Giovanni Francesco Anerio

Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, after Francesco Soriano, between 1600 or 1601 and 1603. In 1609 he held a similar post at Verona Cathedral, his first appointment outside of Rome; he stayed there until 1610, when he went back to Rome; and he stayed there, aside for a few travels, until 1624, in a variety of roles (becoming a priest at last in 1616). In 1624 he took the position of choirmaster to King Sigismund III of Poland in Warsaw. Poland had several active musical centers in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, including Kraków and Warsaw, and often employed Italians and Germans; Anerio was one of the more distinguished foreigners to take up residence there. Unfortunately he never saw Rome again; he died while traveling back home, while in Graz, Austria

madrigals were monodies, borrowing a style which came from Florence and other locations to the north; his motets and masses, on the other hand, are conservative and use the Palestrina style, though the motets include figured bass, another innovation from the first decade of the 17th century. Some influence from Viadana

polychoral, a technique which involved multiple, spatially separated groups of singers. While this was also a technique which developed in Venice, it was widespread by the end of the 16th century: almost all composers of sacred polyphony

psalms, madrigals, much miscellaneous sacred and secular music, as well as a handful of instrumental pieces. Most were published in Rome; many fewer works from his Polish period seem to have been preserved, although two polychoral Masses found in manuscript (one for three choirs) can be attributed to this last phase of his career.^[2]