Book excerpt: "'Giovanni Gabrieli, ye gods, what a man.' Thus Heinrich Schütz recalled his teacher, the greatest of that school of Venetian composers which flourished in the later Renaissance. Denis Arnold's new study, based on prolonged research in the Venetian archives, attempts a fresh appraisal of Gabrieli's music and pays particular attention to the social requirements which were of such importance in the Venice of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book also devotes considerable space to Gabrieli's contemporaries--his uncle Andrea Gabrieli, Croce, Merulo, Bassano, and others--which sheds much light on a major school of composition."--Dust jacket.