Nanino: Complete Madrigals, Part 1

Giovanni Maria Nanino (1543/44–1607) was one of the most important musicians of late-sixteenth-century Rome. Active as papal singer, chapel master, composer, teacher, and one of the protagonists of the newly founded Compagnia dei Eccellenti Musici di Roma, he had a deep impact on Roman musical development in the decades around 1600. The madrigal, the most popular genre of the cinquecento, demonstrates Nanino’s capability to combine tradition with elements of the modern styles commented on by Vincenzo Giustiniani in his Discorso sopra la musica of the early seicento. Most of Nanino’s published music is secular—either madrigals or canzonettas. He published three volumes of madrigals, the second together with his Roman colleague Annibale Stabile. The inclusion of at least one madrigal by Nanino in every important anthology of his time attests to his popularity; by some measures he was the most anthologized madrigal composer of his age.

This volume contains Nanino's first publication of madrigals, Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1571?, reprinted 1579, 1582, and 1605). The texts of the closing portion of the collection reveal a likely connection with Florentine and Roman patrons in the late 1560s.