The Composers
Andrea Gabrieli (c1510 - 1586)
Andrea Gabrieli was born in Venice, and no evidence exists to suggest that he ever left the city, where he died approximately 76 years later. (He was also known as Andrea di Cannaregio, which suggests that he came from a northern sestiere of the city of that name.) A pupil of the influential Adrian Willaert, his skill as a composer brought a local stature to the emerging Venetian school of composers in the late sixteenth century following decades of domination from composers from the Netherlands. He was not as prolific as some of his contemporaries, but he was very versatile, and his influence spread to other north-Italian composers and to those in southern Germany and Austria – just over the Alps. Archived accounts show that he was appointed as a salaried singer to the choir of St Mark’s in 1536. In 1557 his name turns up as a paid musician on the books of the church of San Geremia (in the northern sestiere of Cannaregia in the city) and in the same year he appears to have been an unsuccessful applicant for the post of principal organist (Maestro di Cappella) of St Mark’s following the retirement of Willaert – a post to which he was eventually appointed in 1566, retaining it until his death. His reputation as a composer spread rapidly following this appointment – particularly for his ceremonial instrumental music.
His chronology of works is difficult to establish accurately as he seems to have been reluctant to publish most of it, despite Venice’s reputation at the time as the principal European city for the publication of music. A meeting with the Flemish composer Orlando di Lassus (c1532-1594) led to a close friendship and a notable change in musical style as far as his secular music goes – notably a shift towards the composition of madrigals using pastoral puns and local humour, such as hinting at the idiosyncrasies of well-known gondoliers of the time. These works were, in many ways, forerunners to the operatic plots and stage compositions which were to follow a century or so later from his Venetian successors. His madrigals of the mid-sixteenth century frequently use antiphonal blocks of sound, often alternating between two or three choirs. They have a quickly moving text and choral phrases of unequal length, contrasting different textures and combinations of voices. Taking this a stage further, through the 1570s, Andrea Gabrieli seems to have developed the concept of writing both motets and madrigals for choirs in different places on the pitch spectrum, deliberately contrasting a high tessitura (SSAA) with a low one (ATBB) and sometimes even a mid-range one (SATB). The tessitura of some parts is so extreme that they must have been meant for instruments to play – their use being advocated in the title pages of his manuscripts. Since the salaried instrumental forces (mainly sagbutts and cornetts) at St Mark’s were increased during his tenure, it became possible both to replace and to reinforce vocal parts with instruments. His successor at St Mark’s was his nephew and pupil, Giovanni Gabrieli. This was late in the year of 1586. Giovanni had been acting organist under his uncle’s direction since 1584 which suggests that Andrea Gabrieli had been unwell for some time, eventually dying in office.
Giovanni Gabrieli (b1553-56 - d1612)
Giovanni Gabrieli, heavily influenced by his uncle Andrea, represents one of the highest points of the Venetian Renaissance – a musical movement which had arguably begun with Adrian de Willaert’s appointment as Maestro di Cappella at St Mark’s in 1527. We do not know when he was born as the only known reference to his birth is in his obituary in the Venetian necrology of 1612, which states that he was either 56 or 58 years old; the handwriting is not clear, and, in any case, these notices were notoriously inaccurate. At some point around 1570 we know that he left Venice and took employment at the court of Duke Albrecht in Munich. His first surviving composition is a madrigal, which was published in 1575 in an anthology of works by employed musicians of that court. Gabrieli remained in Munich for some years as records show that in 1578 he was still in receipt of a salary and a livery. By 1584 however he was back in Venice and acting as temporary organist at St Mark’s under the direction of his uncle. As previously mentioned he was appointed to this position (Maestro di Cappella) permanently in 1586. Following Andrea’s death, Giovanni edited, and prepared for publication, a large amount of his uncle’s hitherto unpublished music. The most influential of these was the Concerti, published in 1587. This was a collection of large-scale secular and sacred choral music, and ceremonial instrumental music in which he cheekily included some of his own motets. Giovanni first published some of his music in its own right as the Sacræ Symphoniæ in 1597. This music quickly became fashionable both in Venice, understandably, but also north of the Alps, where Giovanni was no doubt still trading on the contacts he had made during his time in Munich. This resulted in a number of members of the aristocracy from courts in southern Germany and Austria sending pupils to Venice for Giovanni to teach. From 1606, however, he suffered from the recurring presence of kidney stones and was absent from St Mark’s for much of this time. His earliest music inevitably shows influence from his uncle and teacher, and therefore indirectly from Lassus. However, Giovanni’s style soon developed its own characteristics. He largely ignored the light and popular secular form of the Canzonetta and Villanella (or street-song) prominent in Venice during this time, preferring to write sacred music and instrumental music for use in church. Most of the music written before 1597 uses the immensely impressive technique of chori spezzati – or spaced choirs. The harmonic language of this music is modal. All of Giovanni’s secular music was written in the sixteenth century. The appointment of Claudio Monteverdi to the position of Maestro di Cappella at St Mark’s in 1613 meant that Gabrieli’s influence on Venetian composers after his death was minimal. However it was north of the Italian border that his influence continued and the re-publication of his music in Nuremburg long after his death suggests that there must have been a market for it. The publication of the Cantiones Sacræ in 1625 by Heinrich Schütz, clearly influenced by Giovanni Gabrieli, is also testament to this.
