The Valvasone Organ Book: Music for the 16th Century Vincenzo Colombi Organ

Composer(s)

Adriaen Willaert
(b Bruges or Roulaers, c1490; d Venice, 7 Dec 1562). South Netherlandish composer active mainly in Italy. He was one of the most important and influential composers and teachers of his time.

Adriano Banchieri
(b Bologna, 3 Sept 1568; d Bologna, 1634). Italian composer, organist, theorist and writer. He was one of the most versatile figures in the Italian music of his day and is of particular interest as a theorist.

Andrea Gabrieli
(b Venice, ?1532/3; d Venice, 30 Aug 1585). Italian composer and organist, uncle of Giovanni Gabrieli. He brought an international stature to the school of native Venetian composers after a period when Netherlandish composers had dominated. Although he was not as profound a composer as Giovanni, his music displays an exceptional versatility; he was one of the most important figures of his generation and exerted considerable influence on both later Venetian and south German composers.

Annibale Padovano
(b Padua, 1527; d Graz, 15 March 1575). Italian composer and organist. He was an organist at S Marco, Venice, from 30 November 1552 until 2 August 1565. He must have been well known to his employers even before his appointment, for the competition was advertised with little notice and Annibale seems to have been the only candidate. On 1 August 1545 he became organist at the court of Archduke Karl II of Austria in Graz, where he was promoted a year later to ‘chief musician’. Shortly before 1570 he assumed the title of director of music.

While in Venice, Padovano was undoubtedly able to become part of Willaert’s prestigious group of pupils. He must also have known Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli, Zarlino and Rore. His secular production coincided with the period of greatest expressive development of the madrigal. Nevertheless, his reputation rests on his organ playing and organ works. Together with Willaert, Merulo, Bertodi, A. Gabrieli and Buus he contributed significantly to the early development of the ricercare for keyboard. His book of ricercares, published in 1556, brings together for the first time most of the stylistic elements of the mature Venetian ricercare: a dignified and homogeneous level of rhythmic activity; diatonic, largely conjunct thematic material; the linking of thematic material by means of subtle motivic interconnection and variation; the variation of thematic material by constant rhythmic permutation and by learned devices (augmentation, diminution, inversion and stretto). Padovano was also a master of the toccata: he may have been the first composer to expand the form and make it more important. His insertion of an imitative section between two sections of passage work also characterizes the toccatas of his colleagues, and continued into the high Baroque.

Padovano was highly regarded both in Italy and abroad. In 1568 – together with Lassus – he composed much of the music for the wedding of Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria to Renata of Lorraine. His eight-part instrumental battaglia was performed on this occasion; also probably performed were a 12-part instrumental work (lost) and a 24-voice mass (in A-Wn). He probably also composed music for the wedding between Archduke Karl and Mary of Bavaria, in Vienna on 26 August 1571; a letter from the duke of Mantua to Hippolito Nuvolono of Graz, dated 19 September 1571, speaks of a Dialogo a 7 composed by Padovano in honour of the couple.

WORKS

Antonio Mortaro
(fl 1587–1610). Italian composer. He became a Franciscan friar at Brescia in 1595, and by 1598 had taken the post of organist at the Franciscan monastery in Milan. He was organist at Novara Cathedral in 1602, but returned to Brescia after 1606. He was one of the more important transitional church composers whose works span the pre-continuo and the continuo epochs, and his output also includes a large number of canzonets and some madrigals, and instrumental works, some in keyboard or lute tablature. The majority of his sacred music is for double or triple choir in the Venetian manner of the Gabrielis, although there are conventional polyphonic motets in the 1602 volume and five-part psalms with continuo in that of 1608 (in a more forward-looking style). The three-part motets, first published in 1598 and reprinted at least twice, in 1603 and 1610, are interesting examples of the developing concertato style. Written for two upper voices in equal range with a supporting bass voice, the 1598 publication includes a ‘partitio’ book in which the three voices are arranged in score for the keyboard player. In the 1610 edition this book is replaced by a genuine basso continuo part. This same trio texture is apparent in Mortaro’s four volumes of Fiammelle amorose, canzonets with a pleasing rhythmic gaiety, although here the upper voices are usually not equal. Whatever medium he chose, his works were popular and widely disseminated in anthologies over a 40-year period.

Aurelio Bonelli
(b Bologna, ?1569; d after 1620). Italian composer, organist and painter. According to Eitner and Gerber he was active at Milan about 1600. In 1602 he was organist of the monastery of S Michele in Bosco, Bologna, where between 1605 and 1616 he collaborated with his master Annibale Carracci on a series of frescoes and other paintings. He was still at Bologna in 1620, as organist of S Giovanni in Monte. Only his Primo libro de ricercari et canzoni (Venice, 1602) survives complete. Its contents, mostly in four parts, belong to the ‘classical’ Venetian tradition of instrumental music; they are also found, transcribed into German organ tablature and decked out with organ-style embellishments and diminutions, in a source in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Turin (VIII, Giordano, 8), which dates from 1639–40. The two volumes by him that survive incomplete are Primo libro delle villanelle a tre voci (Venice, 1596) and Messe e motetti a quattro voci (Venice, 1620).

Claudio Merulo
(b Correggio, 8 April 1533; d Parma, 4 May 1604). Italian composer and publisher. He was the most gifted of a group of performer-composers who transformed European keyboard genres from simple pieces based on vocal models to idiomatic virtuoso works during the second half of the 16th century; also a prolific composer of madrigals, masses and motets in the mature Venetian style.

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.

