Giammateo Asola - Music and Influence

Music and Influence

Asola was a rare case of a composer working in Venice who showed almost no stylistic influence from the Venetian school; indeed most of his works are in the Palestrina style, the idiom of the Roman School of composers. In his later works he began using a basso continuo, and he may have been one of the first composers to do so. The only musical feature he borrowed from the Venetian composers elsewhere in his adopted city was the idea of cori spezzati, spatially separated groups of singers; however this musical style was widespread in northern Italy by the time he was writing, and by no means unique to Venice. Cori spezzati techniques appear in particular in his 1588 publication of masses for eight voices.

Among his copious works are many masses, including a Requiem mass; psalm settings, lamentations, vespers, antiphons, sacrae cantiones, and numerous other sacred works. In addition he composed secular music, including several books of madrigals, as well as one book of madrigali spirituali, which is lost.

One of his books of madrigals is unusual in that it consists of canons for two voices only; most madrigals of the time were for at least four voices, and rarely used strict counterpoint.