Two years later the Marquis, wishing to engage a master of singing for his son, sent to one Nicolo, the German, at Ferrara, and this musician recommended Giovanni Brith as highly qualified to sing in the latest fashion the best songs of the Venetian style.
Ludovico, who has already been mentioned and who was the marquis from 1444 to 1478, had for two years at his court the celebrated Franchino Gaffori.

This master, born near Lodi in 1451, was the son of one Betino, a soldier.

The boy went into the church in childhood and studied ecclesiastical music under a Carmelite monk named Johannis Godendach.
Later, he went to Mantua, where his father was in the service of the Marquis.

"Here for two years he closely applied himself day and night to study, during which time he composed many tracts on the theory and practice of music."[8] The period of Gaffori's greatest achievements in theoretical work, especially his noted "Practica Musicae," from which Hawkins quotes copiously, was later than his residence at Mantua, but his studies at that court at least betoken the existence of a congenial atmosphere, and we may be assured that such an enlightened amateur as Ludovico did not neglect opportunities to acquaint himself with the workings of this studious mind.
[Footnote 8: "A General History of the Science and Practice of Music," by Sir John Hawkins.

London, 1776.] Bertolotti reproduces sundry interesting letters which passed between the courts of Ferrara and Mantua and dealt with musical matters.