It’s less than a month now til our performances at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition. The festival is shaping up to be a fascinating event – in addition to the seven ‘main stage concerts and the EMA conference and exhibition there will be 50 fringe concerts during the week! Many (most) of these concerts include dear friends of Magnificat and it is evidence of the amazing vibrance of the early music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The same week, Magnificat will be officially releasing the first volume of our recordings of Cozzolani’s complete works at a CD release party at Yoshi’s in San Francisco. Beyond final tweaks and dithering with the audio files, there’s the booklet to proof read – and then there’s the cover image…

We are also putting the final touches on Magnificat’s 2010-2011 season – and the brochure that will announce it. We’re very excited about the programs we will be offering next season. Each program will examine a different aspect of the tremendous cultural shift that took place over the course of the 17th century – the changes in the notions of nobility, the way that music of the lower classes was reflected in art music, the various ways that brilliant women found to express themselves in spite of societal restrictions, and use of parody and satire in the form of the Italian commedia dell’ arte was used to comment on the human condition.

And the music! The first English opera, Charpentier’s beloved Midnight Mass, a program of women’s music featuring soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani and a charming (and sometimes bawdy) staged madrigal comedy.

Even before the festival in June this blog will host the next History Carnival. While the subject is roughly the 18th century, in keeping with the focus of this blog, we’re getting fascinating nominations from a wide range of historical specializations – evidence of the impressive work being done in the blogosphere. We’re happy to receive more nominations – just go to this link to make your suggestion.

All in all a pretty exciting time.

Dan Hutchings, Chris LeCluyse, Paul Elliott & Mirko Guadagnini

The parts designated ‘Alto’ or ‘Septimus’ in Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, like all music from the period, encompass a vocal range that in later music is most often sung by high tenors. The ‘counter tenor’ of the later Baroque would typically sing in a slightly higher register. As a result together with the ‘Tenore’ and ‘Quintus’ parts, we will have four tenors for our performances April 23-25.

Three of these tenors are very familiar to Magnificat audiences – Daniel Hutchings, Christopher LeCluyse, and Paul Elliott have appeared frequently in a wide variety of repertoire over the past decade. For these performances we are welcoming Italian tenor Mirko Guadagnini, who will be making his American debut.

Monteverdi’s alto, extending from e to b flat’, coincides much more closely with a modern tenor than with a modern alto, and we can assume the part would habe neem sung in the seventeenth century by what today would be called a tenor. Monteverdi’s tenor on the other hand, approximates a modern baritone, except that the highest few notes are beyond the reach of most baritones and wide-ranging tenor, like the four in Magnificat’s concert, are essential for the performance of the 1610 Vespers.

Dan Hutchings first sang with Magnificat in a program of music by Charpentier in 2003. He has since been a regular contributor, both as a high tenor “alto” and as a tenor. performs extensively with early music ensembles throughout the Bay Area. He is a regular member of the American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Chorale, and of the acclaimed Schola Santorum of the National Shrine of St. Francis, a twelve-voice ensemble specializing in a repertory of Gregorian chant and renaissance style liturgies. Dan frequently performs solos with the San Francisco Bach Choir, including Bach’s Magnificat, Mass in B Minor, and as the Evangelist in Schütz’s Christmas Oratorio.

Christopher LeCluyse has performed with Magnificat on several occassions since his appearance in the Schütz Auferstehungshistorie in 2005. Chris holds a PhD in English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied bilingual poems and songs from medieval England. While in Austin he sang with Conspirare, the Texas Early Music Project, La Follia Austin Baroque, and the Schola Cantorum at St. Mary’s Cathedral and appeared as a guest artist with the Houston-based groups Ars Lyrica and Canzonetta.

In the Bay Area, Chris has performed with Voices of Music, Conspirare, the San Francisco Early Music Society, and Voces Musicales. He has recently formed Utopia Early Music in Slat Lake City, where he is an assistant professor of English and writing center director at Westminster College.

One of the most celebrated early music tenors, Paul Elliott has been a core member of Magnificat since our program of Cassisimi cantatas and oratorios in 2005.  Since his solo debut in 1972 Paul has performed with such world-class orchestras as The London Bach Orchestra, The Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra, The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, The English Chamber Orchestra and The London Mozart Players. He is perhaps more widely known for his performances of Early Music, having performed with European early music groups including The Academy of Ancient Music, The Early Music Consort of London, The London Early Music Group, Musica Antiqua Köln, The Deller Consort, Pro Cantione Antiqua and The Hilliard Ensemble, of which he was a founder member.

