GIOVANNI GABRIELI. — Musician, born in Venice in 1557, died there on 12 August 1612; from 1575 to 1579 he was at the musical chapel of the court of Munich, then under the direction of Orlando di Lasso; in 1586 he succeeded Claudio Merulo as first organist at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, a position he held until his death.
Nephew and pupil of Andrea G., he is closely tied to the personality of his uncle, not only by such bonds but also by a profound spiritual affinity. Without a fixed dependence or materially conceived relationships, in reality one must consider a continuation of the expressive traits so admirably achieved in the work of Andrea G. Giovanni G. himself felt this spiritual filiation, and in the preface to the *Canti e Concerti* of 1587, which collects compositions by both, he clearly expounds the artistic qualities of his uncle while also indicating the intimate reasons for his own formation and the predilections that shaped his style. All that has been briefly noted regarding Andrea G. must therefore be considered a necessary premise for the subsequent artistic development of Giovanni G., who not only exploits in a versatile manner what was transmitted to him but also achieves a distinct originality through the incomparable vigour of his rich imagination. With Giovanni G., the musical canvas seems to expand to the dimensions of the frescoes and canvases that his Venetian painter contemporaries conceived with equal variety of perspectives, movements, and figures; in this regard, the evident descriptive traits that serve as clear indications of spiritual affinities are usually and justly noted. The increasing number of musical parts, which in the polychoral distribution reaches as many as 22, is employed by Giovanni G. to create structures of monumental grandeur, in which the novelty of expressive detail and the harmonious cohesion of the initiator are equally contemporary. Of decisive importance is the union of instruments with voices, already begun by Andrea G., not as a 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 rich colouristic brilliance of ingenious splendour. Giovanni G.’s art summarizes and unfolds, at the same time, the traits of the Venetian style, which with him acquires a European resonance; it seems to impose itself, beyond its intrinsic value, as an example of an art that is modern, renewed upon the glorious trunk of polyphony. In this regard, the most representative works are the *Symphoniae sacrae* (1597 and 1615), which exerted a profound influence on the development of European music in the 17th century; just as Andrea G. had had as pupils Hassler and Sweelinck, so Giovanni G. had as a pupil one of the greatest musicians of the entire 17th century, Heinrich Schütz. In contrast, his sensitivity led him to a certain prevalence of resplendent sonority, yet the religious expression is more evident in the richness of the imagination with which counterpoint is bent to interpret sacred texts, understood with the same dramatic and evocative mobility as profane ones. Giovanni G.’s purely instrumental works likewise mark a moment of great significance for the autonomous development of forms that were already clearly individualized in the sonorous nature of the individual instruments.