A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Anerio, Giovanni

ANERIO, Giovanni Francesco, a younger brother of the preceding, born at Rome about 1567. His first professional engagement was as Maestro di Cappella to Sigismund III, King of Poland. He afterwards served in the same capacity in the cathedral of Verona. Thence he came to Rome to fill the post of musical instructor at the Seminario Romano, and was afterwards Maestro di Cappella at the church of the Madonna de' Monti. Lastly, in 1600, he was made Maestro at the Lateran, where he remained until 1613. He then disappears. He was one of the first Italians who made use of the quaver and its subdivisions. His printed works form a catalogue too long for insertion here. Suffice it to say that they consist of all the usual forms of sacred music, and that they were published (as his brother's were) by Soldi, Gardano, Robletti, etc. Giovanni Anerio had a fancy for decking the frontispieces of his volumes with fantastic titles, such as 'Ghirlanda di sacre Rose,' 'Teatro armonico spirituale,' 'Selva armonica,' 'Diporti musicale,' and the like. He was one of the adapters of Palestrina's mass 'Papæ Marcelli.' (See Palestrina). There were scores of several of his masses in the collection of the Abbè Santini. A requiem of his for 4 voices has been recently published by Pustet of Regensburg.

[ E. H. P. ]