Animuccia, Giovanni

ANIMUCCIA, GIOVANNI. - A musician of purely religious inspiration who, together with Costanzo Festa (v.), opens the golden tradition of the Roman polyphonic school. Born in Florence in 1514, died in Rome on 25 March 1571. Having come to Rome young, he joined the artists who paid court to Cardinal Giulio Ascanio Sforza of S. Fiora and formed, in 1540, a deep friendship with his fellow citizen St. Philip Neri, who called him to collaborate in the Oratory, where he enrolled in 1555. In the same year he was appointed master of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's, where, at his death, Palestrina succeeded him. He married "madonna Lucrezia Giulia sanese," herself a penitent of St. Philip.

The two principal fields of A.'s activity, the Cappella Giulia and the Oratory, are also those in which the highest values of sixteenth-century musicality unfold, namely liturgical music (masses, magnificats, motets), and extra-liturgical religious music, with popular intonation and vernacular text (spiritual lauds). In the former, A. draws from the traditional Gregorian repertoire the thematic inspiration to clothe it in the most limpid and flowing polyphony which, if at times it lacks the architectural grandeur of Palestrinian lines, nonetheless always has a collected and profound religiosity. He moreover brings the expressive adherence between the music and the liturgical text to such a level of clarity that he may rightly be called the musician of the Council of Trent, whose spirit he expresses, especially in the masses known precisely as "secundum formam Concilii." It may be said that every mass - let us cite the great collection of 6 masses for 4, 5 and 6 voices printed in Rome in 1567 under the title Missarum liber primus - is like a polyphonic apotheosis of the Gregorian thematic content of the hymn (Ad coenam Agni providi, Ave Maris Stella, Christe Redemptor omnium), of the antiphon (Gaudent in coelis) or of the sequence (Victimae paschali) from which it takes its name: the cantus firmus winds here and there through the various parts, broken up, resumed, elaborated and enriched with counterpoints, imitations and fugal passages, always alive and present in the most vibrant melodic transparency of the polyphonic edifice. After the masses, the magnificats hold a pre-eminent place, composed in the eight tones and printed in Rome (1568) under the title Canticum Beatae Mariae Virginis ad omnes modos factum. Here the Gregorian inspirational element is more evident in the classic intonations of the verses and in the psalm-like flow of the voices, but the greater contrapuntal sobriety is compensated by an extraordinary richness and variety of effects in the disposition of the parts and in the fusion of the rhythmic elements. But it is in the brief pieces on vernacular texts, composed for the Filippine Oratory of St. Jerome of Charity, that A.'s art takes on a wholly particular aspect: the Laudi spirituali, which appeared in two books in 1563 (for 4 voices) and in 1570 (for 8 voices). A. had written other small compositions of the motet type on Latin texts (in the manuscripts Libelli studiorum, in the Madrigali a 3 voci of 1565), but those on Italian words assume a far greater importance if one considers that they are the first roots from which the oratorio would develop. At first they are for 4 voices only, simple, homophonic, then they are enriched with imitations and other artistic means, such as the grandiose effects of the double choir, where, after a varied alternation, the 1st and 2nd choirs join together in majestic and solemn finales, unfolding all the timbral richness of an eight-voice texture. And so let us recall some of the most significant laudi, such as Yesu sposo mia dolce, Signor dolce mia vita, Occhi pietosi e casti, Venite al cibo eletto, Su su su che stiamo a fare: little idyllic pictures that bring us back to the serene quiet of the Roman countryside and villas where, especially during the visit to the seven churches, those Filippine spiritual gatherings were held, to which A. brought a fervent yearning for art and faith.

Luisa Cervelli