Francisco Guerrero was the most influential and respected composer in Spain in the time of Philip II. Born in Seville in 1528, he died there in 1599. After an appointment as maestro at Jaén (he was only seventeen), he returned to Seville, first as a singer, then for many years as assistant to the long-lived but ailing Pedro Fernández, and finally from 1574 to 1599 as maestro de capilla of this greatest and wealthiest of Spanish cathedrals. If Toledo held the power, it was Seville that surpassed all in riches and in the splendour of its services, its choir and instrumentalists.