Felice Anerio was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 composer of the late Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

 and early Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 eras, and a member of the Roman School

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 produced...

 of composers. He was the older brother of another important, and somewhat more progressive composer of the same period, Giovanni Francesco Anerio

Giovanni Francesco Anerio

Giovanni Francesco Anerio was an Italian composer of the Roman School, of the very late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was the younger brother of Felice Anerio...

.

Life

Anerio was born in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and lived his entire life there. He sang as a boy soprano

Boy soprano

A boy soprano is a young male singer with an unchanged voice in the soprano range. Although a treble, or choirboy, may also be considered to be a boy soprano, the more colloquial term boy soprano is generally only used for boys who sing, perform, or record as soloists, and who may not necessarily...

 at the Julian Chapel (the Cappella Giulia

Cappella Giulia

The choir "Cappella Giulia," officially named the Reverend Musical Chapel "Julia" of the Sacrosanct Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican, is the choir of St...

) from 1568 until 1577 (by which time he was an alto

Alto

Alto is a musical term, derived from the Latin word altus, meaning "high" in Italian, that has several possible interpretations.When designating instruments, "alto" frequently refers to a member of an instrumental family that has the second highest range, below that of the treble or soprano. Hence,...

), and then he sang at another church until 1580. Around this time he began to compose, especially madrigal

Madrigal (music)

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....

s; this was one of the few periods in his life during which he wrote secular music. Likely he was influenced by Luca Marenzio

Luca Marenzio

Luca Marenzio 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 form in its late stage of development, prior to its early Baroque transformation by Monteverdi...

, who was hugely popular at the time and who was in Rome at the same time Anerio began composing. By 1584 Anerio had been appointed maestro di cappella at the Collegio degli Inglesi; he also seems to have been the choirmaster at another society of Rome's leading musicians called the vertuosa Compagnia de i Musici di Roma. These positions must have given him considerable opportunity to exercise his compositional talents, for he had already written the music, songs, madrigals and choruses, for an Italian Passion play by this time. In 1594, he replaced Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

 as the official composer to the papal choir, which was the most prominent position in Rome for a composer.

In 1607 or shortly afterwards he became a priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 (a common career path for a composer in the Roman School). In conjunction with Francesco Soriano

Francesco Soriano

Francesco Soriano was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most skilled members of the Roman School in the first generation after Palestrina....

, another composer of the Roman School, he helped to reform the responsories

Responsory

-Definition:The most general of a responsory is any psalm, canticle, or other sacred musical work sung responsorially, that is, with a cantor or small group singing verses while the whole choir or congregation respond with a refrain. However, this article focuses on those chants of the western...

 of the Roman Gradual

Roman Gradual

The Roman Gradual is an official liturgical book of the Roman Rite containing chants, including the Gradual but many more as well, for use at Mass...

, another of the late activities of the Counter-Reformation

Counter-Reformation

The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...

 in Italy.

Works

Anerio was a conservative composer, who largely used the style of Palestrina as a starting point, at least after his youthful period of writing secular works, such as madrigals and canzonetta

Canzonetta

In music, a canzonetta was a popular Italian secular vocal composition which originated around 1560...

s, was done. Nevertheless he achieved an expressive intensity which was his own. Some influence of the Northern Italian progressive movements is evident, though muted, in his work, for instance the use of double choirs (polychoral works were the norm in Venice); quick homophonic declamatory textures; quick melodic passages in the bass line (which were an influence from monody

Monody

In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....

). In addition he sometimes liked quickly changing textures, alternating between full chorus and small groups of two or three voices, another progressive trait of the northern Italian schools (this trait is much evident, for example, in the music of Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...

).

In his very last works the influence of Viadana

Lodovico Grossi da Viadana

Lodovico Grossi da Viadana was an Italian composer, teacher, and Franciscan friar of the Order of Minor Observants...

, the popularizer of the basso continuo, is evident, but he still remained true to the Palestrina style in his melodic and harmonic writing. Anerio wrote no known purely instrumental music.

Many magnificats, hymns, motets and other works were printed by K. Proske in his Musica Divina (1854).

Works by Felice Anerio included:

Sacred Vocal

• Two books of Madrigali Spirituali
  Madrigale spirituale
  A madrigale spirituale is a madrigal, or madrigal-like piece of music, with a sacred rather than a secular text...
  
  (both Rome, 1585)
• Two books of sacred hymns (Venice, 1596 and Rome, 1596)
• Holy Week Responsories (for four voices, Rome, 1606)
• 13 Spiritual canzonettas; 12 motets, including many for 8 voices; psalms, litany, other works, many including a basso continuo
• Madrigals, choruses, solo songs for Passio de Nostro Signore in verso heroico (Viterbo, 1604)

Secular Vocal

• One book of canzonettas (1586)
• Five books of madrigals (one of which is lost) (1587, 1590, 1598, 1602, unknown)
• Miscellaneous other madrigals not included in the main publications

External links