Anerio was born in Rome and lived his entire life there. He sang as a boy soprano at the Julian Chapel from 1568 until 1577 and then he sang at another church until 1580. Around this time, he began to compose, especially madrigals; this was one of the few periods in his life during which he wrote secular music. Likely he was influenced by Luca Marenzio, who was hugely popular at the time and who was in Rome at the same time Anerio began composing. By 1584, Anerio had been appointedmaestro di cappella at the Collegio degli Inglesi; he also seems to have been the choirmaster at another society of Rome's leading musicians called the vertuosa Compagnia de i Musici di Roma. These positions must have given him considerable opportunity to exercise his compositional talents, for he had already written the music, songs, madrigals, and choruses for an ItalianPassion Play by this time. In 1594, he replaced Palestrina as the official composer to the papal choir, which was the most prominent position in Rome for a composer. In 1607 or shortly afterwards, he became a priest. In conjunction with Francesco Soriano, another composer of the Roman School, he helped to reform the responsories of the Roman Gradual, another of the late activities of the Counter-Reformation in Italy.
Works
Anerio was a conservative composer, who largely used the style of Palestrina as a starting point, at least after his youthful period of writing secular works, such as madrigals and canzonettas, was done. Nevertheless, he achieved an expressive intensity which was his own. Some influence of the Northern Italian progressive movements is evident, though muted, in his work. For instance, the use of double choirs : quick homophonic declamatory textures, quick melodic passages in the bass line. In addition, he sometimes used quickly changing textures, alternating between full chorus and small groups of two or three voices, another progressive trait of the northern Italian schools – a trait much in evidence, for example, in the music of Claudio Monteverdi. In his very last works, the influence of Viadana, the popularizer of the basso continuo, is evident, but he still remained true to the Palestrina style in his melodic and harmonic writing. Anerio wrote no known purely instrumental music. Works by Felice Anerio include:
