This Italian organist and composer was greatly lauded by his contemporaries. He was an exceptional organist as well as a composer with new and innovative ideas. Turini was one of the first composers to use the concertato in vocal chamber music as well as one of the first composers to use the term "cantata" to refer to a structural formula. In the concertatos, for example, he scored for two violins and voices for his book of madrigals. The "cantata," as used by Turini, was not a fully developed musical schema for an extended work but referred to an extended recitative. He published motets and masses in addition to his other works. Clearly a versed composer and practitioner of counterpoint Turini's music was influential for almost a century. Handel employed a theme from one of Turini's masses, scored as a canon, for his own keyboard Fugue in B-flat. First a student of his father Turini became the court organist, at the age of twelve, to the court of the Emperor Rudely in Venice and later he served Morisini after which he became the organist for Brescia Cathedral. ~ Keith Johnson, Rovi