Giovanni Animuccia

Background

Animuccia was born in 1520 in Florence, Italy. His brother Paolo Animuccia was also a celebrated composer.

Career

Little is known of Animuccia’s life until 1555 when he became choirmaster at St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. His laudi spiritual, religious part-songs sung in Italian, was composed to be performed during St. Philip Neri’s popular services at the Oratory of San Girolamo in Rome. Soloists were sometimes added to the choral performances of the laudi, and the laudi were often presented in dialogue form. This quasi-dramatic structure was the framework within which the oratorio developed.

Animuccia was one of the first composers to simplify the structure of 16th-century church music. Although he was a prolific master of the complex counterpoint of the Netherlandish style that dominated Renaissance music, he experimented with short, clear-cut musical forms, melody set syllabically, and declamation sung in chords. His work possibly influenced Giovanni Pierluigi da, Palestrina. Animuccia’s works include several books of madrigals, masses, Magnificats, spiritual madrigals, and laudi spirituali. Animuccia was a maestro di capella of the Oratory until his death on March 20, 1571, in Rome.

Achievements

• Giovanni Animuccia was an Italian composer who contributed to the development of the oratorio. Animuccia was one of the first composers to simplify the structure of 16th-century church music.

Works

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• book

  • Musica Per Cardinali (1542-1592) (Bongiovanni)

    (Preces speciales pro salubri generalis concilii successu ...)

  • Missarum liber primus. Rome 1567. With ... an introduction by Thurston Dart. A facsimile.
  • Primo Libro di Madrigali a quatro a cinque & a sei uoci ... nouamente uenuti in luce. Libro Primo. Cantus. (Altus.) (Tenor.) (Bassus.) (Quintus.)
  • Mass, " Conditor alme siderum, " for four voices ... edited by H. B. Collins. London, 1918. Lithographed
  • Missa " Ave Maris Stelle " . Quatuor vocum inaequalium (1567) ... Transcripsit et curavit Bonaventura Somma ... Partitura, etc (Polifonia vocale sacra e profana, sec. XVI)

Connections

Brother:

Paolo Animuccia

(died 1563)

References

• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (Oxford Quick Reference)
• Counter-reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo
• Cori Spezzati: Volume II, An Anthology of Sacred Polychoral Music (Cori Spezzati)