Giovanni Bassano - Life

Life

Nothing is known of Bassano's life before his arrival as a young instrumental player at St. Mark's, probably in 1576 at the age of 18. He quickly acquired a reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in Venice, and by 1585 had published his first book, Ricercate, passagi et cadentie, which details exactly how best to ornament passages when transcribing vocal music for instruments. In that same year he became a music teacher at the seminary associated with St. Mark's. In 1601 he took over the job as head of the instrumental ensemble from Girolamo Dalla Casa, and he remained at this post until his death in August 1617.

In addition to directing the music at St. Mark's, Bassano was busy elsewhere in Venice; he directed several groups of piffari, bands of wind players including bagpipes, recorders, shawms, flageolets, bassoons, and conceivably other instruments, which were used in other churches (such as San Rocco) or even street festivals.

Bassano was also a composer, though his music has been overshadowed by his renown as a performer and his associated performance treatise. He wrote motets and concerti ecclesiastici (sacred concertos) in the Venetian polychoral style; and he also wrote madrigals, canzonettas and some purely instrumental music. His canzonettas achieved some fame outside of Italy: Thomas Morley knew them, printing them in London in 1597 in English translation.

Some of Bassano's instrumental music is ingeniously contrapuntal, as though he were indulging a side of his personality he was unable to display in his more ceremonial, homophonic compositions. His fantasias and ricercars are densely imitative and contain retrograde and retrograde inversions of motivic ideas, a rarity in counterpoint before the 20th century.

The similarity of Bassano's motets to the early work of Heinrich Schütz, who studied in Venice with Gabrieli, suggests that the two may have known each other; likely Schütz knew Bassano's music.