Andrea Gabrieli, a former pupil of Flemish…

Andrea Gabrieli, a former pupil of Flemish composer Adrian Willaert at St. Mark's Basilica, is in his late thirties in 1558 when he becomes organist of San Geremia in Venice.

Willaert, music director at Saint Mark's since 1527, is the founding father of the Venetian school of composition; he and Gabrieli have developed a polychoral (multiple choruses) style of composition that imparts special power to the contrast and opposition (both spatial and aural) of mixed groups of performers.