Although twenty-first-century audiences may be more familiar with the name of his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli, in his time Andrea was well known and highly respected as an organist and composer who worked in all the major instrumental and vocal genres, both sacred and secular. His madrigals, however, form the bulk of his output and in these he demonstrates characteristic versatility, setting everything from politically motivated texts to erotic dialogues and carefree pastoral poetry.

Surprisingly little is known of Andrea’s life. He was organist at San Geremia in the Cannareggio quarter of Venice and later second organist at St Mark’s. In contrast to his illustrious predecessors and colleagues there, Andrea set more anonymous pastoral texts than elevated literary sonnets. Indeed, Andrea is considered to be a key figure in the development of the hybrid madrigal, a new style of madrigal that incorporated elements of ‘lighter’ genres.

Andrea’s first book of six-voice madrigals, printed around 1576, contained a number of ‘serious’ texts, including ‘Lasso, Amor mi trasporta’ but the light tone of his second book (1580) prompted the twentieth century music historian Alfred Einstein to declare that ‘the madrigal has surrendered to hedonism’. References to pastoral characters abound and Gabrieli liberally peppers his music with word-painting devices such as the decoration of ‘cantando’ (singing) in ‘Hor ch’a noi torna’ and the harmonic colour of ‘piangendo’ (weeping) in ‘Voi non volete donna’.