Opening bars of "Amor, giustitia Amor" from Cantade et Arie…1626
The three works in Grandi’s Cantade et Arie a voce sola of 1620 that bear the designation of “cantata” are all constructed using the technique that musicologists now categorize as “strophic bass” cantatas. In its classic form as represented in these pieces, the same bass line is used for each stanza of a strophic poem with varying melodies in the vocal part.
Ostinato bass lines were already common at the beginning of the century, but these new cantatas were distinguished by the greater length of their recurring bass line and their more definite structure. The strophic bass cantata is anticipated in, for example Monteverdi’s Orfeo in variations of the vocal line above a slightly modified bass line within a ritornello structure are found.
Grandi’s innovation can be seen as a logical extension of an improvised practice. It is likely that performers, in interpreting a strophic song would vary the melodic line for each stanza to emphasize certain words or communicate different sentiments. “Arias” setting strophic poetry are found in innumerable collections from the early years of the 17th Century, and in fact the bulk of Grandi’s 1620 collection is devoted to such strophic songs. One has to think only of Monteverdi’s Si dolce e’l tormento – a remarkably simple looking work on the page – and how it can be varied to exceptional effect in performance.
The cantatas in the 1620 collection formalize this practice, though they certainly do not preclude further embellishment and variation by the singer. There are numerous accounts of virtuosi, like Francesca Caccini, who could improvise a musical setting of poem and one can imagine that a strophic bass technique would lend itself to such extemporizing.
Grandi’s cantatas were immensely popular. The newly identified print from 1620, from which the cantatas on Magnificat’s program are drawn was in fact a reprint of an earlier publication and he went on to publish three more collections over the next decade, only one of which survives. Numerous composers imitated the cantatas, including Monteverdi himself.
Even in the 1620s we can observe the characteristic of the later Baroque cantata emerging, as composers begin to modify the bass line and alternating recitative and arioso styles in the vocal lines. Amor, giustitia amor, the one work designated “cantata” in Grandi’s third book of Cantade et Arie, published in 1626, which Magnificat will also be performing, already shows considerable variation in the bass line from stanza to stanza and clearly anticipates the more variegated form of the later cantata. The expansion of the stanzas into distinct sections is paralleled in the development of the trio sonata from a free flowing sectional form to a set of individual movements over the course of the 17th Century.
San Francisco Classical Voice posted the following excellent preview by Steven Winn of Magnificat’s upcoming concerts featuring the music of Alessandro Grandi. The original post is here.
For anyone who cares about 17th-century music, 2010 is without question a Claudio Monteverdi year. The 400th anniversary of the composer’s ground-breaking and magisterial Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin) of 1610 is a ripe occasion to program the sacred masterpiece of an artist deemed “the creator of modern music” by scholar Leo Schrade.
It’s an opportunity that Magnificat Baroque wasn’t about to miss. The Bay Area ensemble concludes its 18th season with an April 23-25 slate of Vespers concerts.
But before they get there, the troupe is embarked on an unusual and revealing side-trip through Monteverdi territory, with the composer’s lesser-known Venetian contemporary Alessandro Grandi as the destination. To make this journey even more enticing, Magnificat is offering a striking historical contrast to the well-known Vespers: The Feb. 12-14 Grandi programs feature what may well be modern premieres of some of the first self-identified cantatas ever written. The feat has generated considerable interest around the early-music world.
More important, these concerts figure to be an alluring discovery for audiences. In addition to the short solo cantatas on the program, performed by soprano Laura Heimes, Magnificat’s trio of Celeste fiori concerts will include assorted Grandi madrigals and motets, as well as instrumental music published at the time the composer lived in Venice. read more…
To mark Women’s History Month, Public Radio Exchange (PRX) has posted an hourlong program celebrating some of the remarkable women in music from the Baroque. Hosted by Angela Mariani, the program includes works by Barbara Strozzi, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Isabella Leonarda and, of course, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani.
We are pleased that they included Magnificat’s recording of Cozzolani’s setting of the psalm Dixit Dominus on the program.
Dinko Fabris, an Italian scholar and lutenist of the Conservatorio Nicolò Piccini in Bari, Italy, has provided some information about Alessandro Grandi’s 1620 collection Cantade et Arie a voce sola, from which five of the works on Magnificat’s upcoming program are drawn.
In 1620 Alessandro Grandi, published a second edition of his ground-breaking Cantade et Arie a voce sola. The first edition has long been lost. The importance of this collection of secular pieces lies in the very first use of the word “cantata” in a music publication. The multi-sectional structure of these solo pieces lays the groundwork for the sectional organization of the later solo cantata.
