The popular image of the music of Giovanni Gabrieli (as well as that of Monteverdi some years later) includes the famous myth of the cori spezzati, the split choirs. Performers and audiences alike delight in hearing the music played by contrasting ensembles from different ends of a hall or church, imagining this was "how the music was intended" at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. Unfortunately, though that church did maintain opposing organ lofts, the best historical evidence indicates that the singers and musicians of the time did not venture to separate themselves physically from each other in this way. There even exists a picture from the time, showing several choirs of singers and players packed together in a single loft. The fact within Venetian music remains, though, that constrasts of texture and timbre between groups often lie at its heart. This is expressly the case in one of Gabrieli's best-known instrumental sonatas, No. 18 in his 1615 posthumous anthology. In the print, all 14 instruments are specified, a very early occurrence of specific orchestration; the music is thus clearly disposed in three choirs, two including upper cornetto pairs with trios of trombones each, and a fundamental choir of four trombones supporting them.

The distinct orchestration and the motivic quality of the sonata also lend it a clearly audible structure. The first upper choir begins with an imitative passage on the basic motive; the second choir follows with more ornamented material in variation, and the low choir also takes the principal motive, but in rich and often startling harmonic guise. Three cornettos offer a brief flourish of a coda, which is followed by a lengthy (and powerful) tutti passage. The remainder of the lengthy sonata proceeds in contrasts, both textural and stylistic. The principal motive is usually present, often either in diminution or as a fundamental bass beneath a larger texture; the fuller contrapuntal textures alternate with virtuosic splashes from the cornettos. The harmonic language frequently diverges into surprisingly distant areas, and once after a rest in all voices a shocking D-B flat progression arrives. The final tutti finds the instruments filling a very wide span of tonal space and arriving on a long-held and -ornamented final chord. The very end of the piece, however, contains a unique whimper: all voices have explicit rests except the first cornetto, which dashes off a tiny echo of an ornament just heard.

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Though Giovanni Gabrieli must have composed prolifically, relatively little of his instrumental music survives. His professional duties eventually encompassed not only the principal musical leadership for St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice (the church of the Doge himself) and the important confraternity the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, but he also apparently regularly prepared music for churches throughout the city on their principal feast days. He had some of the finest instrumentalists in Europe to play his music, and he even had extra money budgeted to hire more of them on major feast days. Yet only two complete anthologies of his instrumental music were printed, one of them after his death (from a kidney stone) at the possibly early age of 58. The second of these two anthologies, the 1615 Canzone e sonate, includes nearly two-dozen pieces, 17 of which bear the popular name canzona, or song; the music probably represents more than a decade of his compositional efforts. In fact, some of the pieces in the anthology show a tantalizing mixture of early and late compositional features; the very first canzona in the collection (known thus as the Canzon No. 1) eloquently mingles such features.

Some more superficial features of this canzona clearly reflect Gabrieli's heritage in an earlier generation of instrumental composers. The motive first heard (in simple imitation) begins with a simple but characteristic long/short/short rhythm, echoes of which will tinge many motives throughout the piece. The canzona is written for relatively modest forces, just five voices disposed in a single choir. An overall da capo structure echoes the French chansons (also songs by title) that may have preceded the canzona genre. The composer does, however, continue to develop the opening motive to much greater lengths than did a previous generation, and he allows chromatic sequences to occasionally divert the harmonic direction of the canzona. And at the heart of the piece, he carries both of these features to lengths that betray a later compositional mindset. After one set of chromatically tinted motives are developed, he begins a new passage based upon the striking melodic interval of a diminished fifth (the "devil's interval" of the tritone) blatantly in the uppermost voice. Cross-rhythms in the following music intensify the musical tension; the concluding return of original motives cannot completely defuse that tension.

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Gabrieli's exciting 17 canzoni and four sonati of the posthumous 1615 edition were intended "per sonar con ogni sorte de instrumenti con il basso per l'organo" (to be played on all sorts of instruments with the organ bass). Only a few of these pieces were specifically orchestrated by the composer, and the organ bass may have a spinet, harpsichord, lute, guitar, cittern, chittarone, small harp, positive or regal organ added to it or played in dialogue with it, each instrument playing a different accompaniment or playing each with its own choir.

