Girolamo Cavazzoni (1525 ? 1577) was an Italian organist and composer, the son of Marco Antonio Cavazzoni. The composers's years of birth and death are not known exactly. From his remarks in the preface to Intavolatura libro primo, the first collection of his music, published in 1543, where he states that he is "not much more than a boy", it is deduced that he must have been born around 1525. The second collection of Cavazzoni's music, Intabulatura d'organo, appeared somewhere between 1543 and 1549, and contains no biographical details. Because the last known mention of Cavazzoni is from 1577, naming him as organist of the court church of Santa Barbara in Mantua, we only know he died after 1577.

All that is known about Cavazzoni's life is that he worked at Venice and Mantua, and published two collections of organ music. These collections only contain music written before about 1549, but are of high quality, and allegedly established the traditional form of imitative ricercars and canzonas.

The first of these two collections is the Intavolatura libro primo, consisting of Ricercars and Canzonas. It was published in 1543 when Cavazzoni was a mere 17 years old. The four Ricercares in this collection are multi-sectional works consisting of series of imitative expositions of different subjects. Pretty advanced and innovative music for the time and his age, and he must already have been a highly regarded composer to have his work published so young.

I recorded these Ricercars in 2010 on the Holtgrave organ in the Dorpskerk, Nieuwegein, Netherlands (Nrs. 1 and 2, july 23, 2010) and the Flentrop organ of Kerkelijk Centrum de Bron, Nieuwegein, Netherlands (Nrs. 3,4, june 8, 2010)

Chris Breemer, organ
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00:21 Ricercar No.1
04:52 Ricercar No.2
10:08 Ricercar No.3
15:47 Ricercar No.4

The images are all from (or related to) Mantua, the city in Lombardy, Italy, just south of Verona, where Cavazzoni lived and worked.

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