CROCE, GIOVANNI. — Also known as Ioannes a Cruce or “il Chiozzotto,” from Chioggia where he was born in 1557 and died on 15 May 1609. He was a distinguished composer, trained in the school of Zarlino and called by him to join the cappella of S. Marco in Venice as a contralto. He became a titled priest of the church of S. Maria Formosa in Venice; in 1593 he was appointed master at the seminary; in 1595 vice-master of the cappella, and finally, on 13 July 1603, maestro di cappella at S. Marco, successor to Donati and a worthy continuer of that luminous artistic tradition that had elevated to the same glorious chair A. Willaert, C. de Rore, and G. Zarlino.
Of his works, admired for the genius of their inspiration and for contrapuntal skill, several prints and reprints from the period survive, as well as new recent editions published by F. X. Haberl (Jahrbuch Peters, Regensburg 1888), by Commer in Musica sacra, by Proske in Musica divina, etc. Croce’s sacred music comprises a large number of masses for 5–6–8 voices, psalms for 6–8 voices, complete psalmodies for vespers at 8 voices, lamentations and motets for 4 and 8 voices, sacred cantilenas and cantiones found in the libraries of Italy and Europe along with numerous manuscripts of masses up to 16 voices, motets for 4 and other spiritual songs. His secular music is equally numerous.