(b ?Udine; d Venice, cAug 1601). Italian composer and instrumentalist. Together with his two brothers Giovanni (b ?Udine; d Venice, 25 April 1607) and Nicolò (b ?Udine; d Venice, 8 Feb 1617) he formed the first permanent instrumental ensemble at S Marco, Venice, where they were appointed on 29 January 1568. Their duties, which had previously been assigned to available instrumentalists on an ad hoc basis, included the performance of concerti in the organ lofts on major feast days. Girolamo’s initial salary of 75 ducats, from which he was expected to pay additional members of his group, was increased to 90 ducats in 1572 and 100 ducats in 1582. The group gradually increased in size until the 1580s, when Girolamo was named capo de’ concerti at the basilica, head of the (often substantial) group of players who were to inspire the canzonas and sonatas of Giovanni Gabrieli.
Girolamo is today known largely as the author of Il vero modo di diminuir, libri I et II (Venice, 1584), a treatise on ornamentation which gives many examples of embellished melodic lines from motets, madrigals and chansons as performed in Venice during the later 16th century. Among the exemplars are works by Janequin, Courtois, Willaert, Rogier, Gombert, Sandrin, Clemens non Papa, Palestrina, Lassus, Rore, Striggio, A. Gabrieli and P. de Monte (some ed. in Erig). His figuration relies a great deal on scalic movement and regular motion in quavers and semiquavers and applies the gruppo (or trill) at cadences. In contrapuntal works the themes are usually left unadorned so that the phrase structure is clear; in this respect Dalla Casa differs from Bassano, his colleague at S Marco: Bassano’s treatises on ornamentation offer several contrasting examples based on the same vocal originals. Although Girolamo’s motets survive in an incomplete state, the remaining parts are clearly amenable to ornamentation in the ways suggested by his treatise. Nicolò published a volume of Canzoni et madrigali à quattro voci, libro secondo (Venice, 1591) and one five-part madrigal appeared in a collection (RISM 15933).
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Il primo libro de madrigali, 5, 6vv, insieme un dialogo, 8vv (Venice, 1574) |
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Il secondo libro de madrigali, 5vv, con i passaggi (Venice, 1590) |
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Il primo libro de motetti, 6vv (Venice, 1597) |
CaffiS
G. Benvenuti: Preface to Andrea e Giovanni Gabrieli e la musica strumentale in San Marco, IMi, i (1931)
I. Horsley: ‘Improvised Embellishment in the Performance of Renaissance Polyphonic Music’, JAMS, iv (1951), 3–19
H.M. Brown: Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music (London, 1976)
R. Erig and V. Gutmann, eds.: Italienische Diminutionen: die zwischen 1553 und 1638 mehrmals bearbeiteten Sätze (Zürich, 1979)
J.H. Moore: Vespers at St. Marks: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli (Ann Arbor, 1981)
G.M. Ongaro: ‘Gli inizi della musica strumentale a San Marco’, Giovanni Legrenzi e la Cappella Ducale di San Marco: Venice and Clusone 1990, 215–26
W. Quaranta: Oltre San Marco: Organizzazione e prassi della musica nelle chiese di Venezia nel Rinascimento (Florence, 1998)
DENIS ARNOLD/ANDREA MARCIALIS