Everything about Annibale Padovano totally explained
Annibale Padovano (
1527 –
March 15,
1575) was an Italian composer and
organist of the late
Renaissance Venetian School. He was one of the earliest developers of the keyboard
toccata.
Life
Padovano was born in Padua — hence his name — but little is known about his early life. He first appears at
St. Mark's in
Venice on November 30,
1552, when he was hired as first organist at an annual salary of 40 ducats. He stayed at this post until
1565. St. Mark's at this time also began to employ a second organist (it was
Claudio Merulo for the last eight years of Padovano's tenure), which allowed two simultaneous, spatially separated organs to perform in the huge space of the cathedral: this was a key development in music of the Venetian school, which was already using spatially separated choirs of voices. Merulo took over the job of first organist when Padovano left.
In
1566, Padovano left Venice to go to the
Habsburg court in
Graz. Many Venetian musicians left their native area to seek their fortunes in Habsburg domains, which generally remained friendly to Venice. Padovano became the director of music at Graz in
1570, and died there five years later.
Music and influence
Although Padovano published a book of
motets, a book of
masses, and two books of
madrigals, he's mainly remembered for his instrumental music. He was a notable early composer of
ricercars, a predecessor of the
fugue; many of the themes he used derived from
plainchant, but he included considerable ornamentation in the melodic lines. In addition he often broke the theme up for motivic development in a surprisingly "modern" way, anticipating the developmental techniques of the
common practice period.
Probably his most famous compositions are his
toccatas, which were perhaps the earliest examples of the toccata in its more modern sense as an improvisatory, highly ornamented piece. Usually he included
imitative interpolations between
improvisatory sections, and also
meter changes from duple to triple, anticipating later music of the Venetian school.
Quite unknown is a magnificent Missa a 24, which makes use of three choirs of eight voices each. There is an outstanding recording of this mass by the Huelgas-Ensemble, lead by Paul van Nevel.
References and further reading
- Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. New York, Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN 0-486-28151-5
- "Annibale Padovano", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
- Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
Further Information
Get more info on 'Annibale Padovano'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://annibale_padovano.totallyexplained.com">Annibale Padovano Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
