Cocciola, Giovanni Battista (EN)

Cocciola Giovanni Battista, *second half of 16th c. Vercelli (Piemont), †after 1625, Italian composer.  He probably arrived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as early as 1598 and took up a position as an alto singer in the chapel of King Sigismund III Vasa. Before 1606, he entered the service of Szymon Rudnicki, Bishop of Warmia. Before 1613, he published two collections: in Gdańsk – canzonettas, and in Venice – a mass and motets for two choirs. He may have sought employment in Archduke Ferdinand’s court in Graz, given that a composition by Coccioli appeared in the anthology Parnassus musicus Ferdinandeus. By 1621 at the latest, he had become Kapellmeister at the court of Lew Sapieha, Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1589 to 1623. He then published a collection of motets for five voices, followed by a collection of concertato motets, which appeared in two editions in 1621 and 1625 (the second after Sapieha had been promoted to the office of Grand Hetman of Lithuania). The Pelplin Tabulature, dating from around 1620–1640, contains 30 of his works, reflecting the composer’s musical language: 8 bicinia, 7 tricinia, and 14 two-choir motets for 8 voices; these are most likely transcriptions from the composer’s published, but now lost, collections.  From the perspective of Polish music history, the most significant works in Cocciola’s oeuvre are his small-scale sacred works, which combine the characteristics of late Renaissance polyphony (of the bicinium or tricinium type) with an instrumentation typical of a fully developed church concerto.

Literature: A. Osostowicz-Sutkowska G. B. Cocciola e l’intavolatura di Pelplin, “Rivista Italiana di Musicologia” 5, 1970; I. Bieńkowska Ukształtowania drobnoodcinkowe w małogłosowych kompozycjach religijnych, G.B. Coccioli, in: Complexus effectuum musicologiae studia Miroslao Perz septuagenario dedicata, ed. T. Jeż, Krakow 2003; The Polychoral Works of G. B. Cocciola from the Pelplin Tabulature within the Context of the Stylistic Changes of the Epoch, in: Musica Baltica, Im Umkreis des Wandels – von den cori spezzati zum konzertierenden Stil, ed. J. Krassowski et al., Gdańsk 2004; Religious Works of G.B. Cocciola (16th/17th Century): The Topography of Sources, in: Musical Culture of the Bohemian Lands and Central Europe before 1620, ed. L. Hlávková and J.K. Kroupa, Prague 2011; P. Barbieri Music-selling in seventeenth-century Rome: Three new inventories from Franzini’s bookshops 1621, 1633, 1686, “Recercare” 2011 Nos. 1–2; B. Przybyszewska-Jarmińska Muzyczne kontakty dworów polskich Wazów i austriackich Habsburgów w świetle dawniejszych i nowszych badań, “Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska. Sectio L, Artes”, 2011 No. 1; I. Bieńkowska Concerti Ecclesiastici by G.B. Cocciola in the Light of the Seconda Prattica, 2014, article available on: docplayer.pl; A. Patalas G.B. Cocciola’s Activity in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and his concerto “Ave mundi spes Maria” from the “Parnassus Musicus Ferdinandaeus”, “De musica disserenda” 2017 Nos. 1–2; B. Przybyszewska-Jarmińska Music-related contacts between the courts of the Polish king and the archdukes of Inner Austria and the dissemination of musica moderna in Central and East-Central Europe, “De musica disserenda” 2017 Nos. 1–2; M. Szelest Sancte Simon magno mundi: nowo zidentyfikowany motet G.B. Coccioli, “Muzyka” 2018 No. 3; A. Patalas Inventory of music print from the bookshop of Franz Jakob Mertzenich (Kraków 1613), “Musica Iagellonica” 2021.