Giovanni Gabrieli - Life, Music and style, References and further reading

Composer, nephew, and pupil of Andrea Gabrieli, born in Venice, NE Italy. He composed choral and instrumental works in which he exploited the acoustics of St Mark's in Venice with brilliant antiphonal and echo effects, using double choirs, double ensembles of wind instruments, and other devices, as in his well-known Sonata pian' e forte. He published much of his uncle's music, and became a renowned teacher.

Giovanni Gabrieli (1554–1557?

Life

Gabrieli was born in Venice. While not much is known about Giovanni's early life, he probably studied with his uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli;

By 1584 he had returned to Venice, where he became principal organist at the church of San Marco in 1585, after Claudio Merulo left the post; Also after his uncle's death he took on the task of editing much of his 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 a lot 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. much of his music was written specifically for that location, although it was probably less than he composed 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. Evidently he also made his new pupils study the madrigals being written in Italy, so not only did they carry back the grand Venetian polychoral style, but also the more intimate madrigalian style to their home countries; Hans Leo Hassler, Heinrich Schütz, Michael Praetorius and others helped transport the transitional early Baroque music north to Germany, an event which was decisive on subsequent music history. The productions of the German Baroque, culminating in the music of J.S.

Gabrieli was also associated with the Confraternity of San Rocco, another Venetian church, at which some of the most renowned singers and instrumentalists in Italy performed; a vivid description of the music there survives in the travel memoirs of the English writer Thomas Coryat.

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.

Music and style

Though Gabrieli composed in many of the forms current at the time, he clearly preferred sacred vocal and instrumental music. All of his secular vocal music is relatively early; late in his career he concentrated on sacred vocal and instrumental music that exploited sonority for maximum effect.

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.

In particular, his arguably best-known piece, 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.

References and further reading

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. 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 0-460-03155-4 Article "Giovanni Gabrieli," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.