I have included, when I can find them, links to comprehensive lists of works by a composer. I suppose they could be called Easter Eggs. The term "Easter Egg" has come to be used to mean a message, image, or feature hidden in some electronic medium.
For example, on the Giovanni Gabrieli page I have included a link to a comprehensive list of his compositions. Some of the entries contain additional information, such as this entertaining description of his Canzon No. 1 (La Spiritata): "On the highest feast days in Renaissance Venice, the Doge himself, with all the Signoria of the city, was required to participate in the Cathedral's religious ceremony. Permeable boundaries between church and state dissolved, as the ceremonial head of the Venetian government united with the people in ceremonial worship. And by the turn of the seventeenth century, the wealth of the Venetian mercantile state had become an intrinsic part of the same worship services. When Giovanni Gabrieli prepared music for the Cathedral's celebration of Christmas, for instance, he could not only muster the large instrumental and vocal forces of the Cathedral's regular musical establishment, but could also supplement them with extras; in 1603, for instance, he paid four cornettists, five trombones, one basson, two violins, and a violone player to add to the splendor of the ceremony. Yet the vibrant musical life of the Venetian state can be reflected even in his instrumental works of more modest character. A "simple" four-voiced canzona such as Gabrieli's piece known as "La spiritata" elegantly portrays the effervescent life of the Carnival city. Gabrieli's Canzon "La spiritata" was published in a 1608 anthology of Venetian music, though a keyboard version of his piece exists from as early as 1593. It achieved the epithet "the spirited," despite its unique character as the only Gabrieli canzona in this collection written in a minor key. Right from the opening measures, however, the composer tinges its minor key with positive highlights by a sprightly, more ebullient rhythm the usual canzona dactyls. Though the opening motive is subject to strict paired imitation, the counterpoint remains generally simple throughout the piece, in the spirit of the French chansons then popular in Venice. After a long yet contrapuntally straightforward exposition and a quick stretto, the first section comes to a complete cadence from which a more homophonic triple-meter passage emerges, its dance-like character also belying the minor mode. In the third and final section of the piece, Gabrieli introduces the most complex rhythms, though both harmonic and textural simplicity still reign. In fact, the two principal motor-rhythms of this final passage both derive directly from the opening rhythm, and only outline simple triadic motions and cadential gestures. The passage repeats, and a predictable but emphatic extension of the final cadence closes the work in a continued character of high spirits." Enjoy!
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Formerly a successful software engineer and then Mathematics instructor, I am now retired and keep busy as an amateur musician of early music. Archives
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