Andrea Gabrieli's music in Milan: dissemination, adaptation, assimilation

The name of Andrea Gabrieli appears very rarely in studies on music in Milan between the end of the 16th century and the start of the 17th, and is also infrequent in those on the repertory commonly known as ‘lombardo-padano’. And yet there are various clues pointing to the fact that his fame had reached Milan during his lifetime, and how several local composers had succumbed to the charm of his music, sometimes taking it as a starting point, borrowing techniques and procedures and re-using them in the course of their own compositions. This article follows up these clues and reflects on some aspects of the transmission and reception of Andrea Gabrieli's music in Milan, taking into consideration firstly the ‘positive’ elements, regarding the reprinting in Milan of some of his collections and the presence of his compositions in local music publications, and then moving on to an examination of how some of his madrigals are treated in collections of contrafacta published in Milan or in any case assembled by personages active in Milan. Considerations have been made about some aspects of the active and creative reception of his music, illustrating the characteristics of some compositions from the musical environment in Milan that reveal the assimilation of technical-stylistic features that can be traced to Gabrieli's output.