The two great formative influences on the evolution of keyboard music during the 17th century were the Dutchman J. P. Sweelinck and the Italian Girolamo Frescobaldi. Frescobaldi, the younger of the two by twenty years, was born at Ferrara in 1583. There he was a pupil of the organist Luzzasco Luzzaschi, through whom he no doubt became acquainted with the work of the madrigalist, Gesualdo, Luzzachi's friend. He worked and studied for a time at Rome before travelling with Guido Bentivoglio of Ferrara to Brussels (1607-8), where he gained first-hand acquaintance with the music of Sweelinck himself. He passed the rest of his career, apart from a six year period at Florence, in Rome. Frescobaldi's fame as an executant spread all over Europe and pupils flocked to study under him. Among them was the German J. J. Froberger, while some fifty years later Johann Sebastian Bach studied the works in the Fiori Musicali.

The hallmarks of Frescobaldi's style were clarity of harmonic structure, the fullest exploitation of thematic material in a wealth of masterly sets of variations, the incorporation of the art of the virtuoso into compositions of the highest musical worth, and the cultivation of a pure and cantabile line. In addition to his keyboard music he wrote madrigals and music for instrumental ensembles.

His canzoni, like those of some of his contmporaries, exhibit an important trend away from the multi-sectional form towards the three or four movements of the later sonata.