Life and works of Giovanni Gabrieli (Musicological studies and documents) [Hardcover]

Egon Kenton (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 557 pages
• Publisher: American Institute of Musicology (1967)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006BQ3PE
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,887,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Star of the Adriatic Sea, June 9, 2008

By 

Scott Schwartz - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life and works of Giovanni Gabrieli (Musicological studies and documents) (Hardcover)

Gabrieli was the star of the Adriatic, the most respected composer in Venice around 1600. His music still appeals today, even to people without formal training. I have his music playing in my cubicle in the hospital every day for the past 30 years. Indigent and unsophisticated patients are so moved that I have given away dozens of CD's of his music to newly-created fans. Yet his works are almost unknown to the general music- loving population. This could be because next to nothing is known about the man. He does not emerge with a strong personality to be popularized in book or film like Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, or evn Marais.

Kenton's study was the first major English analysis of Gabrieli's style, life, and works. The previous work, done in German in 1834, is the only other study up to then. Though some new material has been discovered, largely by Richard Charteris, and a painting of him playing a lute exists in Dresden, unknown to Kenton, most of the recent work by Charteris, Arnold, and Selfridge use Kenton as a starting basis. It is a comprehensive book, full of documents, quotes, and has a thematic index. It is definitely not a historical novel. Nonetheless, a picture of Gabrieli can be conjectured. He seemed to be industrious, totally non-narcissistic, dedicated to writing, playing, and teaching. We see him as loved by his students, who traveled from as far away as Germany to study with him (Schutz and Hassler). They were sorrowed by his painful death from a kidney stone. We get a hazy but well-defined view of the creator of the music that was the summation of the Renaissance and the genesis of the Baroque. If that appeals to you, then get this hard-to-find book.