EDEXCEL A-LEVEL NOTES

Giovanni Gabrieli (b.1554-7, d. 1612), In ecclesiis from Symphoniae Sacrae II, 1615

Background

At the turn of the seventeenth century Giovanni Gabrieli held one of the most important musical jobs in Europe, that of Director of Music at St Mark's Church, Venice. Since the 1420s the best musicians of the day had been employed at this, the city's principal church. Venice was rich, being the centre of trade (in silk and spices, for example) between the Eastern and Western worlds. Its elite, sophisticated citizens enjoyed the ostentatious pageantry made possible by copious wealth, the prestige of military victories and a tradition of processing through the streets.

Giovanni Gabrieli's predecessors at St Mark's included Adrian Willaert (c.1480-1652, who had brought to Venice the Netherlandish polyphonic style, initiated by Josquin des Près (c.1445-1521) around the turn of the sixteenth century; its high prestige and modernity ensured that cities wanted to employ its practitioners, such as Willaert, who was born in Bruges (now in Belgium). As with Taverner, pieces written in this style treat each voice part as being of equal importance, rather than the more traditional approach of having one voice singing a slow cantus firmus, with other parts providing fluent, yet unimportant, contrapuntal accompaniments.

Another of Giovanni's predecessors was his uncle, Andrea Gabrieli (?1510-1585). Both Andrea and Giovanni had known Orlande de Lassus (c.1532-1594) during their travels in Germany and his music represents an important staging post on the stylistic road to the motet In ecclesiis. Lassus was a master of the Netherlandish polyphonic style, but adapted it to a more harmonic, rather than polyphonic, idiom. Like the Gabrielis, he wrote for double choir (SATB-SATB) and responded to his text in the more homophonic fashion of a madrigal composer.

Both Gabrielis followed Lassus' style: their music is polychoral and is infused by madrigalisms. The particular polychoral style the Gabrielis pursued is known as cori spezzati: pezzati means 'piece' andspezzati 'split' (thus, cori spezzati indicates a work for split, spaced or divided choirs). Giovanni Gabrieli's output represents the high watermark of cori spezzati. Looking at bars 119-124 we can see that the choir sing 'Alleluia' one bar before the soloists, who, positioned elsewhere, create an echo effect that is quite different from the normal practice of alternating sections of the choir antiphonally: the alternation is immediate rather than verse-by-verse. In effect, Gabrieli has three 'choirs' at play in In ecclesiis, the soloists, the chorus, and the instruments, all supported by the organ.

However, Giovanni added a new element to his work: continuo. The organ plays throughout in In ecclesiis, allowing the composer to use more expressive solo ornamentation of the type described by Caccini in Le nuove musiche (1602). This can be seen particularly clearly in bars 85 to 95, on the word vivificanos (give us life). There are intricate, virtuosic rhetorical figures growing in intensity and exuding the liveliness which the words, which seem ideally suited to this kind of treatment, demand. At this time sacred music did not lag behind secular music as a conservative genre, and the stylistic innovations created by the birth of opera (elsewhere in Italy, in Florence and Mantua) are readily apparent.

Harmonically Giovanni Gabrieli is a little more adventurous than Lassus, but not as daring as Monteverdi (see page 353). Tonally, the music oscillates between F major and A major/minor, finishing in the latter, although there is a striking move from F major to D major in bar 102, and it even descends a tritone (B-flat – G – E) in bars 108-109. The form of this work is sectional but a great crescendo is effected, running from the opening to its conclusion. It is not unified by any attempt at tonal progression, but by the recurrent triple-time refrain, which was first used by Giovanni in O magnum mysterium, from the 1587 publication Concerti.

Some of the same features can be seen in the work of one of Giovanni Gabrieli's pupils, the German Heinrich Schütz, who studied with him from 1609-1612. Schütz's Herr, unser Herrscher, based on Psalm 8, has a continuo basis to its polychoral texture, and, like In ecclesiis, employs instruments. However, Schütz absorbed less of Gabrieli's response to the new monodic style: whereas Gabrieli distinguished himself by writing independent instrumental parts, Schütz merely doubled the voices.

The Latin text is non-liturgical and the often-repeated Alleluias indicate that a feast not far from Easter may have been responsible for the motet's composition. Since this extract is long, a complete harmonic scheme is not provided, although attention is drawn to important points and stylistic features.

Analysis