failures, for the first organist’s position in 1566 and held the post until his death. During that period there
were several major quasi-secular celebrations held at the cathedral—the outstanding one being the trionfi
following the naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571—and Gabrieli’s music for these occasions
revealed an enormous aptitude for ceremonial splendor, a talent he continued to develop as the
cathedral’s musical resources were expanded. He also furnished music for theatrical presentations,
including a set of choruses for up to six voices performed in March 1585 at a gala performance of
Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus tyrannis. It is the earliest surviving music specifically composed for a
humanist revival of Greek drama, which puts Gabrieli in the line that led, eventually, to opera.
Andrea’s collected sacred works, published the year after his death, contain several spectacular
Masses and motets that employ larger and more varied forces than any previous written music. Especially
indicative of the trend is a Mass for sixteen voices organized into four antiphonally deployed four-part
choirs, performed in 1585 to welcome (and impress) a party of visiting Japanese princes. One of the
choirs was marked a cappella, designating it and it alone as intended for performance by voices (and
voices alone) on all four parts. The intended performing medium for the other choirs can be deduced from
the title page of the collection: CONCERTI/continenti Musica DI CHIESA/per voci, & stromenti
Musicali; à 6.7.8.10.12.&16.
Concerti! A momentous word. From Andrea’s title page one can learn what it originally meant: works
expressly combining voices and instruments—written, that is, in what is still sometimes called the
“concerted” style—in which the contrast and interplay of timbres are an integral part of the musical
conception. From the employment lists at St. Mark’s it is possible to infer that these works by Gabrieli
mixed and alternated voices with wind instruments such as cornetti—not modern cornets but instruments
held and fingered like oboes but played with a brass cup mouthpiece—on the upper parts (or choirs) and
trombones on the lower, with the organ playing along with everything and providing the sonic glue that
held the whole timbrally and spatially variegated surface together.
Gabrieli’s “concerted” Masses and motets were quickly imitated—so quickly as to suggest that the
practice was an established one, at least in the great churches of northern Italy, long before it was
specified in print. The very next year, in 1589, the Bolognese musician Ascanio Trombetti, associated
with the church of San Petronio, a great center for instrumental music, published Il primo libro de motetti
accomodati per cantare e far concerti (“The first book of motets arranged for singing in conjunction with
instruments”).
The terms concerto and concertato became standard in titles. Beginning with the double-choir
Concerti ecclesiastici a otto voci (“Church concertos [= concerted motets] for eight voices”) by the
Bolognese organist Adriano Banchieri (Venice, 1595), publishers supplied a new standard feature: a
separate part for the organist to assist the player in his new role as omnibus accompanist. Banchieri
supplied a primitive score (spartitura = “parts extracted”) for this purpose that summarized the basic
harmonies of his first choir.
A few years later, in a more modest publication called Cento concerti ecclesiastici, a una, a due, a
tre & a quattro voci (“One hundred church concertos for 1, 2, 3, and 4 voices,” Venice, 1602) by a
peripatetic north Italian friar named Lodovico Viadana, a more streamlined organ part was devised. Since
some of Viadana’s “concerti” were actually accompanied solo songs (in keeping with yet another sort of
radical anti- ars-perfecta practice that we will investigate in the next chapter), there was nothing to
“score.” Instead, as the title page advertised, there was a basso continuo per sonar nell’organo, nova
inventione commoda per ogni sorte de cantori, & per gli organisti: “a continuous bass line to play on
the organ, a new invention for the convenience of all kinds [i.e., any number] of singers and for the
organists.” The basso continuo, a term that caught on and has been standard ever since, was an
independent organ part written as one line, but realized in full harmonies (with radical implications: for