ANERIO, FAMILY. - A house to which several musicians belonged, among whom the following are notable:
MAURIZIO, of Narni, trombone player at Castel Sant’Angelo, father of Giovanni Francesco and Felice. He also performed as a musician for the Congregation of the Oratory, of whose founder, St Philip Neri, he had been a penitent since 1556. He died in 1591.
GIOVANNI FRANCESCO, born in Rome in 1567. From 1575 to 1579 he was a boy singer in the Cappella Giulia under the direction of Palestrina, and from 1606 until about 1609 he appears to have been at the court of Sigismund III, King of Poland. In 1609 he is found again in Verona as maestro di cappella at the Duomo, and from 1611 in Rome as ‘in Seminario Romano musicae Praefectus’ and maestro di cappella at the church of the Gesù (1613–20).
He became a priest after long preparation from 1583 to 1616, the year in which he received sacred ordination in the sacristy of St Peter’s at the hands of Giulio Sansidoni, Bishop of Grosseto. On 7 August following he celebrated his first sung Mass in the church of the Gesù, attended by all the singers of Rome divided into eight choirs. Recent archival research has led to the belief that the date of his death, generally placed after 1621 (from the date of his last published work, the Lieti scherzi, with a dedicatory preface by the author), should be set after 1624.
Besides his extensive sacred output, composed for the churches of the Society of Jesus, he devoted a significant part of his activity to the Congregation of the Oratory, for which he wrote Lauds and, in 1619, the Teatro armonico spirituale, which occupies an important place in the origins of the vernacular Oratory.
His compositions, richer in number and variety than those of his brother Felice, include, besides various collections of madrigals (from one to eight voices) and instrumental music (harpsichord and lute), a Dialogo pastorale al Presepio for three voices with harpsichord and lute tablature (engraved on copper, Verona 1600); many collections of sacred pieces from one to eight voices (I, 1609; II, with litanies and four Marian antiphons after Vespers, 1611); Sacri concentus una cum basso ad organum, with litanies for four voices (1613); Antiphonae seu sacrae cantiones (1613; motets, I, IV, 1617; I, V, 1618); Sacrarum cantionum (I, V, 1618); Ghirlanda di sacre rose musicalmente contesta, concerted for five voices (1619), to which may be added La Selva armonica (motets, madrigals, canzonas, dialogues and arias) of 1617, leading up to the famous collection of 1619, Il Teatro armonico spirituale of madrigals for five to eight voices concerted with organ bass, which, together with the Laudi composed for the Tempo armonico of the blessed Giovenale Ancira (q.v.) and with the aforementioned Dialogo pastorale, constitutes the prelude, in the new monodic and representational style, to the dramatic musicality that would inform the 17th century, from true theatre to the spiritual music of the Oratory. In the strictly liturgical sphere his name is linked to a group of