PAOLO AGOSTINI. — Musician, born in Vallerano ca. 1583, died in Rome in September 1629. He was a pupil and later son-in-law of G. B. Nanino; he served as maestro di cappella at the church of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, at Santa Maria in Trastevere, at San Lorenzo in Damaso, and finally at St Peter’s. Of his numerous polyphonic works, many still lie in manuscript in various Roman libraries; among those printed, the most important are the Salmi della Madonna (1629), containing Magnificats, antiphons, and concerted motets, and five books of Masses (1627).
Like almost all members of the post-Palestrina Roman school, Agostini still awaits a thorough study that will determine the importance and value of his artistic personality, also in relation to the stylistic transformation then taking place in religious music at the start of the 17th century. His style appears oriented toward the great contrapuntal tradition of the Roman school, but already open to some new expressive elements, chiefly to be seen in a tendency to expand the sonority of the choral mass, as is characteristic of 17th-century polyphony, and to admit new harmonic effects.