Alessandro Grandi
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Alessandro Grandi
(b ?1575-80; d Bergamo, 1630, after June). Italian composer. He may have studied with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice. His first posts were in Ferrara: he became maestro di cappella of the Accademia della Morte in 1597, of the Accademia dello Spirito Santo in 1610 and of the cathedral in 1615. In 1617 he moved to Venice as a singer at St Mark's, where Monteverdi was maestro di cappella; he was made his deputy in 1620. From 1627 he was maestro di cappella of S Maria Maggiore, Bergamo.
Grandi was one of the most talented and popular composers of his day in northern Italy. He contributed importantly to church music in the new concertato style, particularly in his c 200 motets (including 11 published collections). The earlier of these, mostly for two to five voices, are distinctive for their emotional intensity and interesting textures. Many of his motets of after c 1620 are for solo voice with instruments; this new genre was to lead to the ‘sacred concertos’ of Schütz and later German composers. Grandi also composed three books of large-scale psalms and masses (1629-30). His secular works include strophic solo cantatas and arias, written in a progressive, tuneful style, and two books of concertato madrigals.
He should not be confused with the Alessandro Grandi (1638-97) who worked at Rimini Cathedral and composed sacred music.
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Alessandro Grandi
Biography
Alessandro Grandi is considered by many the most important Italian composer, after Monteverdi, from the first half of the sixteenth century. He is best known for his church music, secular cantatas, and arias.Grandi may have been born in Ferrara or in the vicinity of Venice, but almost certainly not in Sicily as once claimed. Not much is known about his early years, but his activities began to emerge more clearly as the seventeenth century approached: between the late 1590s (1597-1600) and 1617 he held at least four positions of note.
The first (maestro di cappella) was at a religious fraternity in Ferrara, the Accademia della Morte, while the second, at San Marco Church in Venice, was as giovane di coro, beginning around 1605; the third (maestro di cappella), beginning in 1609-1610, at the Accademia dello Spirito Santo, another religious fraternity in Ferrara; and the final one (maestro di cappella) was at the Ferrara Cathedral, from 1615 to 1617.
In the midst of this activity Grandi published his first volume of motets (1610). The influence of Gabrieli (a composer whose music helped shape Grandi's writing style) is most noticeable in the Mass setting contained in this initial effort.
In 1617 Grandi accepted a position as singer at San Marco in Venice, and a year later was appointed voice teacher at a local seminary. But his most prestigious and financially rewarding post came when he was elevated to Monteverdi's assistant at San Marco in November 1620.
Grandi held this position until 1627, when he secured an appointment at Santa Maria Maggiore, in Bergamo, as maestro di cappella, a post that required large-scale compositions, just the opposite kind of works popular in Venice around 1620, the year Grandi began to conform to tradition there by turning out his first solo cantatas and arias.
Grandi remained busy composing throughout the period 1610-30, producing mostly small-scale motets, except after his 1627 Bergamo appointment. Most of these motets appeared in five additional volumes, the last published in 1630. Through these works Grandi became instrumental in helping establish the concertato style in church music that would soon become prevalent. In 1629 Grandi published the first of three large volumes of church music -- the result of his Bergamo appointment -- his last important publications. He died in 1630, a victim of the bubonic plague. ~ Robert Cummings, Rovi
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Alessandro Grandi
Alessandro Grandi (1586 – after June 1630, but in that year) was a northern Italian composer of the early Baroque era, writing in the new concertato style. He was one of the most inventive, influential and popular composers of the time, probably second only to Monteverdi in northern Italy.
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Life
He was probably born in Ferrara and spent the first part of his life there, likely studying with Giovanni Gabrieli at Venice, which was nearby. He held several posts in Ferrara as maestro di cappella at different cathedrals and academies. In 1617 he won a post at St. Mark's in Venice, during the time Monteverdi was choirmaster there. Eventually he became Monteverdi's assistant, and during this time seems to have chosen to write works in some of the smaller forms which Monteverdi was neglecting. In 1627 he went to Bergamo, probably because he had an opportunity to be maestro di cappella at a place where he could build up the music program from scratch. Most likely he met Heinrich Schütz on that composer's second visit to Italy. Unfortunately, after only three years at Bergamo, Grandi died in 1630 during an outbreak of the plague.
Works
Most of his music is vocal with instrumental accompaniment. Stylistically, his early music is similar to that of Giovanni Gabrieli, with alternating short passages of greatly contrasting rhythms and texture; however he usually wrote for smaller forces. Most of his early compositions are motets in the concertato style: some are duets and trios, an innovation in motet writing, which usually involved larger groups. Grandi was one of the few composers who continued to write involved vocal polyphony over the basso continuo right after its introduction—most composers using the continuo in the first decades of the 17th century wrote monodies, or preferred more homophonic textures.
Grandi experimented with extreme emotionalism with some of his music, with chromaticism, ornament and affectation; while harmonically he was not as adventurous as Gesualdo, he was connected to the larger tradition, and thus his works were almost as influential as Monteverdi's. He ceaselessly innovated, writing monodies with instruments such as violins, and in a sectional form with repeating parts for instruments only—an idea which would develop into the ritornello. The music of Grandi shows a link between the concertato style which began the Baroque era, and the form of the cantata which culminated in the work of J.S. Bach.
Grandi was one of the most popular composers of his day; his works were published throughout Italy, Germany and the Low Countries, and continued to be reprinted long after his death. He wrote motets, psalm settings, madrigals, as well as some of the earliest compositions to be called "cantata."
References
- Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. ISBN 0-393-09745-5
- Articles "Alessandro Grandi", "Monody", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
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Mentioned in
Jubilate Deo, motet for 8 voices (1597)
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Cantata
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