Paul’s discography lists over one hundred recordings of music ranging from Perotin to Weber. Amongst his best-known recordings are two CDs of Handel’s Messiah and the video recording of that work filmed in Westminster Abbey and conducted by Christopher Hogwood. He also appeared in the TV series Music in Time hosted by James Galway, now a standard music-history teaching-tool in many U.S. colleges. Some more recent recordings include Proverb by Steve Reich for Nonesuch and Fragments, Hoquetus, The Age of Cathedrals and Monastic Song for Harmonia Mundi (USA).

Mirko will be appearing with Magnificat for the forst time in these performances. Born in Milan, he studied at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi and privately with Bianca Maria Casoni. In 1998 he won the As.Li.Co. competition. His repertoire ranges from Baroque to twentieth-century music. Major operatic rôles have been in The Rake’s Progress, Falstaff and Kiss me Kate, Dido and Aeneas, Il matrimonio segreto, Il pirata, Don Giovanni, L’Olimpiade, Wolf-Ferrari’s La vedova scaltra, Die Zauberflöte, Handel’s Alcina and Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. His recordings include medieval music, Peri’s Euridice, Marcello’s Arianna, Sammartini’s Memet, and Wolf-Ferrari’s La vedova scaltra. He has sung with famous orchestras, including La Scala, Radio France, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Pomeriggi Musicali, the Orchestra of the Accademia Santa Cecilia of Rome, and the Accademia Bizantina. In 2003 he took part in the re-opening of La Fenice in Venice with Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle and Caldara’s Te Deum conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Jennifer Paulino and Jennifer Ellis Kampani

A year ago, Magnificat performed Alessandro Scarlatti’s serenata Amore, Venere, e Ragione with “3 Jennifers“. For the final concerts of our 2009-2010 season, Magnificat is pleased to feature two of the Jennifers for the two soprano parts – Jennifer Paulino and Jennifer Ellis Kampani – as our sopranos. (Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane will be joining us for our performance at the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition in June.)

Jennifer Paulino has appeared frequently with Magnificat since singing the role of Daniele in Stradella’s La Susanna in February 2007, a production that we also performed at the Tropical Baroque Festival in Miami that Spring. She has been a prat of several productions since then, including earlier this season when she sang several roles – notably the seductive Siren) in Francesca Caccini’s La Liberatione di Ruggiero.

Jennifer is a founding member of the Baroque ensemble Les grâces, who appeared in earlier this season on the San Francisco Early Music Society series and toured in Europe last Fall. As an ensemble singer, Jennifer has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the Arts Center in Seoul, Korea, and on recordings contracted by the Spoleto Festival USA and The Washington National Cathedral. She was a member of The Choral Scholars, a vocal ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of early music and new works from 1999-2004. Her tenure with the ensemble culminated in a recording and concert in collaboration with Trio Mediæval and the Washington National Cathedral girls choir.

Jennifer studied Baroque singing with Julianne Baird, Jill Feldman, and Michael Chance, and holds performance degrees from The Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Netherlands and Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, NJ. She now resides in Oakland and teaches voice in her home studio.

Jennifer Ellis Kampani has been a core member of Magnificat since her debut in the role of Gelosia for Magnificat’s modern premiere production of Marrazoli’s Il Cappricio in 1997. She has performed with Magnificat over fifty times since then and features prominently in our recodings of Cozzolani’s complete works. Magnificat recently released our recording Cozzolani’s setting of Laudate Dominum, a work for solo soprano, violins and continuo.

Jennifer recently made her debut with the Washington Bach Consort, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, and the New York Collegium with Andrew Parrott conducting and was  featured artist in “Le Tournoi de Chauvency” a Medieval opera production with Francesca Lattuada and Ensemble Aziman which toured through Europe. Her international career has included appearances with the period instrument groups American Bach Soloists, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Apollo’s Fire, Musica Angelica, Washington Catherdral Choral Society, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Solamente (Budapest, Hungary), Ensemble Tourbillon (Prague, Czech Republic), and Musica Aeterna (Bratislava, Slovakia). In addition, Ms. Kampani has sung with the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Charlotte Symphony. Opera highlights include leading roles in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, Duron’s zarzuela Salir el Amor del Mundo, Handel’s Semele, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

A specialist in the music of Spain and Latin America, Jennifer has toured villancicos and zarzuela’s extensively with Richard Savino and El Mundo and has performed on programs with Andrew Lawrence-King. She has been heard in many concert series and festivals including Aston Magna, Houston Early Music, Music Before 1800, Miami Tropical Baroque, Connecticut Early Music, Carmel Bach, and the Berkeley and Boston Early Music Festivals. Ms. Kampani has recorded Villancicos y Cantadas and The Essential Giuliani for Koch, the works of Cozzolani (Gramophone editors pick, August 2002) for Musica Omnia, and Carissimi Motets and Cantatas for Hungaroton. She was awarded finalist in the 2004 Early Music America Medieval/Renaissance Competition, first runner up at the 2000 Bethlehem Bach Vocal Competition, the Adam’s Fellowship at the Carmel Bach Festival, and performed at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan with Nicholas McGegan. Born in San Francisco and a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Guildhall School of Music in London, Jennifer currently lives in Detroit.