Decisions about orchestration must be made by referring to the nature of the music to be played. Primarily, bravura passages should be given over to brass instruments, contrasted with diminutions (quiet parts) in other instruments, or where no contrasts are intended, instruments of the same family should be used for a more uniform surface. For example, the Canzon Prima à 5 (canto, alto, quinto, tenore, and basso, plus the organo), which has no wide contrasts or bravura writing, would be performed by five strings, five shawms, five woodwinds, or five brass (three cornets and two trombones), and so on. These are all possibilities that are preferable to an instrumentation consisting of instruments from different families.

However, where there are multiple voices in overlapping ranges (even if there are still no vivid contrasts), it is a good idea to have contrasting timbres by assigning various families. For example, for Canzon IX à 8, with its skipping triplet rhythms and spectacularly polyphonic although brief coda, the following fascinating instrumentation has been used (highest to lowest): (1) violin and alto recorder, (2) violin and alto recorder, (3) chalemie, (4) viola, (5) bass recorder and epinette, (6) viola and lute, (7) alto krummhorn, and (8) cello and krummhorn.

These canzoni and sonati clearly demonstrate the essence of G. Gabrieli's mature style: the extensive use of imitation in the form of echoing choirs, quick alteration of different forms of the harmonic minor as one form of simple chromaticism played over standard root progressions, vigorous, surprising rhythmic changes, and the frequent use of fanfare-like repeated notes and chords, as in the heroic Canzon XIV à 10, usually orchestrated for two groups, each consisting of violin, two cornets (or trumpets), and two trombones, plus the organ continuo.

Sonata XVIII à 14 is one of the few orchestrated by the composer: two choirs, each having two cornets (or trumpets) and three trombones, and a third choir with four trombones with organ. He gives unique material to each choir, which gives it a character from which it rarely deviates: the first, sombre ascending modulations; the second, thrilling flashy runs and faster dotted rhythms (charge!); and the third, the lowest range/slowest moving notes with occasional calls.

By contrast, after establishing in successive order the unique characters for the five choirs of mixed string, brass, and winds of Sonata XX à 22, the choirs blend in magnificent harmonic resonances, and unfold into a masterpiece of rhythmic invention.

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In addition to his well-known tenure as organist (and composer) for the cathedral St. Mark's of Venice, Giovanni Gabrieli served the city's most important confraternal church, the Scuola Grande di S. Rocco. He provided music for this church and its confraternal brothers on a large number of feasts each year, not the least of which was S. Rocco's own feast day of August 16. The confraternity spent great sums of money for the sumptuous festivities, including music; Gabrieli in 1603 performed with his usual ensemble plus three violins, a violone, four lutes, no fewer than seven organs, four other instrumentalists, and at least 10 extra singers. Unfortunately, no documentation of exactly what he performed survives. However, one piece printed posthumously matches the known performers, historians have tended to assume he wrote it for San Rocco's feast and for the confraternity: the Sonata "con tre violini" (with three violins).

Gabrieli's Sonata con tre violini may be the most stylistically advanced piece he wrote. It is his only instrumental work with a true basso continuo; other music he printed with basso continuo parts only reproduce the lowest-sounding note of every chord, while here the bass part is independent and freestanding. Above this most-seventeenth century artifice he places three violin parts (which his instructions also allow to be played on a trio of other treble instruments). Thus, instead of the alternating massed choirs found elsewhere in his instrumental music, or the newer monodic style, Gabrieli chose a musical texture that may prefigure the trio sonata style that came to dominate instrumental music in the seventeenth century.

Within that musical texture, the composer weaves an intricate and somehow intimate musical web among the voices. The three upper voices tend to proceed either in imitation or in antiphonal sequences between a pair and a solo voice. At the same time, the printed version of the piece includes numerous virtuosic embellishments in all three upper voices, as well as frequent moments of piquant harmonic interest, suspensions, and bitter cross-relations. This musical character led one early scholar of Gabrieli's music to suggest its resemblance to the famous chromatic madrigals written for the "three ladies of Ferrara" a few decades before. The entire effect of the music, if indeed written for the rich Venetian confraternity, would serve to tickle the ears of his patrons and honor their saint with stunningly new music.

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