Giovanni Battista Strata

Giovanni Battista Strata was an Italian organist and composer active between 1609 and 1651, according to the years documented in the surviving records about him. His career unfolded in Genoa, where he held the post of second organist and priest at the cathedral around 1610.

He then appears to have worked at the church of Santa Maria delle Vigne, also in Genoa, before returning to his post at the cathedral on 21 July 1648. He was replaced in that position on 13 March 1651, perhaps because he had died, although it is not known with certainty whether this was the case.

His output, simple and unpretentious in style, seems to have been intended mostly for the churches and religious houses of Genoa. His publications include a mass, motets and a Magnificat printed in Venice in 1609, and the collection Arie di musica, published in Genoa in 1610, containing litanies, psalms and pieces of a spiritual character. A good part of his fifty-one compositions survives in the library of the Genoa cathedral and in the Biblioteca Braidense...