Mirko Guadagnini

These performances will be Mirko Guadagnini’s San Francisco debut but he is known to early music fans from his appearance in the title role of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo on La Venexiana’s recording of Monteverdi’s opera, which received the 2008 Grammophone Award for Best Baroque Vocal.

In 2003 he sang for the opening of Teatro La Fenice in Venice with Caldara’s Te Deum led by Riccardo Muti and  in 2004 he made his debut as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte at Teatro Politeama in Lecce, as Oronte in Händel’s Alcina by Händel at Teatro Verdi in Trieste, as Conte in Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Paisiello at Teatro La Fenice in Venice and as Cassio in Otello at Grand Théâtre de Genève. In 2005 he sang Nerone in L’incoronazione di Poppea at Opera de Lyon, conductor William Christie with Les Arts Florissants; in Händel’s Messiah in Florence with Orchestra della Toscana. Mirko made his debut at La Scala in Milan as Goffredo in Rinaldo by Händel, and debuted in the title role of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at Auditorium Verdi in Milan and at Auditorium Nacional de Madrid.

Kiri Tollaksen

Kiri Tollaksen enjoys a varied career as a performer and teacher. Kiri has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe with numerous groups such as Apollo’s Fire, Piffaro, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, New York Collegium, Concerto Palatino, La Fenice, and Tafelmusik. Kiri is a founding member of the ensembles Anaphantasia and Chiaroscuro. As a professional trumpet player, Kiri performs with the River Raisin Ragtime Revue and freelances throughout Michigan.

In addition to being on faculty at the Early Music Institute at Indiana University, Kiri maintains a teaching studio in Ann Arbor, and has taught cornetto at the Amherst Early Music Festival. Kiri holds performing degrees in trumpet from Eastman, Yale, and a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. She has recorded with the Huelgas Ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, Piffaro, La Fenice, The New York Collegium, La Gente d’Orfeo, the River Raisin Ragtime Revue and the Dodworth Saxhorn Band.

Jeffrey Fields

Jeffrey Fields has performed regularly throughout California in concert, oratorio and opera since moving to the Bay Area in 1999. In 1998, he was selected as an Adams Fellow at the Carmel Bach Festival and has had numerous solo appearances there since; he will sing the Monteverdi Vespers at this summer’s festival. He also sings regularly with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and American Bach Soloists.

Jeffrey made his Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah in December 2007. Recent and current engagements include Dvorak’s Stabat Mater in Berkeley, Handel’s Alexander’s Feast at UC Davis under Jeffrey Thomas, Brahms’ Requiem in Palo Alto, San Francisco and Berkeley, Mozart’s Requiem with the Marin Symphony, Orff’s Carmina Burana at Stanford, Handel’s Samson with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Acis and Galatea (Polyphemus) with Berkeley Opera, the title role in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Marin Oratorio, Mendelssohn’s St. Paul in Berkeley, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the Carmel Bach Festival and the Bach Society of St. Louis, the Requiems of Faure and Durufle, Haydn’s Creation in Los Angeles and Carmel, and Bach’s B Minor Mass with the San Francisco Bach Choir. Jeff was a three-time winner of the NATS Central Region auditions. His wide repertoire includes Marcello in Puccini’s La Boheme, Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote, and King Herod in Massenet’s Herodiade, as well as a broad spectrum of concert works, oratorios and art song.

On June 7th, KDFC with present Magnificat’s CD Release Party at Yoshi’s in San Francisco. The event will mark the official release of the first volume of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani’s complete works.

Over the past couple years, “KDFC in the Clubs” has offered Bay Area audiences the chance to hear classical artists performing in a less formal atmosphere. Magnificat will be the first early music ensemble to be presented – and the first to appear at Yoshi’s.

The event will include selections from both volumes of Magnificat’s recordings of the complete works of Cozzolani – some of which we will be performing for the first time. The program will be different from the one Magnificat will perform later in the same week as part of the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition and will include instrumental music by Isabella Leonarda.

