Missarum quatuor vocum, liber primus (1561), and: Missae cum quinque vocibus, liber primus (1572), and: Ioannis Contini Ecclesiae Cathedralis Brixiae Magistri Modulationum Quinque Vocum Liber Primus (review)

Giovanni Contino. Missarum quatuor vocum, liber primus (1561). A cura di Ottavio Beretta. (Monumenti musicali italiani, 18.) (Opere di antichi musicisti bresciani, 6.) Milano: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, 1995. [Prefazione, p. vii-xxv; criteri editoriali, p. xxvi-xxix; bibliografia, p. xxx-xxxix; 3 plates; score, p. 1-256. Cloth. S. 10979 Z. L 130,000.]

Giovanni Contino. Missae cum quinque vocibus, liber primus (1572). A cura di Ottavio Beretta. (Monumenti musicali italiani, 20.) (Opere di antichi musicisti bresciani, 8.) Milano: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, 1997. [Prefazione, p. vii-xix; criteri editoriali, p. xx; descrizione delle fonti, p. xxi-xxiii; apparato critico, p. xxiv-xxix; bibliografia, p. xxx-xxxiv; 3 plates; score, p. 1-258. Cloth. S. 11246 Z. L 160,000.]

Giovanni Contino. Ioannis Contini Ecclesiae Cathedralis Brixiae Magistri Modulationum Quinque Vocum Liber Primus (Venice: Scotto, 1560). Edited by Richard Sherr. (Sixteenth-Century Motet, 25.) New York: Garland, 1994. [Contents with remarks, p. v-vi; gen. introd., p. vii; editorial procedures, p. ix-xi; vol. introd., p. xiii-xvi; plate, p. xvii; score, p. 1-278. Cloth; acid-free paper. ISBN 0-8240-7925-6. $125.]

Born in Brescia in 1512 or 1513, Giovanni Contino worked in Trent under Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, in Brescia as maestro di cappella (where he may have taught Luca Marenzio), and for Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga in Mantua, where he died in 1574. Although not well known today, Contino must have been quite a successful composer in his own time, for in 1560 and 1561, the Venetian printer Girolamo Scotto published what amounted to the composer's "opera omnia" (Jane Bernstein, Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press [1539-1572] [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 200) that consisted of one volume each of introits, madrigals (with two more now lost), Masses, Lamentations (reprinted in 1588), hymns, and three books of motets (two for five voices and one for six). In addition, two more prints, containing Magnificats and Masses for five voices, were published later.

Thanks in part to the Centro di Studi Musicali "Luca Marenzio" in Brescia, Contino's music has begun to appear in modern editions. Five publications have appeared to date in the series Opere di antichi musicisti bresciani (subsumed under the larger series Monumenti musicali italiani): two volumes of madrigals edited by Romano Vettori (Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, 1560 in 1987 and the collection Madrigali a quattro e cinque voci in antologie e intavolature in 1994); and three volumes of Masses edited by Ottavio Beretta.

The two volumes here under consideration, the first books of Masses for four and for five voices (issued in 1561 and 1572), are part of Beretta's large-scale plan to edit all of Contino's Masses. Published in 1988, the first volume (Cinque Messe mantovane dal fordo Santa Barbara, a cinque voci) contains the Masses Contino wrote for the special liturgy of Santa Barbara in Mantua and also most helpfully provides all of the associated plainchant. The edition of Contino's Masses will attain completion upon publication of the final volume in the set, which as noted in Beretta's preface to the 1561 collection of Masses (p. vii n. 1), will contain "a full and detailed critical and historical study of the entire corpus of Masses, including detailed analyses of the compositional structure of each Mass." The other volume addressed in this review is Richard Sherr's edition of Contino's five-voice motets of 1560. Part of the thirty-volume set Sixteenth-Century Motet issued by Garland Publishing, it forms a worthy complement to the Brescian editions.

It is instructive to compare the Beretta and Sherr editions. The transcriptions in both are very accurate, and the publishers present the music and text in an attractive, easy-to-read layout with generous margins. In fact, the...