Ruggiero Giovannelli - Music and Influence

Music and Influence

Giovanelli composed and published a large number secular pieces. He is noted for his church music, most of which also survives in manuscript. As could be expected for a composer of the Roman School, his sacred music was conservative, and mostly in the Palestrina style for the first part of his career; however, after 1600 he experimented with some of the stylistic innovations which defined the beginning of the Baroque era, such as the concertato principle and the basso continuo. His output of sacred music fell off dramatically late in his life, and at least one scholar has suggested that this was because he was uncomfortable with the new style. In 1615 he created a new edition of the Gradule known as the Medicean, published by the Medici press. (The Encyclopedia Americana may contradict this, writing that a Editio Medicæa of the Graduale of 1614 was created by Felice Anerio.)

He wrote masses and motets, some of which are for as many as 12 voices, and which often use polychoral techniques.

For a Roman School composer and a priest he wrote a surprising amount of secular music, mostly madrigals and canzonettas, some of which are in a light-hearted style influenced by northern Italian models, or by Luca Marenzio, who had spent time in Rome. He wrote three books of madrigals for five voices and two books for four voices, as well as a large quantity of other secular songs which were not collected in publications; most have been dated to the 1580s and 1590s.

Giovannelli's music was reprinted widely, in Italy and elsewhere, indicating his broad popularity.