Magnificat

The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo

It has frequently been assumed that Grandi remained at San Marco until he accepted the position as chapel master at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in March 1627. However, there are many indications that he left St. Mark’s earlier. He had been relieved of his duties as maestro di canto at the seminary by March 1626, and Giovanni Rovetta makes clear in the dedication to his Salmi concertati (dedication dated 1 January 1626), that the post of vice-maestro at St. Mark’s was already vacant and that he had been performing some of the duties associated with the position:

I hoped thereafter [i.e., after joining the cappella] to be able to exercise the duties of vice-maestro in the absence of the Maestro di Capella, this position already being vacant beforehand. Nor was the thought that I might succeed at this in vain, for since this need occurred shortly after I entered, I was honored by the most Illustrious and Excellent Procurators, my patrons, that I should exercise this charge until their new determination [i.e., until the formal election of a vice-maestro].

Grandi was still in Venice at the end of July 1626, when he signed the dedication to the Cantade et arie a voce sola . . . libro terzo; exceptionally, the title page to this collection fails to list his position as vice maestro. Moreover, a number of other prints from 1626—the first edition of the Arie, et Cantade a doi, e tre voci concertate con doi violini (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1626), the fourth impression (actually the sixth printing) of the Madrigali concertati . . . [libro primo] (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1626), and the reprinting of the Madrigali concertati . . . libro secondo (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1626)—lack indications of Grandi’s employment on their title pages.

The omission is particularly striking in these final two cases, since the wording of these title pages is virtually identical to that of previous impressions, except for the removal of a reference to Grandi’s post. In fact, Vincenti had taken special pains to keep the title page the first book of Madrigali concertati up to date: the first three impressions (1615, 1616, and 1617) identify Grandi as maestro di cappella in Ferrara; the terzo impressione (1619, actually the fourth printing) lists him as a musician at St. Mark’s; and the quarto impressione (1622) gives his title as “vice maestro di capella . . . in San Marco.” The explicit removal of the vice-maestro designation for the 1626 impression is thus particularly telling.

It is possible that Grandi left his post at San Marco even before 1626, since Rovetta, admittedly somewhat ambiguously, refers to the need for someone to perform the duties of vice-maestro “shortly after I entered [the chapel; i.e., after December 1623].” What is more, the title pages of the only two editions of Grandi’s music printed in 1625 omit any mention of his post, though the evidence in both cases is equivocal. The first edition of the Motetti . . . con sinfonie . . . libro secondo is lost so we cannot know if Grandi’s position had appeared on the original title page. Similarly, the original edition of the Celesti fiori (1619) did not give Grandi’s post at all, listing only the position of the collection’s compiler, Leonardo Simonetti, “cantor nella cappella di S. Marco”; the lack of a title on the later impression thus provides no real evidence concerning Grandi’s employment.

Simonetti may have left another oblique clue concerning Grandi’s circumstances in 1625, however.

He included works by both Grandi and Rovetta in his seminal anthology of Venetian sacred monody, the Ghirlanda sacra (Venice: Stampa del Gardano, 1625). The opening pieces of the collection seem to be arranged according to the composers’ status. Four pieces by “dell’illustre Signor Claudio Monteverde Maestro di Capella della Serenissima Signoria di Venecia” open the collection, followed by a work of the imperial chapel master, Giovanni Priuli. Next comes a motet by Rovetta and only then, one by Grandi; the following work is by Giovanni Pietro Berti, an organist at San Marco. Also peculiar is the fact that Simonetti does not furnish a job title for either Rovetta or Grandi, in contrast to the careful annotations for many other composers in the collection. Under normal circumstances, Simonetti’s treatment of the two composers would seem coincidental and unremarkable; read against the background of the other information concerning Grandi’s situation in 1625-26, it only serves to reinforce the impression that Grandi’s standing at San Marco was on the wane.

Grandi’s conflicts in Venice and the probability that he left San Marco long before securing a position in Bergamo throw the martial imagery of a stanza from Giulio Strozzi’s Venetia edificata, seemingly glorifying Grandi and Monteverdi, into starkly different light:

S’il Grandi allor, s’il Monteverde a gara
in vestir sacri o lascivetti carmi
con dolce canto e sinfonia sì rara
stati in quella stagion fossero in armi,
qual dale lor discordie illustre e cara
consonanza nascea dentro a que’ marmi
dove la maga in quelle fiamme estive
s’ingegna d’allettar l’alme piú schive.

(If Grandi, then, if Monteverdi competing
to clothe sacred or lascivious songs
with sweet song and such rare symphony
were to have stood armed in that season,
from their discords what distinguished and precious
consonance would have been born within those statues
where the sorceress in those summer flames
sought to delight those more bashful souls.)

Whether Grandi and Monteverdi’s “armed competition” and “discords” were metaphorical or actual, remains uncertain, but it is not difficult to imagine Monteverdi envying Grandi’s success in the print market with “lascivious songs” that must have seemed to the older composer rather slight. In fact, Grandi’s compositional interests shifted during the period when he occupied leadership positions at San Marco, away from sacred music and toward secular forms, particularly strophic arias and light canzonetta-like pieces. After the publication of the Motetti . . . con sinfonie . . . libro secondo, published sometime between 1621 and 1625, Grandi published no more sacred music until he moved to Bergamo in 1627. In contrast, Vincenti issued at least three (and perhaps four) editions of Grandi’s secular music between 1622 and 1626.

