Heinrich Finck was born in Bamberg and quite probably spent his formative years at the court chapel in Cracow or Warsaw in Poland. In any case, this is what can be gathered from comments by his grandnephew, Hermannn Finck, in his Practica Musica of 1556. Here we also read that his granduncle was famed as a master already in the 1480's. After a short period of study in Leipzig he then was active as the church music director at the Polish court in Cracow for a number of years. He interrupted his activity there in 1490 in order to accept a position at the Hungarian royal court, but this arrangement was not permanent. When the ducal ensemble was disbanded in 1514, Finck probably became a member of the imperial court chapel. He later served the Salzburg Cathedral chapter, then at the Scottish Abbey in Vienna, where he contributed to the development of the choral and instrumental ensemble, and finally as the chapel master of Emperor Ferdinand I's court ensemble.