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Ignazio Donati (c. 1570 – 21 January 1638) was an Italian composer of the early
Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
era. He was one of the pioneers of the style of the
concertato Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a ''genre'' or a ''style'' of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from It ...
motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...
.


Biography

Ignazio Donati was born in
Casalmaggiore Casalmaggiore ( Casalasco-Viadanese: ) is a ''comune'' in the province of Cremona, Lombardy, Italy, located on the Po River. It was the birthplace of Italian composers Ignazio Donati and Andrea Zani. Recently, its women's volleyball team Volleyb ...
(now in the
Province of Cremona The province of Cremona (; Cremunés dialect, Cremunés: ; ; Emilian dialects, Casalasco-Viadanese: ) is a Provinces of Italy, province in the Lombardy region of Italy. Its capital city is Cremona. The province occupies the central section of Pa ...
). Little is known about his earliest years, but he must have had a thorough early musical training, and his succession of posts at various cathedrals in Italian towns is well documented: he served successively at
Urbino Urbino ( , ; Romagnol: ''Urbìn'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Italy, Italian region of Marche, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially und ...
,
Pesaro Pesaro (; ) is a (municipality) in the Italy, Italian region of Marche, capital of the province of Pesaro and Urbino, on the Adriatic Sea. According to the 2011 census, its population was 95,011, making it the second most populous city in the ...
,
Fano Fano () is a city and ''comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the ''Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by pop ...
,
Ferrara Ferrara (; ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, capital of the province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main ...
, Casalmaggiore,
Novara Novara (; Novarese Lombard, Novarese: ) is the capital city of the province of Novara in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region in northwest Italy, to the west of Milan. With 101,916 inhabitants (on 1 January 2021), it is the second most populous ...
, and Lodi, eventually acquiring the prestigious post at
Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
Cathedral in 1629, which he kept with one short break until his death. Donati wrote "sacred
concerto A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The ...
s",
motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...
s,
mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
es and
psalm The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of H ...
settings. Most of Donati's music is sacred, and his style tends towards the cheerful, the light, and the practical. He wrote motets using the new
concertato Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a ''genre'' or a ''style'' of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from It ...
style pioneered by the composers of the Venetian School, though he was not associated with
Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
himself. Most of his music is for two to five voices with instrumental accompaniment including basso continuo, and some of his works—for example a book of psalm settings—exist in several settings for different types of performance, with different instrumental and vocal forces. Ignazio Donati wrote the ''Sacri concentus'' and published it in Venice in 1612; here he defined the " cantar lontano" vocal practice. In some of his music he went even farther, and suggested multiple performance ideas—from singing only a very few parts, to using multiple choruses with instrumental doubling, based on the resources of the performing ensemble and the type of effect required by the performance occasion. This kind of practical advice is rarely found in the writings accompanying the music of the Venetian school composers, who had massive, virtuoso, well-paid ensembles at their disposal, but it would have been essential to the musical establishments at the small provincial towns in which Donati worked. In addition to his concertato motets and other mixed instrumental-vocal music, he wrote some relatively conservative masses, which, however, are not in the
polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...
Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; , ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Prenestina. It is built upon ...
style but find a middle-ground between the ''
stile antico ''Stile antico'' (literally "ancient style", ), is a term describing a manner of musical composition from the sixteenth century onwards that was historically conscious, as opposed to '' stile moderno'', which adhered to more modern trends. ''Prim ...
'' and the more modern
harmonic In physics, acoustics, and telecommunications, a harmonic is a sinusoidal wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'' of a periodic signal. The fundamental frequency is also called the ''1st har ...
practice.


References and further reading

*Articles "Ignazio Donati," "concertato," "Motet" from ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. *
Eleanor Selfridge-Field Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It was the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages">Provençal dialect ...
, ''Venetian Instrumental Music, from Gabrieli to Vivaldi.'' New York, Dover Publications, 1994.


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Donati, Ignazio 1570s births 1638 deaths People from Casalmaggiore Italian male classical composers Italian Baroque composers Italian Renaissance composers 17th-century Italian composers 17th-century Italian male musicians