Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554-1612); ITA

Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/57–1612), nephew and pupil of Andrea Gabrieli, was born in Venice and became the supreme representative of the Venetian polychoral tradition. As a young man he spent several years in Munich at the court of Duke Albrecht V, where he worked under Orlando di Lasso. Returning to Venice, he became organist at St. Mark’s Basilica in 1585 and also held a post at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The magnificent acoustical possibilities of St. Mark’s, with its opposing choir lofts and instrumental resources, profoundly shaped his music. Gabrieli acquired an international reputation, and students from northern Europe—notably Heinrich Schütz—carried elements of his style back across the Alps.

Gabrieli’s sacred and instrumental works transformed spatial contrast into a fundamental compositional resource. In collections such as Sacrae symphoniae and the posthumous Canzoni et sonate, choirs of voices and instruments answer, combine, and separate in music of exceptional ceremonial splendor. His celebrated Sonata pian e forte is among the earliest instrumental works to specify both instrumentation and dynamic contrasts in print. Gabrieli’s use of contrasting ensembles, increasingly idiomatic instrumental writing, and concern with tonal organization helped prepare the way for the Baroque concerto principle. His music represents both the culmination of the Venetian Renaissance and a decisive step toward the musical language of the seventeenth century.

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Read biography at allmusic.com.