Giovanni Battista Pinello di Ghirardi (born in Genoa c. 1544 – died in Prague on 15 June 1587) was an Italian music composer and

Kapellmeister (, also , ) from German ''Kapelle'' (chapel) and ''Meister'' (master)'','' literally "master of the chapel choir" designates the leader of an ensemble of musicians. Originally used to refer to somebody in charge of music in a chapel, the term ha ...

of the Italian Renaissance. Giovanni Battista Pinello came from a noble Genoese family. He worked first as a singer in Vicenza, from the 1570s at the Innsbrucker Hof, then in Prague at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. A few months after the death of Antonio Scandello, he was appointed Kapellmeister to the

Staatskapelle Dresden The Staatskapelle Dresden (known formally as the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden) is a German orchestra based in Dresden, the capital of Saxony. Founded in 1548 by Maurice, Elector of Saxony, it is one of the world's oldest and most highly re ...

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

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 (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