Gabrieli, Giovanni

GABRIELI, GIOVANNI. - Musician, b. in Venice in 1557, d. there on 12 September 1612; from 1575 to 1579 he was at the musical chapel of the court of Munich, then under the direction of Orlando di Lasso, and later, in 1586, he succeeded Claudio Merulo at the first organ of the basilica of St. Mark in Venice, where he remained in that office until his death.

Nephew and pupil of Andrea G., he is closely bound to his uncle's personality, but not only for such reasons, rather through a profound spiritual affinity. Without establishing dependencies and relationships understood too materially, account must in reality be taken of a continuation of the expressive characteristics so admirably achieved in the work of Andrea G. G. G. himself felt this spiritual filiation, and in the preface to the Conti e Concerti of 1587, which collects compositions by both, setting forth with clear awareness his uncle's artistic qualities, he likewise « indicated » the intimate reasons for his own formation, the predilections that had determined his style. All that has been briefly mentioned with regard to Andrea G. must therefore be kept in mind as a necessary premise for the subsequent artistic development of G. G., who not only carries out a versatile exploitation of what was transmitted to him, but attains a clear originality through the incomparable vigor of his rich imagination. With G. G. the musical picture seems to expand to the dimensions of the frescoes and canvases that contemporary Venetian painters conceived with an equal variety of foreshortenings, movements and figures; in this regard, evident common characteristics are usually rightly noted and described, which serve as clear indications of intimate spiritual affinities. The growing number of musical parts, which in the polychoral distribution reaches as many as 22, is used by G. G. to realize structures of monumental grandeur, in which the novelty of the expressive detail and the harmonious cohesion of the whole are equally blended. Of decisive importance is the union of instruments with voices, already begun by Andrea G., not in the function of accompaniment or doubling, but as an element of indispensable integration in the overall conception: the timbres of wind and string instruments, alone or fused with the various vocal registers, give rise to a richness of color of unequaled splendor. The art of G. G. summarizes and at the same time unfolds the characteristics of the Venetian style, which with him acquires a European resonance; it seems to impose itself, beyond its value in itself, as an example of a « modern » art, renewed on the glorious trunk of polyphony. In this regard the most representative works are the Symphoniae sacrae (1597 and 1613), which exercised a profound influence on the development of European music of the seventeenth century; just as Andrea G. had had Hassler and Sweelinck as pupils, so G. G. had as his pupil one of the greatest musicians of the entire seventeenth century, Heinrich Schütz. His contemporaries were quite sensitive to a certain prevalence of fantastical sonority, but the religious expression is more discernible in the richness of the imagination with which the counterpoint is bent to interpret the sacred texts, understood with the same dramatic and evocative mobility as the secular ones. The purely instrumental work of G. G. equally marks a moment of great importance for the autonomous development of forms by then clearly individualized in the sonic nature of the individual instruments.

Luigi Rongo