Giovanni Animuccia

Giovanni Animuccia (c. 1520 – March 20, 1571) was an Italian musical composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the best-known contemporaries of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina in the Roman School of composers, and was influential in the development of the polyphonic "laude" at Rome.

Animuccia was born at Florence. At the request of St. Filippo Neri he composed a number of "Laudi", or hymns of praise, to be sung after sermon time, which have given him an accidental prominence in musical history, since their performance in St. Filippo's Oratory eventually gave rise (on the disruption of 16th century schools of composition) to those early forms of "oratorio" that are not traceable to the Gregorian-polyphonic "Passions." St. Filippo admired Animuccia so warmly that he declared he had seen the soul of his friend fly upwards towards heaven.

In 1555 Animuccia was appointed "maestro di capella" at St. Peter's Basilica, an office which he held until his death in 1571. He was succeeded by Palestrina, who had been his friend and probably his pupil.

The manuscript of many of Animuccia's compositions is still preserved in the Vatican Library. His chief published works were "Madrigali e Motetti a quattro e cinque voci" (Venice, 1548) and "Il primo Libra di Messe" (Rom. 1567). From the latter Padre Martini has taken two specimens for his "Saggio di Contrapunto". A mass from the "Primo Libra di Messe" on the "canto fermo" of the hymn "Conditor alme siderum" is published in modern notation in the "Anthologie des maîtres religieux primitifs" of the "Chanteurs de Saint Gervais". It is solemn and noble in conception, and would be a great work but for a roughness which is more careless than archaic.

Paolo Animuccia, a brother of Giovanni, was also celebrated as a composer; he is said by Fetis to have been "maestro di capella" at the Basilica of St. John Lateran from the middle of January 1550 until 1552, and to have died in 1563.

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