Nephew of the St Mark’s organist Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni Gabrieli also spent some time in the service of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria before being appointed in 1585 to a permanent position at St Mark’s, where he served as organist until his death in 1613. His work as a composer represents the height of musical achievement in Renaissance Venice. His pupils included Heinrich Schütz.

Church Music

Gabrieli continued the traditional cori spezzati techniques developed at St Mark’s during the century, contrasting different groups of singers and instrumentalists and making use of the spacial effects possible in the great basilica. His eight-part setting of the Jubilate, using double choir and brass, is characteristic of his style of writing.

Instrumental Music

The most widely known of Gabrieli’s works is the Sonata pian’ e forte, an eight-part composition for two four-part groups of wind instruments included in the Sacrae symphoniae of 1597, with a number of instrumental canzoni for between six and 16 parts. These works, and a quantity of compositions of a similar kind, including toccatas and ricercari, have provided an interesting repertoire for modern brass players, although originally they were played by instruments that included sackbuts (the earlier form of trombone), cornetts (curved wooden instruments with a cup-shaped mouth-piece) and other instruments of the period.