Giovanni Battista Dalla Gostena

Giovanni Battista Dalla Gostena
(b Genoa, c1558; d Genoa, Aug 1593). Italian composer, uncle and teacher of Simone Molinaro.

He was a pupil of Philippe de Monte at the court of Maximilian II in Vienna. He had returned to Genoa before 1582 and on 26 April 1584 he became maestro di cappella at the cathedral, a post he held until 1589. Dalla Gostena was in contact with the leading figures of the Genoese aristocracy and cultural life, in particular with the poets Angelo Grillo and Gabriello Chiabrera, and with the painter Bernardo Castello. He was murdered by Simone Fasce in August of 1593.

Dalla Gostena’s first published work, Ohimé lasso, appeared in Monte’s third book of four-voice madrigals. His own first book of madrigals appeared in Genoa in 1582. The fact that he gave the name of his teacher together with his own on the title page suggests that he had not reached the age of majority (25) when the book was published. Four more books of madrigals and canzonettas appeared in his lifetime and a number of works appeared after his death. His setting of Tasso’s Poiché d’un cor, on the murder by Carlo Gesualdo of his wife, Maria d’Avalos, and her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, is lost.

A leading figure in the musical life of Genoa, Dalla Gostena was a skilled contrapuntalist who took care to characterize his texts. Although his style is essentially conservative, some of the madrigals experiment with chromaticism as does his Fantasia XXV (which, however, also survives with an attribution to Diomedes Cato).