biography

Giulio M. Ongaro was born in Venice (Italy) and was educated at the Liceo Classico Marco Polo and at the Università degli Studi di Venezia (Dept. of Economics). While a student, he continued his involvement in music, playing in several pop groups and studying classical flute. After completing his military service, he transferred to the University of Iowa, where he received a B.M. in flute performance (with distinction) in 1978.  Subsequently he studied musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed a thesis on fourteenth-century Italian madrigals for his M.A, and a dissertation on the singing chapel of St. Mark’s (Venice) in the sixteenth century for his Ph.D. His research fields range from the Italian Trecento to the early Baroque: he has widely published on these topics in leading European and American journals. He has contributed several important articles (including "Venice to 1600") to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the foremost reference work on music, and his monograph Music of the Renaissance was published in 2004. Professor Ongaro has been on the musicology faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music since 1991.