Giovanni Gabrieli

It is hard to imagine Giovanni’s music without the earlier forms and textures developed by his uncle, Andrea. But how Giovanni cultivated and varied these forms displayed an inventive genius rarely found in the annals of the art.
Giovanni Gabrieli was a Venetian, born in 1553.  In the 1570s, like his uncle, he crossed the Alps to the Bavarian Court in Munich , to experience the skill and excellence of Duke Albrecht V’s musical establishment under the direction of Orlandus Lassus. Albrecht died in 1579 and Giovanni probably returned to Venice as music at the Bavarian Court declined under Duke Wilhelm V.
In 1585 Giovanni Gabrieli succeeded his uncle Andrea as 1st organist at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, and became the leading composer for both church and civic occasions in Venice after Andrea’s death in 1586. The 1587 Angelo Gardano print, ‘Concerti’, contained works by Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. This publication and the 1597 print, ‘Sacrae symphoniae’ spread Giovanni’s fame far and wide especially North to Germany and Scandinavia and even Poland, with names like Hassler, Schütz, Pederson, and Zielinski coming to Venice to study with Gabrieli.
The publication in 1605 of fellow Venetian Monteverdi’s ‘Quinto libro de madrigali’, which moved the madrigal away from the idea of vocal ensemble to a more solo with accompaniment format, further influenced Gabrieli’s composition, the results of which appeared in the posthumus collections of 1615: ‘Canzoni et sonate’ and ‘Symphoniae sacrae’. Giovanni Gabrieli died in August 1612 in Venice.