Andrea Gabrieli

Primus liber missarum sex vocum 4

This volume of the Complete Works contains the four parody (or imitation) masses published in the Primus liber missarum sex vocum of 1572. 1572 was an important year for the almost forty-year-old Gabrieli and his public image as a composer. In close proximity to the new collection of masses, the same year brought reprints of all his earlier single-author anthologies. The present edition is based primarily on the printed text of 1572, which brings together almost the entire corpus of Gabrieli’s six-voice masses. This collection undoubtedly originates in circles close to the composer, and Gabrieli himself was potentially on hand during the entire productive process; the divergent readings of D-Mbs Mus. ms. 17 are transcribed and briefly illustrated in the Appendix.