Musicians for the Yoshi’s event will include Catherine Wesbter, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Meg Bragle, Jennifer Lane, Elizabeth Anker, Rob Diggins, Jolianne von Einem, David Tayler and Hanneke van Proosdij. We look forward to celebrating the first step in completing the Cozzolani Project with  friends and fans.

Since opening in 1973 as a small, North Berkeley sushi bar owned by a trio of struggling students, Yoshi’s has become one of the world’s most respected jazz venues and won a reputation as the Bay Area’s premier location for people who were looking for great food and the best jazz. Yoshi’s has hosted legendary jazz greats such as Betty Carter, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, Diana Krall, Branford Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Harry Connick Jr. and Oscar Peterson among hundreds of others.

Magnificat has been invited to perform a  program of Cozzolani motets as a featured concert on the Berkeley Early Music Festival and Exhibition this June. The concert will mark the release of the first volume of our recordings of Cozzolani’s complete works. Sopranos Catherine Webster, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, and altos Meg Bragle and Jennifer Lane will join with the continuo team of David Tayler and Hanneke van Proosdij for the concert on Friday June 11 at 8:00 at First Congregational Church in Berkeley.

The program will be drawn from Cozzolani’s 1642 collection Concerti Sacri and will include setting of all four Marian antiphons – Ave regina coelorum, Salve, O regina, Alma redemptoris mater, and Regina caeli, laetare. In addition, Magnificat will perform six of her other motets – Colligite, pueri, flores, O mi domine, Obstupiscite, gentes, Regna terrae cantate Deo, Quid, miseri, quis faciamus and Psallite superi.

Magnificat first appeared on the Festival in it’s inaugural year 1990, in a performance with Marion Verbruggen, and was presented by the San Francisco Early Music Society on the 1996 and 2002. At the most recent Festival in 2008, Magnificat joined with several other Bay Area ensembles in memorable performances of Alessandro Striggio’s Missa sopra ‘Ecco sì beato giorno’ under the direction Davitt Moroney.

Magnificat is grateful to all those who have supported the Cozzolani Project and look forward to sharing more of Donna Chiara’s magnificent music at the Festival. More details will be available soon on Magnificat’s website and this website.

Though musicologists have speculated that Dario Castello probably worked at St. Mark’s and probably played violin and/or cornetto, in fact nothing is known about him beyond his music, which was all published in Venice. The numerous reprints of his sonatas and canzoni as late as 1650 attest to his popularity and influence. We will perform the first of his two part sonatas “in stil moderno” published in 1629.

More is known about Biagio Marini, a virtuoso violinist who composed both vocal and instrumental music. Marini traveled extensively and he held positions in Brussels, Neuburg an der Donau, Düsseldorf, Padua, Parma, Ferrara, Milan, Bergamo, and Brescia in addition to his work in Venice. We will perform two works by Marini: his Capriccio, subtitled “in which two violins play four parts” (a reference to the extensive double-stopping in the fiddle parts), and the sonata La Orlandina from Affetti musicali, published in 1617.

Two of the composers represented served in leadership roles in the St. Mark’s musical establishment. Giovanni Rovetta succeeded Grandi as vice maestro at St. Mark’s and assumed the post of maestro di cappella after Monteverdi’s death in 1641. Rovetta’s only published purely instrumental works are four canzonas included in a motet collection from 1626 and we will be performing the second of these canzani.

Francesco Cavalli was engaged as an organist at St. Mark’s while Grandi was in Venice. He went on to become maestro di cappella after Rovetta’s death. Best known for his many operas, Cavalli was also a prolific and respected composer
of sacred and instrumental music. In 1656, Cavalli published his magesterial collection of Vespers music Musiche Sacrae, which served as the basis for Magnificat’s Christmas concert on the San Francisco Early Music Sopciety series in 1996. The collection includes several instrumental canzon for 3 to 12 parts. We will be performing the first of these canzoni.

Hanneke van Proosdij will play a harpsichord Intavolature by Giovanni Picchi, who was hired as organist at the Venetian church of the Frari in 1607 and from 1623 to his death he was also organist at the confraternity Scuola di San Rocco.

Though he spent time in Venice, Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger is most closely associated with Rome. A prolific and highly original composer, Kapsberger is chiefly remembered today for his music for lute, theorbo and chitarrone, which was seminal in the development of these as solo instruments. David Tayler will perform Kapsberger’s Toccata Arpeggiata, a representative of a genre of lute music published during the first decade of the 17th century that exploits the instrument’s facility for appegiation in a way that reminds me of stile briseè of Gaulthier and Chambonieres.

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.