Grandi eventually landed the post of maestro di capella at Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo. The consorzio elected Grandi unanimously to a three-year contract on 18 March 1627, without requiring him to appear for the normal audition. His accession to the post may have been aided by his patron, Francesco Duodo, who was named as capitano (a Venetian patrician sent to govern the Republic’s holdings on the mainland) at Bergamo just a few months before Grandi’s appointment. The regents of Santa Maria Maggiore wrote to Grandi two days after his election, asking him to relocate to Bergamo in time to lead the music for Easter. In return, they offered him fifteen days lodging while he sought a suitable home. Grandi accepted not only because of the honor of becoming maestro di capella, but also because he believed that the cost of living would be lower than it had been in Venice.

At Bergamo, Grandi inherited the leadership of one of the most esteemed musical institutions in Northern Italy, including a cappella of between fifteen and twenty-three singers and instrumentalists. Yet he also inherited a choral repertoire that was decidedly out of date, consisting almost exclusively of large-scale music, nearly all of it a decade or more old, and much of it even older. Not surprisingly, most of Grandi’s published compositions from his tenure at Bergamo are large-scale works and concertato Mass and Psalm settings, precisely the sort of music required in this new context. Grandi’s duties as chapel master at Santa Maria Maggiore included recruiting singers from throughout Northern Italy for the church’s chapel, and teaching figural music and counterpoint each weekday for two hours. By 1630 his teaching, and that of two other music instructors, had apparently become inconsistent enough that the governors instituted a system under which the teachers were paid only for the days on which they actually taught. Grandi was able to organize music for some of the major feasts, particularly for Santa Maria’s two most significant feasts, the Assumption and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, on a sumptuous scale. For the Feast of the Assumption in 1628, he mounted performances that included the twenty-three members of the cappella and sixteen outside performers.

In 1628, Grandi returned to Venice to take part in a performance on the Feast of the Holy Rosary (October 7), and during this trip, received offers to return to Venice. Although he declined, he was nonetheless able to parlay the hint of a competing job offer into a donation of grain and wine after his return to Bergamo. The regents of the basilica noted that the whole city was grateful for Grandi’s work and praised his extraordinary service and diligence. We also learn from the same document that Grandi had ten small children. One of them, Giacomo, entered his father’s profession; the title page to the Cantade et Arie a voce sola . . . libro quarto (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1629), collected by the son, identifies him as a singer in the chapel at Santa Maria Maggiore.

Grandi’s presence in Venice in 1628 would have provided the most likely opportunity for his presumed contact with Heinrich Schütz during the German composer’s second journey to Venice. Schütz parodied Grandi’s “Lilium connvalium” with his “O Jesus süß” from the third book of Symphoniae sacrae. At about this time, perhaps on the trip to or from Venice, Grandi also spent time as a guest of the otherwise obscure Pietro Canonico and Paulo Morandi at the Chruch of the Madonna della Castagna, in the hills just a few miles northwest of Bergamo. Grandi dedicated the Messa, e salmi concertati a tre voci (Venice 1630) to them, noting that the works were born “two years ago from the barrenness of my intellect, in your house . . . while we were in Val Breno at Madonna della Castagna.”

The composer returned to Venice several times near the end of his life, where he signed the dedications to the Motetti . . . con sinfonie . . . libro terzo (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1629; ded. 8 June), the Messa, e Salmi concertati a tre voci (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1630; ded. 5 January), and Il sesto libro de motetti (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1630; ded. 28 June). During the summer of 1630, Leonardo Simonetti also edited another collection devoted primarily to Grandi’s works, the Raccolta terza . . . de messa et salmi del sig. Alessandro Grandi et Gio. Croce Chiozotto. The plague hit Venice in July of 1630, but Grandi managed to return to Bergamo, where he succumbed to the scourge along with his wife and children.

Grandi’s works continued to be published long after his death, both as complete reissues of his earlier collections, and as separate works in anthologies. His sacred compositions, in particular, enjoyed considerable popularity north of the Alps. Sixteen years after the composer’s death, one poet was still valorizing Grandi alongside Monteverdi:

De l’armonia venìano i mastri, e d’essi
con profuso parlar contogli i merti.
Di Claudio fè, tra questi, i pregi espressi,
che spiega in Monte Verdi i suoi concerti.
Ad Alessandro Grandi ancor concessi
fur grandi onor, tra i piú ne l’arte esperti.

(The masters of harmony came, and of them
With lengthy speech she expounded the merits.
Among these, she made express praise of Claudio
Who spreads his concerti on mountains verdant.
To Alessandro Grandi were also granted
Grand honors, as being among the most expert in the art.)

More than three and half centuries later, it is hard to disagree with Benamati’s assessment that Grandi was, indeed, among the most expert in his art.