Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 – 12 August 1612) was an Italian composer A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media[clarification needed]. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright[specify] and the and organist The organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition , dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with the invention of the hydraulis. By around the eighth. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given the gradually adopted "Renaissance" characteristics: musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s to Baroque Baroque music describes a style of European classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1750. This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and was followed by the Classical era. The word "baroque" came from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl", a strikingly fitting characterization of the idioms.
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Life
Gabrieli was most likely born in Venice Venice (Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsia] , Venetian: Venesia) is a city in northern Italy known both for tourism and for industry, and is the capital of the region Veneto, with a population of 271,367 (census estimate 1 January 2004). Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area (population 1,600,000). The name is. He was one of five children, and his father came from the town of Carnia and went to Venice shortly before Giovanni's birth. While not much is known about Giovanni's early life, he probably studied with his uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli; he may indeed have been brought up by him, as is implied by the dedication to his 1587 book of concerti, in which he described himself as "little less than a son" to his uncle.[1] He also went to Munich Munich (German: München, pronounced [ˈmʏnçən] ; Austro-Bavarian: Minga) is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg. There are approximately 1.35 million people living within city limits, while the Munich Metropolitan to study with the renowned Orlando de Lassus at the court of Duke Albert V; most likely he stayed there until about 1579. Lassus was to be one of the principal influences on the development of his musical style.[2]
By 1584 he had returned to Venice, where he became principal organist The organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition , dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with the invention of the hydraulis. By around the eighth at San Marco di Venezia, also known as Saint Mark's Basilica, in 1585, after Claudio Merulo left the post; following his uncle's death the following year he took the post of principal composer as well. Also after his uncle's death he began editing much of the older man's music, which would otherwise have been lost; Andrea evidently had had little inclination to publish his own music, but Giovanni's opinion of it was sufficiently high that he devoted much of his own time to compiling and editing it for publication.
Gabrieli's career rose further when he took the additional post of organist at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, another post he retained for his entire life. San Rocco was the most prestigious and wealthy of all the Venetian confraternities, and second only to San Marco itself in splendor of its musical establishment. Some of the most renowned singers and instrumentalists in Italy performed there and a vivid description of its musical activity survives in the travel memoirs of the English writer Thomas Coryat. Much of his music was written specifically for that location, although he probably composed even more for San Marco.
San Marco had a long tradition of musical excellence and Gabrieli's work there made him one of the most noted composers in Europe. The vogue that began with his influential volume Sacrae symphoniae (1597) was such that composers from all over Europe, especially from Germany, came to Venice to study. Evidently he also made his new pupils study the madrigals A madrigal is a type of secular vocal music composition, written during the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Throughout most of its history it was polyphonic and unaccompanied by instruments, with the number of voices varying from two to eight, but most frequently three to six. The earliest examples of the genre date from Italy in the 1520s, being written in Italy, so not only did they carry back the grand Venetian polychoral style The Venetian polychoral style was a type of music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras which involved spatially separate choirs singing in alternation. It represented a major stylistic shift from the prevailing polyphonic writing of the middle Renaissance, and was one of the major stylistic developments which led directly to the to their home countries, but also the more intimate style of madrigals; Heinrich Schütz Heinrich Schütz (October 8 1585 - November 6, 1672) was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi. He is commemorated as a musician in the Calendar of Saints and others helped transport the transitional early Baroque music north to Germany, a trend that decisively affected subsequent music history. The productions of the German Baroque, culminating in the music of J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 [O.S. 21 March] – 28 July 1750) (often referred to simply as Bach) was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose ecclesiastical and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity, were founded on this strong tradition, which had its roots in Venice.
Gabrieli was increasingly ill after about 1606, at which time church authorities began to appoint deputies to take over duties he could no longer perform. He died in 1612, of complications from a kidney stone Kidney stones result from stones or renal calculi (from Latin ren, renes, "kidney" and calculi, "pebbles") in the ureter. The stones are solid concretions or calculi (crystal aggregations) formed in the kidneys from dissolved urinary minerals. Nephrolithiasis (from Greek νεφρός (nephros, "kidney") and λιθoς (.
Music and style
Though Gabrieli composed in many of the forms current at the time, he preferred sacred vocal and instrumental music. All of his secular vocal music is relatively early; he never wrote lighter forms, such as dances; and late in his career he concentrated on sacred vocal and instrumental music that exploited sonority for maximum effect.[3] Among the innovations credited to him – and while he was not always the first, he was the most famous to do these things – were the use of dynamics; the use of specifically notated instrumentation (as in the famous Sonata pian' e forte); and the use of massive forces arrayed in multiple, spatially separated groups, an idea which was to be the genesis of the Baroque concertato Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a genre or a style of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from Italian concerto which means "playing together" —hence concertato means "in the style of a style, and which spread quickly to northern Europe, both by the report of visitors to Venice and by Gabrieli's students, which included Hans Leo Hassler and Heinrich Schütz Heinrich Schütz (October 8 1585 - November 6, 1672) was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi. He is commemorated as a musician in the Calendar of Saints.[4][5]
Like composers before and after him, he would use the unusual layout of the San Marco church, with its two choir lofts facing each other, to create striking spatial effects. Most of his pieces are written so that a choir A body of singers who perform together is called a choir or chorus. The former term is very often applied to groups affiliated with a church and the second to groups that perform in theatres or concert halls, but this distinction is far from rigid. The term "Choir" has the secondary definition of a subset of an ensemble; thus one speaks or instrumental group will first be heard on one side, followed by a response from the musicians on the other side; often there was a third group situated on a stage near the main altar in the center of the church.[6] While this polychoral style had been extant for decades (Adrian Willaert Adrian Willaert was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance and founder of the Venetian School. He was one of the most representative members of the generation of northern composers who moved to Italy and transplanted the polyphonic Franco-Flemish style there may have made use of it first, at least in Venice) Gabrieli pioneered the use of carefully specified groups of instruments and singers, with precise directions for instrumentation, and in more than two groups. The acoustics were and are such in the church that instruments, correctly positioned, could be heard with perfect clarity at distant points. Thus instrumentation which looks strange on paper, for instance a single string player set against a large group of brass instruments, can be made to sound, in San Marco, in perfect balance.