Like other fine composers doomed to live in the long shadow of a game-changing genius (think Salieri), Grandi has remained a dim figure. “His main problem, ” said Magnificat Artistic Director Warren Stewart by phone, “is the understandable tendency of musical historians to look first at towering figures when they’re rediscovering a period. So the natural focus in early-17th-century Italian music was Monteverdi.” Stewart spoke from Washington, D.C., where he had just attended a Vespers performance at the National Gallery of Art — the second account of the work that week in the city. The towering figures do go on towering.

Grandi, 10 to 15 years younger than Monteverdi, “was talented and prolific before he got to Venice and on an upward career trajectory,” said Stewart. It was there that his and his more illustrious contemporary’s paths crossed, at San Marco Cathedral. In the city’s most important church, Grandi quickly ascended the ranks to become vice maestro to Monteverdi.

According to Steven Saunders, a professor of music at Maine’s Colby College, “evidence suggests that Grandi’s rise in stature under these conditions may have occasioned resistance and event resentment” by Monteverdi, who considered moving back to Mantua. Seen this way, it’s the older Monteverdi who’s cast as the Salieri figure, with Grandi as the fast-rising and threatening Mozart of his day. But fate, not to mention the fact of Monteverdi’s indisputable singularity, had a different hand to deal. After a decade in Venice, Grandi moved on to Bergamo in 1627 and died there in a devastating plague three years later. Monteverdi survived for another 13 years.

Doing Grandi in a Monteverdi year was “a very conscious decision,” said Stewart, who argues that the younger composer’s strophic bass cantatas “employ a variation technique that was immediately imitated by many other Venetian composers, including Monteverdi, in the 1620s.” Citing Grandi’s “very clear tonal sense,” “modern-sounding harmonies,” and a “buoyant and confident musical architecture,” Stewart made a case for even broader influence. “Clearly, [Heinrich] Schutz [German, 1585-1672] learned a lot from Grandi,” he said.

The cantatas on the Magnificat program vary in length from three to six minutes. Brief as they may be, their importance, according to Jeffrey Kurtzman, general editor of a forthcoming complete Grandi edition, “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 sectional organization of the later solo cantata.” Over a repeated continuo bass figure, different vocal melodies, or strophic variations, yield different emphases, cadences, and emotional impact.

Apparently lost in the general neglect of the early Baroque, the pieces survived in manuscripts that had a perilous history of their own. First published in 1620, Grandi’s Cantade et arie a voce sola survived into the 20th century, as far as musicologists knew, only in a copy at Breslau’s University Library. In the Russian siege of that German city in 1945, the library was hit and some of the music collection set on fire. The Grandi collection was not among those works librarians managed to save by tossing them into an adjacent river. A largely impenetrable transcription of the manuscript, by the musicologist Alfred Einstein, remained at Smith College in Massachusetts.

That appeared to be the end of the trail until 2008, when a copy of Grandi’s published cantatas and other solo vocal works came to light from a huge private collection in Spain. Dinko Fabris, an Italian scholar and lute player, explained the discovery in a message to the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

“Some twenty years ago,” recalled Fabris, “I visited for the first time in Seville my good friend Señor Rodrigo de Zayas and I saw in his marvelous private library (30,000 volumes), among other treasures, the only surviving copy of the [Grandi] book.” Respecting his “obligations to the discretion” of the collector, Fabris kept silent. Many years later, after moving to Madrid, de Zayas decided to authorize publication of an edition by the Royaumont Foundation in France. A modern-day Grandi “premiere” concert was mounted in Royaumont in fall 2008.

The three cantatas and two other “new” Grandi vocal works on the February program here came to Magnificat from a transcription prepared by a Ph.D. student in Rome, Giulia Giovani, of yet another scholar, Agostino Ziino, who apparently knew of the Spanish collection’s Grandi treasure even before Fabris. Kurtzman, who is a Magnificat advisory board member as well the Grandi edition editor, served as the conduit.

One way or another, some four centuries later, Grandi was destined to find his way back into live performance. Pleased as he is to be a newsmaker, Stewart is just as excited — probably more so — to give the full range of Grandi’s music the attention it deserves. After a pretty thorough discussion of Grandi by phone, the Magnificat director kept thinking of more things he wanted to say about the composer.

In an effusive e-mail, Stewart limned Grandi’s originality and innovations. “He was among the first to include violins in solo vocal music, specifically in his motets. He integrated the violins (always a pair) in a variety of ways — with ritornelli as well as in more thorough-going dialogue with the voice.” The violin writing in the motets, Stewart added, “is fluid and idiomatic” and undoubtedly responsive to “the talented instrumentalists with whom he worked at San Marco.”

Being all but for forgotten for 400 years, it seems, has its own rewards. The pleasures of rediscovery are all that much keener.