Giovanni Maria Nanino (also Nanini; 1543 or 1544 – 11 March 1607) was an Italian

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and teacher of the late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

. He was a member of the

Roman School In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produ ...

of composers, and was the most influential music teacher in Rome in the late 16th century. He was the older brother of composer

Giovanni Bernardino Nanino Giovanni Bernardino Nanino (ca. 1560 – 1623) was an Italian composer, teacher and singing master of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, and a leading member of the Roman School of composers. He was the younger brother of the some ...

Life

Nanino was born in Tivoli, and served as a

boy soprano A boy soprano (British and especially North American English) or boy treble (only British English) is a young male singer with an unchanged voice in the soprano range, a range that is often still called the treble voice range (in North America ...

in the cathedral at

Viterbo Viterbo (; Viterbese: ; lat-med, Viterbium) is a city and ''comune'' in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It conquered and absorbed the neighboring town of Ferento (see Ferentium) in its early history. ...

. In the 1560s he probably studied with

Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pren ...

at San Luigi de' Francesi in Rome; at any rate, he became ''maestro di cappella'' there after Palestrina left. In 1577 he joined the papal choir as a tenor, and remained in the choir for the rest of his life, occasionally taking the rotating post of ''maestro di cappella''. During the 1590s he was renowned as a teacher; he and his brother established what is thought to be the first Italian-run public music school in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and many future composers studied with him and sang in his choirs, including

Felice Anerio Felice Anerio (26 or 27 September 1614) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, and a member of the Roman School of composers. He was the older brother of another important, and somewhat more progressive composer ...

Antonio Brunelli Antonio Brunelli (20 December 1577 in Pisa – 19 November 1630 in Pisa) was an Italian composer and theorist of the early Baroque music, Baroque period. He was a student of Giovanni Maria Nanino and served as the organist at San Miniato in T ...

, Antonio Cifra and

Gregorio Allegri Gregorio Allegri (17 February 1652) was a Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic priest and Italy, Italian composer of the Roman School and brother of Domenico Allegri; he was also a singer. He was born"Allegri, Gregorio" in ''Chambers's Encyclop ...

(composer of the famous Miserere).

Works

Nanino's output as a composer was not large, but it was distinguished, and his music—especially his

madrigals A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...

—were extremely popular at the time. Almost no collections of madrigals were published in Rome which did not include at least one contribution by Nanino, often in the most prominent position in the book—even ahead of Palestrina. Stylistically his madrigals are extremely varied. While not as comprehensive as

Marenzio Luca Marenzio (also Marentio; October 18, 1553 or 1554 – August 22, 1599) was an Italian composer and singer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the most renowned composers of madrigals, and wrote some of the most famous examples of the fo ...

, who after all wrote more than 500 madrigals, Nanino's examples of the genre vary from the highly serious, angular and

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

, to the lightest

canzonette In music, a canzonetta (; pl. canzonette, canzonetti or canzonettas) is a popular Italian secular vocal composition that originated around 1560. Earlier versions were somewhat like a madrigal but lighter in style—but by the 18th century, especial ...

; in expressive intensity he is sometimes compared to Marenzio. In addition to his famous madrigals, he wrote

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...

s, settings of the

Lamentations The Book of Lamentations ( he, אֵיכָה, , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot ...

, canons, and sacred songs. As of 1980, no complete edition of his works had been prepared, and much of his music remained in manuscript.

Sources and further reading

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References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nanino, Giovannimaria Roman school composers 01 1540s births 1607 deaths 16th-century Italian composers Madrigal composers Renaissance composers People from Tivoli, Lazio Italian male classical composers 16th-century classical composers 17th-century Italian composers 17th-century male musicians