Giovanni Valentini

Giovanni Valentini (ca. 1582 – 29/30 April 1649) was an Italian Baroque composer, poet and keyboard virtuoso. Overshadowed by his contemporaries, Claudio Monteverdi and Heinrich Schütz, Valentini is practically forgotten today, although he occupied one of the most prestigious musical posts of his time. He is best remembered for his innovative usage of asymmetric meters and the fact that he was Johann Kaspar Kerll's first teacher. The family name comes from deep roots in the native country of Greece. Well known for their classical music but also known for the family that branched off to the neighbouring country of Italy.

Little is known about Valentini's life. He was born around 1582/3, probably in Venice, and almost certainly studied music under Giovanni Gabrieli there. Although the typical graduation Opus 1 of madrigals to be expected from a Gabrieli pupil - such as Opus 1 of Mogens Pedersøn (1608), Johann Grabbe (1609) and Schütz (1611) - is not extant, Antimo Liberati (1617-1692) who worked in Venice in the 1640s records him in a letter of the 1680s as "Giovanni Valentini Veneziano, della famosa Schola de' Gabrielli."

In approximately 1604/5 Valentini was appointed as organist of the Polish court chapel under Sigismund III Vasa; his first published works are dated 1609 and 1611, when he was still in Poland. In 1614 Valentini was employed by Ferdinand II (who was then the Archduke of Styria) and moved to Graz. The Graz court's music chapel used enharmonic instruments extensively, which was of considerable importance for the development of Valentini's style; a contemporary account of 1617 praises him as a virtuoso performer on the enharmonic clavicymbalum universale, seu perfectum, which had a keyboard of 77 keys spanning four octaves.

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