NANINO, GIOVANNI MARIA. - Musician, b. at Tivoli in 1545, d. in Rome on 12 March 1607. He was buried in S. Luigi dei Francesi. He studied under Pierluigi da Palestrina, whom he succeeded in 1541 as maestro di cappella at S. Maria Maggiore. He retired from this post in 1575 and went on to direct the musical chapel of S. Luigi de’ Francesi in Rome, leaving it in October 1577 to join the college of singers of the Sistine Chapel; he became its pro tempore director in 1604–1605.
In his music school, the first opened in Rome by an Italian, there were trained, under his instruction and that of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, his brother Giovanni Bernardino, Gregorio Allegri, Antonio Cifra, Antonio Brunelli, Pier Francesco Valentini, Romano Micheli, and others.
In his works, from the printed collections of motets for 3 and 5 voices (1578–79–86) to the Psalms for 8 voices, one can trace the entire arc of that polyphonic art which illuminated the glorious Roman Cinquecento: from the early efforts, in which he shunned the solid contrapuntal construction of the severe and traditional style, to the later ones, in which there already creeps in that decline which would be complete by the end of the century. Among the motets, the Haec dies for 5 voices and the 6-voice Hodie nobis stand out; the latter is still performed by the Sistine Chapel on Christmas morning. Among his other works, especially noteworthy are the 5-voice mass Vestiva i colli (ms. in the Sistine Chapel) and the 5 Lamentations for 4 voices (ed. by Haber in Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch of 1891), to which may be added the Miserere published by Proske in his Musica Divina. The genre in which he particularly excelled, however, was the madrigal, in which it has been said he surpassed even Palestrina himself; numerous reprints of these confirmed their form and success. As a theorist, he left didactic treatises: Centocinquantasette contrapunti e canoni a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 e 11 voci sopra il canto fermo, entitled La base di Costanzo Festa, warmly praised (ms. in the Biblioteca Corsini, Rome); Rudimenti e regole di contrappunto, and Regole di contrappunto doppio a 4 e 5 voci, thus gathering that vast patrimony of reflections which was to form the primary source drawn upon by the new generation of musicians trained in the precious teachings of him and Palestrina.
Many of his works were published in editions of the time, but many remain unpublished in the collections of the Cappella Giulia and the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Library, the Archive of the Chapel of S. Giovanni in Laterano, the Biblioteca Casanatense of Rome, as well as in Bologna, Munich, Münster, and Vienna.
GIOVANNI, the younger brother of the foregoing, b. at Vallerano (Viterbo) around 1560, d. in Rome in 1623, studied under him. He too was maestro di cappella at S. Luigi de’ Francesi from 1591 and later at S. Lorenzo in Damaso. He excelled in the madrigal, a form to which he devoted three books of compositions, but, more than his brother, he cultivated sacred music, publishing 5 volumes of motets, one of Vespers psalms for 4 voices for Sundays, and other minor compositions (invitatories, antiphons, responsories, etc.). Proske published, in his Musica Divina, 4 psalms for 4 voices. Many works are in manuscript in Vienna and other European libraries.