In February, 2010,
Magnificat will present concerts of music by Alessandro Grandi, a prolific and highly respected North Italian composer, who had languished under the shadow of Monteverdi for four centuries. In particular, Grandi was one of the first composers to integrate obbligato instrumental music with monody in the genre that eventually developed into the cantata. He worked first in Ferrara and then for several years he was vice-maestro di capella at San Marco under Claudio Monteverdi. In 1627 he accepted a position at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo where sadly he succumbed to the plague of 1630.
There is little information available about Grandi available on the web beyond what you can find on wikipedia and few of Grandi’s compositions have been published in modern editions, but this unfortunately situation will be rectified by the forthcoming publication of the composer’s complete works by the
American Institute of Musicology.
Steven Saunders, Dana Professor of Music Colby College and one of the editors of the complete works has graciously granted Magnificat permission to post the biography of Grandi that he has written that will appear in in that publication. This article is a comprehensive overview of work begun by Jerome Roche in the 80s and continued on by a variety of scholars who are involved in the forthcoming complete works edition.
A Biographical Essay of Alessandro Grandi
(By the way the image found in the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Grandi"]Wikipedia Article[/ame] and elsewhere on the web is
not the Alessandro Grandi under consideration here, but rather another, even more obscure, composer named Alessandro Grandi who lived and worked in Ravenna in the second half of the 17th century. Some day I'll figure out how to correct the Wikipedia article.)
26-08-09, 10:43 PM
Alessandro Grandi
