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Written while Gabrieli was first the organist at St Mark's Basilica as well as the organist at the Scuola di San Rocco, Venice, the music may have been designed to be performed for one of these institutions. The individual groups of instrumentalists and singers would likely have been spatially separated, creating a polychoral, antiphonal texture.
Gabrieli was born in Venice.He was one of five children, and his father came from the region of Carnia and went to Venice shortly before Giovanni's birth. While not much is known about Giovanni's early life, he probably studied with his uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli, who was employed at St Mark's Basilica from the 1560s until his death in 1585.
Gabrieli's Sonata pian ’e forte is a through-composed work, the structure of which is defined by dialogue between the two instrumental choirs. The formal division into an initial section (mm. 1–31), a longer, relatively complex middle section (mm. 31–71) and a final section (mm. 71–81) conforms to the conventions prevalent at the time.
Giovanni Gabrieli, a Renaissance composer revered for his early works for brass instruments, pioneered the art of antiphonal effect in which different sections are placed in opposition to create a ...
Others were Andrea Gabrieli and Giovanni Gabrieli, both known for antiphonal compositions of brass music, derived for the acoustics of the Basilica. The Gabrielis established the pinnacle of brass antiphonal effect with double and triple choirs, complete with dynamic markings, and spatial location direction.
In the late sixteenth century, however, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli at St Mark's Basilica in Venice began experimenting with placing diverse group of performers – instrumental and vocal – in antiphonal locations around the vast interior of the church, in what became known as cori spezzati (divided choirs). [6]
The New Grove Dictionary defines antiphony as "music in which an ensemble is divided into distinct groups, used in opposition, often spatial, and using contrasts of volume, pitch, timbre, etc." [13] Early examples can be found in the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, one of the renowned practitioners of the Venetian polychoral style:
The Venetian polychoral style was a type of music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras which involved spatially separate choirs singing in alternation. It represented a major stylistic shift from the prevailing polyphonic writing of the middle Renaissance, and was one of the major stylistic developments which led directly to the ...