The available biographical information on Antonio Mortaro’s life is scarce and partly contradictory, and the information in the major music encyclopaedias is insufficient. Hitherto, the most extensive biography of his life is that of Marina Toffetti in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Biographical Dictionary of Italians), vol. 77 (2012).
Mortaro was probably born in the 1570s in Brescia (northern Italy). The earliest biographical evidence of his life dates from 1595 when he entered the Franciscan monastery in Brescia as a novice, and his earliest printed compositions date from 1587. These compositions, which are three Latin Psalms of David for five voices, are included in a revised reprint of a 1573 collection by Giovanni Matteo Faà di Bruno (also known as Orazio di Faà, fl. 1570), published in Venice in 1587. Mortaro was recognised as a skilled organist and was a prolific composer, publishing at least four collections of secular works and around a dozen sacred works – collections that in many cases were reprinted several times. Most of his works were published by the well-known music printer Ricciardo Amadino in Venice. Sometime between February 1596 and June 1598, he went to Milan where he took up the post of organist at the Franciscan church of San Francesco, where he remained until January 1599. From 1 June 1601 to 26 April 1602, Mortaro was organist at the Cathedral of San Gaudenzio in Novara, after which we have no information about his activities until 1606, when he returned to Brescia.
The title page of the 1608 print of the collection Messa, salmi, motetti et magnificat a tre chori indicates that he was at La Santa Casa di Loreto. How long he was employed there is unknown. A few years later, however, he was back in Brescia, where he probably remained until he died in 1619. During his active years, he was also for a short time organist at the Cathedral in “Ossaro” (possibly Osor in Croatia; it is uncertain when this period should be placed in his biography).
In the early 1590s he published four collections of Fiammelle amorose (Flames of love) for three voices, with dedications to the local aristocracy. These canzonettas were popular at the time and all the collections were reprinted several times. Mortaro’s sacred works began to appear in print in 1595, when he was admitted to the Franciscan Order; the ‘liber secundus’ on the title page suggests that a lost ‘liber primus’ must have preceded it. The collection consists of eight- and twelve- part works, dedicated to the provincial superior of the Franciscan Order of the Milanese. This is followed by a series of liturgical works, with dedications to various members of his order: Sacrae cantiones for three voices (1598) – a collection of fifteen motets of which thirteen are for three voices and two for six; and Messa, salmi, motetti et magnificat a tre chori (1599) which apparently was employed by the copyists at Herlufsholm. The latter collection was reprinted in a new edition by Ricciardo Amadino (Venice 1608).
A study of the surviving works by Mortaro reveals three discrete groups of musical works belonging to three different periods of his life. Firstly, as a young man who, from the middle of the 1580s to the middle of the 1590s, composed the Fiammelle which were very popular at the time. Secondly, and as a direct consequence of his entry into the Franciscan Order, from around 1595 and for the rest of his life he composed exclusively sacred music, with the exception of a few instrumental works. Thirdly, he edited a collection of instrumental music, Primo libro de canzoni da sonare a quattro voci (Venice 1600), a genre which contributed to his further fame and which was praised by Adriano Banchieri (1568 – 1634) as a model for the ‘fantasia da osservarsi nell’organo’. A later collection of canzoni was published posthumously in Venice in 1623.
Recent scholarship has pointed to the importance of Canzoni da sonare (1600) and Sacrae cantiones (1598), which was reprinted at least twice, as significant historical examples of the developing concertato style. The rhythmic inventiveness of the secular works is only occasionally found in the sacred music, apparently for acoustic reasons. A sensitivity to acoustics is apparent in Mortaro’s impressive use of echo effects in the Latin sacred polychoral works, composed in the Venetian manner of the Gabrielis. The basis of the style is clearly the avoidance of parallel fifths and octaves, which is not maintained in the doxologies of the vesper psalms, for instance. Sometimes lasting several bars, two of the three bass parts in the twelve-part works, sing in unison, or parallel octaves, functionally reducing the twelve parts to eleven. Both cases reveal an undoubtedly deliberate personal stylistic intention to emphasise the bassline.
The scribes of the Herlufsholm collection were concerned with only pieces that could be used in a Danish liturgical context. Thus the magnificats are omitted and only the first three parts of the Mass Ordinary are used: Kyrie, Gloria and Credo (only up to and including “et homo factus est”). Mortaro’s mass is a parody mass based on the madrigal Erano i capei d’oro by Giovanni Maria Nanino (1543/44 – 1607). As indicated in the Source Description, the Herlufsholm copyists most likely employed the printed edition of 1599 or the second edition of 1608, although it is also possible that they used a now lost print or even an unknown manuscript source. The musical material of Herlufsholm is remarkable as the most comprehensive transalpine collection of Mortaro’s works in Europe.
