AGOSTINI, PAOLO. - Musician, b. at Vallerano c. 1583, d. at Rome in September 1629. He was a pupil and later son-in-law of G. B. Nanino; maestro di cappella at the church of the S.ma Trinità dei Pellegrini, at S. Maria in Trastevere, at S. Lorenzo in Damaso, and finally at S. Pietro. Of his numerous polyphonic works, many still remain in manuscript in various Roman libraries; among those printed, the most important are the Salmi della Madonna (1629), containing magnificat, antiphons, and concertato motets, and 5 books of Masses (1627).
Like almost all those belonging to the post-Palestrinian Roman school, A. still awaits an exhaustive study that will establish the importance and value of his artistic personality, also in relation to the stylistic transformation taking place in sacred music at the beginning of the 17th century. His style appears oriented toward the great contrapuntal tradition of the Roman school, but already open to certain new expressive elements, chiefly discernible in a tendency to broaden the sonority of the choral mass, as is characteristic of seventeenth-century polyphony, and to admit new harmonic effects.