Giulio Maria Ongaro, Ph.D. 1986

Advisor: James Haar

Dissertation Title: The Chapel of St. Mark’s at the Time of Adrian Willaert (1527-1562): A Documentary Study (Italy)

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Dissertation Abstract:

The hiring of Adrian Willaert as maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s in 1527 and the thirty-five years of his tenure in that position are rightly regarded as milestones in the history of music in Venice. Willaert is credited with improving the quality of the chapel, bringing it from relative obscurity to European renown, while establishing the foundations of a Venetian school that reached its sixteenth-century zenith during the “golden age” of the Gabrieli. In spite of the importance of music at St. Mark’s, studies entirely or partially devoted to the development of its singing chapel in the first half of the sixteenth century are rare. Caffi’s classic Storia della musica sacra nella gia cappella ducale di San Marco (Venice, 1854) is increasingly showing its age and presents little information on the singers of polyphony. An article by Rene Lenaerts in 1938 offered a larger selection of archival documents concerning the chapel, but the author often relied on easily accessible, and faulty, copies of original documents.

After a thorough discussion of the available archival sources for the period in question (never satisfactorily described in the existing literature), I examine the situation of the singing chapel of St. Mark’s prior to Willaert’s arrival in Venice, in order to be able to assess accurately the changes brought by the Flemish master. Most of the discussion is devoted to the history of the chapel between 1527 and 1562, tracing its growth, personnel changes, administrative structure, with particular emphasis on the influence of Willaert on new developments.

An extended section focuses on the study of the patronage system at St. Mark’s, including matters such as recruiting, provenance of the singers, and benefices. In addition, I examine the outside activities–both musical and non-musical–of the singers of the chapel, trying to arrive at a definition of their socio-economic status through a careful reading of diverse documents, such as wills, tax declarations, and business transactions. The appendixes include virtually all existing archival records–many of them hitherto unpublished–pertaining to the chapel’s history up to 1562, and a biographical dictionary of all singers active at St. Mark’s during the period in question.

Dr. Ongaro, originally from Venice, Italy, taught at the University of Southern California for eighteen years before moving to Chapman University in Irvine, CA, where he now serves as the dean of the College of Performing Arts. His research has focused on issues of music, society, politics and politics in the sixteenth century. He has also worked on many of the mechanical and logistical elements of music making, including music printing, organology, and the business of music.