Gabrieli's first motets were published alongside his uncle Andrea's compositions in his 1587 volume of Concerti. These pieces show much influence of his uncle's style in the use of dialogue and echo effects.[7] There are low and high choirs and the difference between their pitches is marked by the use of instrumental accompaniment. The motets published in Giovanni's 1597 Sacrae Symphoniae seem to move away from this technique of close antiphony towards a model in which musical material is not simply echoed, but developed by successive choral entries. Some motets, such as Omnes Gentes developed the model almost to its limits. In these motets, instruments are an integral part of the performance, and only the choirs marked "Capella" are to be performed by singers for each part.[8]
There seems to be a distinct change in Gabrieli's style after 1605, the year of publication of Monteverdi Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition: the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque and the heritage of Renaissance polyphony. Enjoying fame in his lifetime, he wrote one of the earliest operas,'s Qinto libro di madrigale, and Gabrieli's compositions are in a much more homophonic In music, homophony (pronounced /hoʊˈmɒfəni/, from the Greek ὁμόφωνος is a texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords. This is distinct from polyphony, in which parts move with rhythmic independence, and monophony, in which all parts (if there are multiple parts) move in style as a result. There are sections purely for instruments - called "Sinfonia" - and small sections for soloists singing florid lines, accompanied simply by a basso continuo Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and nonchord tones, in relation to a bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo, an accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period, though rarely in modern music. "Alleluia" refrains provide refrains within the structure, forming rondo patterns in the motets, with close dialogue between choirs and soloists. In particular, one of his best-known pieces, In Ecclesiis, is a showcase of such polychoral techniques, making use of four separate groups of instrumental and singing performers, underpinned by the omnipresent organ and continuo Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and nonchord tones, in relation to a bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo, an accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period, though rarely in modern music.
Notes
- ^ Bryant, Grove online
- ^ Bryant, Grove online
- ^ Selfridge-Field, p. 81
- ^ Grout, pp. 289-291
- ^ Selfridge-Field, p. 81, p. 99
- ^ Ongaro et al., Venice, Grove online
- ^ Arnold, Grove (1980)
- ^ Arnold, Grove (1980)
References and further reading
- David Bryant. "Gabrieli, Giovanni." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40693 (accessed September 22, 2009).
- Giulio Ongaro, et al. "Venice." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/41311 (accessed September 22, 2009).
- Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music. W.W. Norton & Co., 1980. ISBN 0-393-95136-7
- Richard Charteris, Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1555–1612): a Thematic Catalogue of his Music with a Guide to the Source Materials and Translations of his Vocal Texts. New York, 1996.
- Egon Kenton, Life and Works of Giovanni Gabrieli. American Institute of Musicology, 1967 (Armen Carapetyen).
- Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. New York, Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN 0-486-28151-5
- Denis Arnold, Giovanni Gabrieli and the Music of the Venetian High Renaissance. London: Oxford University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-19-315247-9
- Denis Arnold, Monteverdi. London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1975. ISBN 0-460-03155-4
- Denis Arnold, "Giovanni Gabrieli," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
- Gustave Reese Gustave Reese was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is mainly known for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications Music in the Middle Ages (1940) and Music in the Renaissance (1954); these two books remain the standard reference works for these two eras, with complete and precise bibliographical, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
- Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. ISBN 0-393-09745-5
External links
- Free scores by Giovanni Gabrieli in the International Music Score Library Project The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle. Since its launch on February 16, 2006, over 56,000 scores, for over 23,000 works, by over 3,000 composers have been
- Free scores by Giovanni Gabrieli in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki) The Choral Public Domain Library is a sheet music archive which focuses on choral and vocal music in the public domain or otherwise freely available for printing and performing (such as via permission from the copyright holder)
- Free scores by Giovanni Gabrieli in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA) The Werner Icking Music Archive, often abbreviated WIMA, is a web archive of public domain sheet music. WIMA continues the defunct GMD Music Archive and is named after its founder, the late Werner Icking. At present the archive is held by Christian Mondrup
- Listen to free recordings of songs from Umeå Akademiska Kör.
Categories: 1550s births | 1612 deaths | Renaissance composers | Baroque composers Baroque composers are those individuals who wrote music in the Baroque era, between approximately 1600 and 1760 | Italian composers | Italian musicians | People from Venice (city) | Venetian school composers
