Gabrieli was a prolific and versatile composer, and wrote a large amount of music, including sacred and secular vocal music, music for mixed groups of voices and instruments, and purely instrumental music, much of it for the huge, resonant space of St. Mark's. His works include over a hundred
motets and
madrigals, as well as a smaller number of instrumental works. His early style is indebted to
Cipriano de Rore, and his madrigals are representative of mid-century trends. Even in his earliest music, however, he had a liking for homophonic textures at climaxes, foreshadowing the grand style of his later years. After his meeting with
Lassus in 1562, his style changed considerably, and the Netherlander became the strongest influence on him. Once Gabrieli was working at St. Mark's, he began to turn away from the
Franco-Flemish contrapuntal style which had dominated the music of the 16th century, instead exploiting the sonorous grandeur of mixed instrumental and vocal groups playing
antiphonally in the great basilica. His music of this time uses repetition of phrases with different combinations of voices at different pitch levels; although instrumentation is not
specifically indicated, it can be inferred; he carefully contrasts texture and sonority to shape sections of music in a way which was unique, and which defined the
Venetian style for the next generation. Not everything Gabrieli wrote was for St. Mark's, though. He provided the music for one of the earliest revivals of an ancient Greek drama in Italian translation:
Oedipus tyrannus, by
Sophocles, for which he wrote the music for the choruses, setting separate lines for different groupings of voices. It was produced at the inauguration of the
Teatro Olimpico,
Vicenza, 1585. Evidently Andrea Gabrieli was reluctant to publish much of his own music, and his nephew
Giovanni Gabrieli published much of it after his uncle's death. ==Media==