A programme to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of Giovanni Gabrieli (c1557 -1612), with music by Monteverdi, Merula, di Rore, Donato, Castello, Buonamente, Priuli, and Gabrieli himself.

Seventeenth-century Venetians loved rich and sumptuous spectacle. To satisfy the expression of this opulence in musical terms, the Venetian printing presses produced a wealth of instrumental music, designed to echo around the great golden domes of St Mark's Basilica, and also throughout La Serenissima, in the churches, the palaces and the grand houses on the banks of the canals. By the turn of the seventeenth century, instrumental writing had developed into a highly sophisticated art form, utilising the glorious spaces of Venetian architecture and the virtuosic abilities of the members of the basilica's wind band. The marriage of virtuosity and outward extravagance led to some of the finest music ever written for the wind band, and gives us a window onto the musical tastes of our seventeenth-century ancestors.