Floriano Canale

Floriano Canale
(b Brescia, c1550; fl 1579–1603). Italian composer. He was an Augustinian choir monk at S Giovanni Evangelista, Brescia, where he held the post of organist between 1581 and 1603.

Earlier he may have been in Bologna; the preface to his Sacrae cantiones (1581) is signed from there. According to a note printed at the end of the Canzoni da sonare and ascribed to ‘L’Artusi’ (presumably Giovanni Maria Artusi), he had taught Bargnani, whose first book of instrumental canzonas, now lost, quoted melodic material from Canale’s compositions ‘to honour … the writings of his master’. The Canzoni da sonare are dedicated to Count Alessandro Bevilacqua, patron of the famous Veronese ridotto, and each of the 19 works is further individually dedicated. The canzoni are in a variety of repetition schemes, and some are unified through skilful use of variation. According to Mischiati (MGG1), Quem vidistis pastores, from the six-voice Sacrae cantiones, represents the successful fusion of the traditional polyphonic motet style and the concertato style of the free canzona. Lively rhythms and rich figuration also characterize La balzana, which dates from about 1600 (according to Kirkendale), and is thus one of the earliest 17th-century pieces based on the Aria di Fiorenza bass pattern. It combines Proportz technique with ternary form and is for two instrumental choirs; it is not musically related to Orazio Vecchi’s L’humor balzano in Le veglie di Siena (Venice, 1604), as has been suggested. By contrast, the Missae, introitus ac motecta are mostly in an uncomplicated post-Tridentine manner: largely homophonic, though enlivened in the longer movements by short imitative points at the beginning of each section. The edition includes settings of both the Proper and the Ordinary for three masses, including the Missa pro defunctis. The book concludes with a setting of the Gaudeamus which, in contrast to the rest, exhibits some of the contrapuntal and rhythmic vivacity of Canale’s later works. His organ music, in the tradition of the Lombard school, is in the manner of Costanzo Antegnati and his followers.

Although it is clear that Canale wrote some works that are no longer extant, the evidence is vague and inconclusive: the reference in the Giunta catalogue (MischiatiI) to a set of four-voice Lamentations is clear, but the canzon per sonar à tre listed in the 1649, 1658 and 1662 Vincenti catalogues and Cozzando’s reference to ‘Canzoni a 3 in Venetia presso Alessandro Vincenti 1648’, could be either a new publication or a later (?instrumental) issue of the Canzonette of 1601.