Giovanni Battista Mosto

Giovanni Battista Mosto (* before 1550 in Udine ; † June 1596 in Alba Iulia (Weißenburg in Transylvania)) was an Italian composer and conductor.

Life

Giovanni Battista Mosto was the son of the leading town piper of Udine. He studied with Claudio Merulo , to whom he dedicated his first madrigal collection in 1578, " Il primo fiore della ghirlanda musicale ". Mosto was employed as a zinkenist and trombonist in the Munich court orchestra under Orlando di Lasso in 1568 , but returned to Udine a year later and was one of the town whistlers from 1570. In 1573 he was commissioned to rearrange the town chapel and to teach the cathedral choirboys to play the various instruments. In 1574 Mosto stayed in Venice for a short time and traveled from there to Munich. On November 6, 1580 he received the post of "maestro di cappella" at the Cathedral of Padua . Because of his authoritarian leadership style, his contract was not renewed and in 1589 he moved to the Venetian church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari . In 1590 he came into the service of Prince Sigismund Báthory of Transylvania in Weißenburg to found a court orchestra with Italian musicians. After a Turkish invasion in 1594, Báthory relocated his court and the court orchestra to Krakow. In the same year Mosto traveled to Cologne and entered the service of the Elector and Archbishop Ernst of Bavaria , with whom he stayed in Bonn, Liège and Brussels. In 1595 he returned to Padua to work again as Kapellmeister at the cathedral. The following year, ill, he traveled to his family in Weißenburg, but died during the trip.

In Prague two masses of Mosto were performed in the presence of Emperor Rudolf in 1594 , to which the court chamber recorded "Johan Baptista Mosto has been approved because of 2 presentirter 60 thaller" .

In addition to four volumes of his own works, there are numerous other works by Mosto in the most important anthologies of the later 16th century. So published Thomas Morley in 1598 in London, two madrigals Mostos in his collection " De floridi virtuosi d'Italia ". Stylistically, Mosto belonged to the Venetian school, with a certain proximity to Andrea Gabrieli .

Works

• " Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci con un ecce a dieci nel fine " (Venice, 1578)
• Il secondo libro de madrigali, 5 voices (Venice, 1584)
• Il terzo libro de madrigali, 5 voices (Venice, Angelo Gardano, 1588)
• Il primo libro de madrigali, 6 voices (Venice, 1595)
• Motecta liber primus, 5 voices (Venice, 1590)
• numerous individual madrigals and 2 psalm settings
• 3 fairs (1594)

literature

• Entry in The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians , 1st Edition.
• Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea World of Music - The Composers - A lexicon in five volumes . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07830-7 , pp. 94/95, volume 4 .

Individual references and sources

1. ^ Entry in the Austrian State Archives