ANERIO, FAMILY. - A house to which several musicians belonged, among whom the following are famous:
MAURIZIO, of Narni, a trombone player in Castel S. Angelo, father of Giovanni Francesco and Felice. He also carried on his activity as a player at the Congregation of the Oratory, of whose founder, St. Philip Neri, he had been a penitent since 1556. He died in 1591.
GIOVANNI FRANCESCO, b. in Rome in 1567. From 1575 to 79 he was a boy chorister in the Cappella Giulia under the direction of Palestrina, and from 1606 until around 1609 he seems to have been at the court of Sigismund III, king of Poland. In 1609 we find him again in Verona, choirmaster of the Cathedral, and from 1611 in Rome, «in Seminario Romano musicae Praefectus», and choirmaster in the church of the Gesù (1613-20).
He became a priest after a long preparation extending from 1583 to 1616, the year in which he received holy ordination in the sacristy of St. Peter at the hands of the bishop of Grosseto, Msgr. Giulio Sansidoni. On the following 7 August he celebrated his first sung Mass in the church of the Gesù, in which all the singers of Rome took part, divided into eight choirs. Recent archival investigations have led to the belief that the date of his death, generally placed after 1621 (from the date of his last work - the Lieti scherzi - published with a dedication by the author), was later than 1624.
Besides his vast sacred production, composed for the churches of the Society of Jesus, he devoted a lively part of his activity to the Congregation of the Oratory, for which he wrote some Laudi and, in 1619, the Teatro armonico spirituale, which occupies an important place in the origins of the Oratory in the vernacular.
His compositions, richer in number and variety than those of his brother Felice, comprise, besides various collections of madrigals (for one to 8 voices) and of instrumental music (harpsichord and lute), a Dialogo pastorale al Presepio for 3 voices with harpsichord and lute tablatures (with copper engravings, Verona 1600); many collections of motets for one to 8 voices (bk. I, 1609; bk. II, with litanies and 4 Marian antiphons after Vespers, 1611); Sacri concentus una cum basso ad organum, with litanies for 4 voices (1613); Antiphonae seu sacrae cantiones (1613, motets, bk. IV, 1617; bk. V, 1618); Sacrarum cantionum (bk. V, 1618); Ghirlanda di sacre rose musicalmente contesta, concerted for 5 voices (1619), to which may be added La Selva armonica (motets, madrigals, canzonas, dialogues and arias) of 1617, to arrive finally at the famous collection of 1619 Il Teatro armonico spirituale di madrigali a 5-8 voci concertate con Basso per Organo, which constitutes, together with the Laudi composed for the Tempio armonico of Blessed Giovenale Ancina (v.) and with the aforementioned Dialogo pastorale, the prelude, according to the new representative monodic style, to the dramatic musicality that would inform the seventeenth century, from the theater proper to the spiritual music of the Oratory. In the strictly liturgical field his name is linked to a group of Responsoria nativitatis Domini, Venite exultamus, Te Deum, for 3-8 voices, of 1614 (reprinted in 1629), of Salmi da Vespro for 3-4 voices of 1620, and of masses, among which we recall, besides the edition (of ca. 1600) of 3 masses by Palestrina (among them the Missa Papae Marcelli is notable, reduced by the author to 4 voices) with one of his own masses, the Battaglia, the volume of masses for 4-6 voices of 1614, containing the Missa pro defunctis (published later also separately [1630] and recently reissued by F. Pustet in 1865), and others among which there stands out, for example, a Missa Paulina Burghesia, dedicated to Paul V: all very close to the pure Palestrinian inspiration, to which the author's solid contrapuntal and polyphonic formation harked back. Many manuscript compositions are preserved in the libraries of Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, London, Bologna and Rome.
FELICE, elder brother of the preceding, b. in Rome ca. 1560, d. in 1614, perhaps on 26 September. In 1568 he was received as a boy chorister in the musical chapel of S. Maria Maggiore, in 1575 as a soprano and in 1577 as a contralto in the Cappella Giulia, passing immediately afterward, still as a contralto, to the chapel of S. Luigi dei Francesi (1579-80). His artistic formation, begun very probably by his father, was effectively continued by the various choirmasters under whom his activity as a singer took place, namely: by G. M. Nanino (v.), of whom he insistently loved to declare himself a pupil, by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and by Suriano. His career as a master embraced various fields of activity: from the College of the English, run by the Jesuits (1585), to the Compagnia di Roma (which would later be the Accademia di S. Cecilia), to the chapel of Duke Giovanni Angelo Altemps, and finally to the Sistine Chapel, where he succeeded Palestrina as pontifical composer.
Besides various collections of canzonettas and madrigals, he has to his credit a great quantity of sacred music which, after the Madrigali spirituali, published by Gardano in 1585 (his first printed work) and the two books of Concerti spirituali for 4 voices, of 1593, begins officially with 1594, which marks the beginning of his twofold activity as liturgical composer for the ducal Altempsian chapel and for the apostolic chapel. It is precisely to Clement VIII, who had elevated him to the office of pontifical composer, that the two books of Motets for 8 voices (1596) and for 5-6-8 voices (1602) are dedicated, which came out in Venice (the first) and in Rome (the second) under the title Sacri Hymni et Cantica. The liturgical work of Felice A. comprises, besides the Responsories for 4 voices (1602 and 1606), various masses and psalms which, with litanies and motets, were published in collections by Pustet (ca. 1853-63: see in the Musica Divina* of K. Proske the motets of the Altemps collection), or still lie in manuscript in the libraries of Rome (Sistine Chapel), Berlin, Breslau, Dresden, Vienna, etc.
To express the height of his liturgical art it will suffice to recall a judgment of A. W. Ambros who, of the A.'s mass Veni Sponsa Christi, maintained that it could stand on a par with the Palestrinian mass of the same name.
Like his brother Giovanni, he encloses in his art the two currents that had, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, their point of suture: the Palestrinian polyphonic tradition, with its well-equipped baggage of contrapuntal constructions, and the nascent monodic tendency, which, more than in the properly dramatic form of the solo voice (as in the work of Giovanni Francesco) expresses itself, in Felice, with the marked inclination to push polyphony, by means of homophony, toward that prevalence of the upper voice which would lead to the melodic monodism of the seventeenth century.
The name of Felice A. is also linked to the history of the edition of the Gradual, called Medicea because it was printed in the Raimondi typography, patronized by Cardinal Ferdinando dei Medici, whose revision had been entrusted by Gregory XIII to Palestrina (Proprium de tempore) and to Zoilo (Proprium Sanctorum), together with that of the Antiphonary and the Psalter, and which, abandoned by Palestrina around 1578, was taken up again in 1611, when the undertaking was entrusted, on the initiative of Cardinal Del Monte, to Felice A. and to Suriano. The printing of this edition was completed by the publisher Raimondi, who had by then obtained the privilege, in 1614 for vol. I (Pr. de tempore) and in 1615 for vol. II (Pr. Sanctorum), which came out after the death of A. himself.
BERNARDINO, brother of Felice and of Giovanni Francesco, was also a musician, since he appears among the singers who, directed by Luca Marenzio, took part in the Lenten services of 1595 at the Confraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix in S. Marcello.