FIG. 18-6 Venetian musicians in the service of the doge playing “six silver trumpets” in procession.
Gabrieli’s piece (see Ex. 18-17 for its ending) was touted by Winterfeld as the first sonata, the first
work to specify its instrumentation, the first work to use the violin, and the first work to specify dynamics.
It was actually none of those things. Contrasting loud and soft passages had been implied for a long time
in “echo” pieces, both vocal and instrumental, for which there was such a craze that as early as 1581
Lasso published a famous madrigal for two four-part choirs (“O là o che bon eccho,” roughly “O gee,
what a nice echo”) making fun of it. In 1596, a year before Gabrieli’s publication, Adriano Banchieri had
published a book of four-part canzoni alla francese that included one (no. 11, “La Organistina bella: in
echo,” roughly “The pretty little lassie at the organ: with echo effects”) in which the echoes were
obtained not by contrasting choirs but by explicit forte and piano markings. Gabrieli’s piece was thus not
innovative but symptomatic. It was a symptom of the sensuous delight listeners had begun to take in sonic
effects and displays of all kinds in this early period of music-as-spectacle.
EX. 18-17 Giovanni Gabrieli, Sonata pian’e forte, end