Gioseffo Guami
(b Lucca, 27 Jan 1542; d Lucca, 1611). Organist and composer. He was the most illustrious member of the family. The circumstances of his early training are unknown, but he must have shown unusual promise, for he was sent to Venice to study, perhaps as early as 1557, under the sponsorship of two Lucchese noblemen. Here he was a pupil of Willaert and Annibale Padovano and a singer in the cappella grande. As early as 1562, his compositions were appearing in anthologies alongside those of the leading composers in Venice. In 1567 Lasso made a special trip to Italy to recruit Gioseffo and his brother (2) Francesco for the Bavarian court chapel as organist and trombonist respectively. Both were employed at the court from at least 1568 with equal salaries of 180 florins each (there are no court records extant from before that date). The records show Gioseffo's service there until 1570 and again from 1574 to 1579. Massimo Troiano's official account of the wedding of Duke Wilhelm V to Renée of Lorraine, in 1568, already names Guami, praising him as the ‘excellentissimo’ organist. Between 1570 and 1574 he spent some time in Italy with Lassus, but the full circumstances of these years are not known. One sworn testimony supporting his later appointment at S Marco, Venice, shows he held the title of capo delli concerti, as well as organist at the Bavarian court chapel; this may refer to his second period of employment at the court. In 1574 Guami was also appointed organist at S Michele, Lucca, but he did not actually take up the position until 1579 when he received a special gift of 130 florins from the Bavarian court to return to Lucca, where he was married on 6 July of that year. Guami's length of service in Lucca is uncertain, but he was still there in 1582. By 1585 he was serving as maestro di cappella at the court of Prince Gian Andrea Doria in Genoa. He had returned to Lucca by 1587, but the exact circumstances of his employment are unknown. He was elected to the post of first organist at S Marco, Venice, on 30 April 1588, and, according to a letter of recommendation from a priest there, had already achieved ‘universal renown’. Zarlino's sworn testimony in the proceedings stated that there was ‘none better qualified than he to serve the church’ an assessment echoed in the sworn testimonies of ten other leading Venetian musicians, including Giovanni Gabrieli. Three years later under somewhat mysterious circumstances Guami left the position ‘senza licenza’ and returned to Lucca; the reason may have been his disappointment at not being selected as Zarlino's successor as maestro of the cathedral. He was appointed on 5 April 1591 to his last position, as organist at Lucca Cathedral which he held until his death 20 years later. It was while serving there that he had Adriano Banchieri as a pupil. After his death his son (4) Vincenzo was elected on 20 January 1612 to succeed him as organist at the cathedral.

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).

Giovanni Gabrieli
(b ?Venice, c1554–7; d Venice, Aug 1612). Italian composer and organist, nephew of Andrea Gabrieli. Together with Willaert, Andrea Gabrieli and Merulo, he was one of the leading representatives of 16th- and early 17th-century Venetian music.

Giulio Segni da Modena
(b Modena, 1498; d Rome, 23 July 1561). Italian composer and keyboard player.

Vincenzo Bell’haver
(b c1540–41; d Venice, 29 Aug 1587). Italian composer and organist. He is first heard of as organist of the church of the Crosieri at Padua in 1567; in the same year he applied unsuccessfully for the post of organist of Padua Cathedral. The following year he was elected organist of the Scuola Grande di S Rocco, Venice. He remained there until June 1584, when he returned to Padua, having now attained the position of organist at the cathedral. His initial engagement was to have lasted three years but, perhaps due to an unexcused absence from Padua, a disagreement arose with the canons who, in December 1585, appointed Sperandio Saloni in place of Bellavere. In December 1586 he replaced Andrea Gabrieli as organist at S Marco, Venice; he died eight months later at the age of 46.

Bellavere’s reputation as a composer of madrigals is attested by the presence of his compositions in numerous contemporary anthologies. His style is indebted to that of Andrea Gabrieli: it shows the same penchant for bright sonorities (especially in the upper voices) and a similar attitude to word-setting, verbal images being taken up in the music in a modest rather than extravagant way (as in the Marenzian school). He was a leading composer of giustiniani and veneziane. Ten of these appeared in the Primo libro delle justiniane (RISM 157017), an anthology edited by Bellavere himself. The works are strophic, as in the popular tradition; the comic texts are rich in doubles entendres, imprecations and stammering effects. Of the little church music by Bellavere that survives, the double-choir motet Vidi speciosam (in 16152) is an excellent example of the Venetian polychoral tradition.

Vincenzo Pellegrini
(b Pesaro, c1562; d Milan, 23 Aug 1630). Italian composer. He studied at the seminary in Pesaro, and from 1594 was a canon in the city’s cathedral. It has been suggested that he was also maestro di cappella and organist of the cathedral, but while the first theory might be confirmed by two payments to a ‘ms Vincenzo m.ro di capella’ in 1582, there is no documentation to support the second. His 1599 collection of Canzoni is dedicated to Livia della Rovere, wife of the Duke of Urbino, in whose service Pellegrini worked before moving to Milan (see Radiciotti, 1891). On 23 April 1603 he travelled to Rome with the delegation representing the Pesaro curia. In the same year he was elected vicar-capitular, holding the post until 25 February 1604. During his time in Pesaro he had a number of pupils, including Galeazzo Sabbatini, later organist of the cathedral. On the recommendation of Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Pellegrini was appointed maestro di cappella of Milan Cathedral on 19 October 1611. On 3 February 1612 he asked the Pesaro chapter for three months’ leave to visit Milan, but he settled permanently in the city, while maintaining the title of canon of the Pesaro curia. His connections with the Rovere family continued: autograph letters to the duke’s secretary, Abbot Giulio Brunetti, survive; the motets of the Sacri concentus (1619) are dedicated to Francesco Maria II della Rovere; and Pellegrini was present at the wedding celebrations between Federico Ubaldo della Rovere and Claudia de’ Medici in May 1621.