Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/57 – 1612) was an Italian
composer and organist. 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 to Baroque idioms.
Gabrieli was born in Venice. He was one of five
children, and his father came from the region of Carnia
and went to Venice shortly before Giovanni's birth.
While not much is known about Giovanni's early life, he
probably stud...(+)
Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/57 – 1612) was an Italian
composer and organist. 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 to Baroque idioms.
Gabrieli was born in Venice. He was one of five
children, and his father came from the region 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, who was employed at St Mark's Basilica from
the 1560s until his death in 1585. Giovanni may indeed
have been brought up by his uncle, 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.
Giovanni also went to Munich 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.
By 1584 he had returned to Venice, where he became
principal organist at St 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 the 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.
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 in his career; he never wrote lighter forms, such
as dances; and later he concentrated on sacred vocal
and instrumental music that exploited sonority for
maximum effect. Among the innovations credited to him
– and while he was not always the first to use them,
he was the most famous of his period to do so – were
dynamics; specifically notated instrumentation (as in
the famous Sonata pian' e forte); and massive forces
arrayed in multiple, spatially separated groups, an
idea which was to be the genesis of the Baroque
concertato 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.
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 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. While this polychoral style had been extant for
decades (Adrian Willaert 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. A fine example of these
techniques can be seen in the scoring of In
Ecclesiis.
Hodie Christus natus est (Latin for "Today Christ is
born") is a Gregorian chant sung at Christmas. It
exists in various versions.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gabrieli).
Although originally composed for Double Choir (SSATB +
ATBBB), I created this Interpretation of the "Hodie
Christus natus est" (Christ is born this day) for Winds
(Flute, Oboe, English Horn, French Horn & Bassoon) &
Strings (2 Violins, Viola, Cello & Bass).
PARTITION