'Sancte Simon magno mundi': A newly identified motet by Giovanni Battista Cocciola

Marcin Szelest

Abstract

The article deals with a two-choir motet for nine voice-parts with the incipit Sancte Simon  magno mundi, preserved in the form of an organ intabulation included in the Oliwa (Braniewo)  Tablature, started in 1619 (Vilnius, the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Library of  Sciences, F 15-284, f. 45v–46r), and attributed to a “Joannis Baptista”. In this source, and in  similar sources from the northern territories of the First Polish Republic, such concise attributions  referred only to composers well-known locally; also, in the case of two manuscripts,  the names “Joannes Baptista” were used with reference to Giovanni Battista Cocciola, a composer  based in Warmia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (years of activity confirmed in the  sources: 1606–25). The author offers a summary of available knowledge about the composer’s  artistic legacy, adding new information, including the previously unnoticed reference to the  existence of another authorial print that has not survived (Motetti a cinque, ed. before 1621).  The text of the motet Sancte Simon magno mundi has not been found. The text certainly refers  to the apostle Simon the Zealot, who was not worshipped individually on a large scale, but  was the patron saint of Szymon Rudnicki, Bishop of Warmia in the years 1605–21. Rudnicki  maintained close contacts with the Jesuit College in Braniewo, where the source of the motet  discussed here originated, and Cocciola was recorded as a musician in the bishop’s service  in 1606. This remarkable coincidence lends credibility to the speculation that the motet  Sancte Simon magno mundi could have been authored by Cocciola, who probably dedicated  the composition to his patron. 

The motet belongs to a relatively small group of compositions in which the melody of  the appeal from the Litany of Saints was used as an ostinato. The piece reveals a close affinity  to Antonio Gualtieri’s motet Beatissimus Marcus for the same set of performers, published  in an authorial print in 1604. In both compositions, the ostinato in the highest voice-part is  repeated seven times without variations and at equal intervals. Gualtieri’s motet is also about  a saint with the same name as the composer’s patron, Bishop Marco II Cornaro, to whom  the collection was dedicated. It seems highly probable that Cocciola consciously modelled  his composition on Gualtieri’s motet, while applying more sophisticated artistic devices: an  ostinato performed at three different levels of the scale, an opening in imitative technique,  greater variation of rhythm, the absence of repeated material and a more impressive culmination  at the end.