Vincenzo Ruffo (ca.1510 - 09/02/1587), an Italian composer and singer, born in Verona. He became a priest at Verona in 1531 and remained there, apart from a period (1542-6) in the service of Alfonso d'Avalos in Milan, until 1563; directed music at the Accadernia Filarmonica in 1551-2 and at the cathedral from 1554, later becoming maestroat Milan cathedral, Pistoia and finally Sacile. He was a prolific writer of masses, motets and madrigals, whose works circulated widely. The madrigals show his contrapuntal skill, but more interesting historically are the Masses written while he was at Milan under S. Carlo Borromeo, a powerful advocate of the Tridentine reforms affecting verbal intelligibility in church music; these works show straightforward chordal writing and avoid any taint of secular inspiration.