Francesco Sponga-Usper

Research conducted by Ennio Stipčević is the first attempt to gain a complete insight into the work of the Poreč-born Venetian composer Francesco Sponga known as Usper. Apart from historiographic information – a full insight into the written sources on music and musicians of the time (music lexicons, archived documents and numerous other records) in which Stipčević located information about Usper, the author’s interest mostly revolves around several of the composer’s collections (Messa, e salmi (1614), Compositioni armoniche (1619), Salmi vespertini (1627) and Ricercari et arie francesi (1595)). Stipčević gave a lot of attention to the overview of Usper’s composition in the context of the period, but also in the circle of Usper’s contemporaries – Dutch polyphonic composers, the Venetian school, and composers who worked on the Croatian side of the Adriatic.