Orazio Sardena

Orazio Sardena was an Italian trumpeter and composer, born around 1550, whose name is associated with the court of the Archdukes of Austria in Graz during the last third of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth. His career is useful for understanding how musical chapels were organised in the noble houses of Central Europe, where brass players served both military and ceremonial functions.

Sardena began his career as a brass player at the archducal court in Graz, where he served as a trumpeter from 1569 to 1572. He then spent a brief period in the service of Archbishop Wolf Dietrich in Salzburg and returned to Graz in 1595. In 1602 he composed a Magnificat for 33 voices, now lost. When Ferdinand of Styria was elected emperor in 1619 under the name Ferdinand II, Sardena followed him to Vienna along with the rest of the Graz household. He is still listed as a member of the chapel of Emperor Ferdinand III in 1637, although a pension had already been granted to him in 1622.

Sardena was also a pupil of Simone Gatto, maestro di cappella in Graz, and a colleague of Annibale Perini. After the deaths of both men, he published a collection of 52 of their works, almost all motets, in Venice in 1604, although the exact date of this edition is not known with certainty, as the imprint is incomplete. His legacy survives chiefly through this collection and through the records documenting his life at court.