Le opere attestate in antologie compilate in vita

Vol. 10 of the Complete Works, articulated in two parts, contains the music found exclusively in manuscript and printed anthologies compiled prior to the great sixteenth-century Venetian composer’s death in 1585. Broadly speaking, Gabrieli’s contributions to collective anthologies fall into the following categories: 1) celebratory compositions, in several cases conceived as individual contributions to madrigal cycles by various composers in honour of more or less prominent Venetian or other personalities; 2) compositions originating in social and cultural circles close to Gabrieli; products of the composer’s habitual interaction with patrons, poets and musicians in mid sixteenth-century Venice, these compositions are published in anthologies containing similar works by other composers in Gabrieli’s milieu; 3) individual madrigals inserted in generic multi-author anthologies. Vol. 10/I features eight compositions on texts in Latin, Italian and ‘stradioto’ dialect (a linguistic concoction in which words of Greek origin appear against a background of simulated Venetian dialect). These include Gabrieli’s contribution to a Corona of nine sonnets by various composers on the death of Annibale Caro, the celebrated man-of-letters whose production comprises a highly successful Italian translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. The entire Corona is edited in the Complete Works. Gabrieli’s presence in multi-author anthologies follows a predictable pattern.

The young composer’s earliest madrigals appear in editions of music by well-established authors (Vincenzo Ruffo, Cipriano de Rore) or collective anthologies edited by enterprising local musicians or other cultural figures (Giulio Bonagiunta, a singer at St Mark’s; the Venetian poet, actor and musician Antonio Molino). These give way to anthologies of music by highly celebrated composers, to which Gabrieli, his reputation now secure, accedes by invitation; and, beginning in 1583, non-Italian publications (increasingly common in the years following the composer’s death).