Giovanni Bassano

[1] Bassano was most responsible for the performance of the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, who would emerge as one of the most renowned members of the Venetian School.

By 1585 he had published his first book, Ricercate, passagi et cadentie, which details how best to ornament passages when transcribing vocal music for instruments.

His canzonettas achieved some fame outside Italy: Thomas Morley knew them, printing them in London in 1597 in English translation.

[7] Some of Bassano's instrumental music is ingeniously contrapuntal, as though he were indulging a side of his personality that he was unable to display in his more ceremonial, homophonic compositions.

[8] The similarity of Bassano's motets to the early work of Heinrich Schütz, who studied in Venice with Gabrieli, suggests that the two may have known each other.