Giovanni Battista Pinello di Ghirardi (born in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

c. 1544 – died in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

on 15 June 1587) was an Italian music composer and Kapellmeister of the

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

. Giovanni Battista Pinello came from a noble Genoese family. He worked first as a singer in

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the ''Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a thr ...

, from the 1570s at the Innsbrucker Hof, then in Prague at the court of Holy Roman Emperor

Rudolf II Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the Hous ...

. A few months after the death of

Antonio Scandello Antonio Scandello (January 17, 1517 – January 18, 1580) was an Italian composer, born in Bergamo. He worked as musician at the court of the Electors of Saxony in Dresden. In 1549 he became court-bandmaster, and in 1568 Kapellmeister succeedin ...

, he was appointed Kapellmeister to the Staatskapelle Dresden in 1581. Because of disagreements, he soon had to give up this post and settled again in Prague. Pinello was one of the composers who brought the Italian style into the German-speaking world.

Johann Gottfried Walther Johann Gottfried Walther (18 September 1684 – 23 March 1748) was a German music theorist, organist, composer, and lexicographer of the Baroque era. Walther was born at Erfurt. Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that ...

mentioned in his ''Musicalisches Lexicon'' published in 1732 the following compositions by Pinello: *A four-part mass (1583) *Ein deutsches Magnificat in den acht Kirchentönen (1584) – a German Magnificat in the eight church tones *''Cantiones Sacrae'' and madrigals for eight, ten and fifteen voices (Dresden, 1584) *''Neue deutsche Lieder zu fünf Stimmen'' (Dresden, 1585) – New German songs to five voices held in the style of the Neapolitan

villanella In music, a villanella (; plural villanelle) is a form of light Italian secular vocal music which originated in Italy just before the middle of the 16th century. It first appeared in Naples, and influenced the later canzonetta, and from there also ...

transferred from the Italian *''Napolitane'' a cinque voci (Dresden, 1585) – in five voices *''Motetii quinque vocum'' (1588) *18 five-part Motets (Prague 1588)

Biography

*Moritz Fürstenau: Pinelli de Gerardis, Giovanni Baptista. In ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (ADB). Vol. 26, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, p. 150.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinello di Ghirardi, Giovanni Battista 16th-century Italian composers Austrian composers Czech composers Czech male composers 16th-century German composers Renaissance composers Sacred music composers Musicians from Genoa 1540s births 1587 deaths Year of birth uncertain