The only known copy of the 1620 publication resided in the music division of the University Library in Breslau, Germany until the final months of World War II. As the Russians laid siege to Breslau, a bombardment that lasted three months in early 1945, the building housing the music division was hit and caught on fire. Library personnel saved much of the music collection by throwing it into the surrounding river (the building with the music division lies on an island), but some very important items, including the Grandi Cantade et Arie of 1620 were lost. The only record of the music then lay in an old, difficult-to-read manuscript transcription by the musicologist Alfred Einstein, which is housed in the Music Library at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
What was unknown to musicologists with the exception of Agostino Ziino, and later, Dinko Fabris, was that another copy survived in the private collection of Rodrigo de Zayas in Seville. However, de Zayas has recently provided copies of his print to the Royaumont Foundation in France with permission to Aurelio Bianco of the Université de Tours in France to make an edition, and to Giulia Giovani, a student working on her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Rome under Professor Ziino.
Magnificat is grateful to the cooperation of all these musicologists in making our performances of this music possible. We will be performing from transciptions provided by Bianco and Giovani of the cantatas Amor altri si duol, Vanne vattene Amor and Udito han pur i Dei as well as two madrigals O Bella Catatrice and Un Cerchietto d’oro. We will also perform one cantata in Grandi third book of Arie et Cantade from 1626, Amor, giustitia Amor. With the exception of the cantata Amor, altri si duol, these works will in all probability be receiving their first performances since the 17th century, and certainly their first North American performances, in Magnificat’s concerts.
Chilly Gondolas
Like most I suspect, when I think of Venice I imagine a sun-baked Piazza of San Marco, but of course winter visits Venice each year and it seems that before the advent of modern heating, the experience was particularly brutal. In his engaging journals recounting his three years in Venice during the 1860s, W.D. Powell describes the attitude of the locals to winter:
“The Venetians pretend that many of the late winters have been much severer than those of former years, but I think this pretense has less support in fact than in the custom of mankind everywhere to claim that such weather as the present, whatever it happens to be, was never seen before.”
In common with other places (like California) where the weather is generally agreeable, houses are built with a view to coolness in summer and one can only imagine that the experience of a Christmas or Epiphany feast in the spacious interior of San Marco was often a chilly one. In fact in Howell’s judgment it is those who must spend their time indoors that suffer the most.
“When one goes out into the sun, one often finds an overcoat too heavy, but it never gives warmth enough in the house, where the Venetian sometimes wears it. Ineed the sun is recognized by Venetians as the only legitimate source of heat, and they sell his favor at fabulous prices to such foreigners as take the lodgings into which he shines.”
Annunciation
Last Sunday, I attended Artek’s performance of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine at the National Gallery in Washington DC. It was lovely to hear a fine performance of this masterpiece (a piece I’m thinking about alot these days) in one of my favorite buildings in the world. We arrived through the East entrance and were directed by the guards up to the second floor, which meant that we got to have a glimpse of a Cranach alterpiece, Gentileschi’s lute player (which is not a portrait of Francesca Caccini by the way), and several Vermeers and Rembrandts before hearing Monteverdi’s magnificent music.
Almost as if it had been planned I turned one corner and there was the magnificent Annunciation by Van Eyck. I first saw this extraordinary painting shortly after it was restored. A whole room had been dedicated to its display. Now it occupies a more modest space but it is just as stunning.
Magnificat’s will perform the Vespers within the context of Second Vespers for the Feast of Annunciation and there was something very satisfying about having Van Eyck’s colors in my head as I heard the fanfare of the opening response of Monteverdi’s 1610 collection. The dislocation of the 15th century painting, the 17th century music and the 21st century setting emphasized the unspeakable timelessness of beauty.
Newly Discovered Cantatas by Alessandro Grandi to be Sung by Soprano Laura Heimes
Soprano Laura Heimes
At Magnificat’s concerts on February 12-14 Bay Area audiences will have the opportunity to hear the first performances since the 17th century of five vocal works by Alessandro Grandi, including the first three pieces identified by a composer as “cantatas”. Soprano Laura Heimes will join with David Tayler and Hanneke van Proosdij for what will most likely be the first performances of these works in modern times.1
In his 1620 collection Cantade et Arie, Grandi used to the term “cantada” to distinguish three settings of strophic poetry for soprano and continuo. Each of the works – Amor altri si duol, Vanne vattene Amor and Udito han pur i Dei – employs a compositional strategy identified by musicologists as “strophic bass” cantatas, an example of strophic variation with which many composers were experimenting at the time. read more…
- News of our upcoming performances has created a buzz among musicologists studying the music of the 17th century and we have been informed that one of the cantatas, Amor, altri si duol, was in fact performed at the Bibliothèque musicale François-Lang in Royaumont, France on October 12, 2008. It is, of course, impossible to determine with complete certainty that the other works have not received a public performance and if we hear of any others, we will update this post. ↩
Magnificat
