Sacrae Symphoniae - GIOVANNI GABRIELI

The instrumental works contained in the 1597 Sacrae Symphoniae and posthumously published 1615 Canzoni e Sonate of Giovanni Gabrieli represent a pinnacle of late renaissance technical skill, musical imagination and sheer variety which are unsurpassed as a collection. Many pieces of the later 1615 collection show a genius for counterpoint and a harmonic audacity that have not been overshadowed by anything since. Yet curiously, they have been largely neglected with only a handful, notably the Sonata Pian e Forte regularly performed.

Much mystification surrounds the performance of 'early' music and this has undoubtedly contributed to this neglect. Early musical notation is a notoriously inexact form of communication and relies heavily on an understanding of the conventions of the time to make it work. Merely supplying the bare notes gives little real idea of how the music might have been played.

St. Marks in Venice - the musical home of the Gabrielis The edition coming out on the 400th anniversary of Gabrieli's own first publication makes no pretensions to be definitive; but it is meant to make the music accessible to present-day musicians, whether or not early music specialists, in a form that is easily read and assimilated without hours of discussion or rehearsal. Care has been taken to try to be as clear, unequivocal and as faithful to what we know of renaissance practice within a modem guise as possible.

Dubious notes and rhythms... probably copying errors - have been corrected and accidentals added for harmonic consistency within the conventions of 'musica ficta', but without attempting to sanitise the original. The performance and recording of these editorial decisions has given them practicable validation.

Some pieces have been transposed down a tone to make them more accessible to a wide range of instruments. Bar and note lengths have been chosen for ease of reading and appropriate musical style.

Alternate parts are supplied in various transpositions to cover different combinations - see under Instrumentation.

PERFORMANCE GUIDELINES

Surrey Brass use the ERIC CREES PERFORMING EDITION

Instrumentation

From contemporary records and the limited marks by Gabrieli himself, we know that cornetts - a recorder/trumpet cross, trombones - smaller-bored and smaller belled and 'violini' -the predecessors of our violin and viola, were the most widely used instruments in the late 16th century Venice. The idealised sound world for performances would naturally use these instruments. Unfortunately, the alto and tenor cornetts occasionally specified are still rarely played even in specialist groups and the dimensions of modern sackbuts - renaissance/baroque trombones - and their mouthpieces, variable. This makes any intended 'authentic' performance, sound-wise, still a compromise. Reproduction instruments when skilfully played with good intonation can undoubtedly enhance this music, but what they can never do in themselves, is to automatically guarantee appropriate style and musicianship.

For the music to truly live and sparkle, how it is played is at least as important as on what; this is the 'raison d'etre' of this edition. In the frontispiece of the original publications it states that the pieces were 'per sonar con ogni sorte de instrumenti' - to be played on all sorts of instruments. The nature of this splendid music is that it sounds well on many instrumental combinations, including modem ones.

Recordings

There are many recordings of Gabrieli for brass. Let us know about your favourite and we'll put it here!

Audience Comments

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