1577–1630 · Baroque
Alessandro Grandi was an Italian composer active in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, an assistant to Claudio Monteverdi at the Basilica of St Mark's in Venice. His output ranges from motets and psalm settings to madrigals and cantatas, and he was one of the best-known Italian musicians of his generation. The site offers his choral score "Litania".
Alessandro Grandi belonged to a generation of northern Italian composers of the early Baroque era. Some sources also spell his name Alessandro de Grandi. Writing in the then-new stile concertato — literally the "concerted" style — he was one of the era's most inventive, influential and popular composers, probably second only to Claudio Monteverdi in northern Italy. Formally, Grandi remained a subject of the Republic of Venice throughout his life.
He studied composition in Venice with the local master Giovanni Gabrieli. Sources also name Giovanni Croce among his teachers. In modern classifications, his music is placed within the Baroque era.
After the years spent with his Venetian teachers, Grandi left Venice for a long time: for quite a while he lived and worked in Ferrara. There he led the choirs of two city confraternities — the Accademia della Morte and the Accademia Santo Spirito — and also served at local cathedrals. These were years when, alongside his everyday duties as maestro di cappella, he kept composing his own music.
In 1610 his first printed collection — a book of motets — appeared in Ferrara.
In 1617 Grandi returned to Venice and took a place in the singing chapel of the Basilica of St Mark's. In those years the chapel was led by Claudio Monteverdi. In time, Grandi became his assistant. Formally, he was taken on at the chapel specifically as a singer, not as a staff composer.
It seems Grandi deliberately chose to write in the smaller forms which Monteverdi himself was largely neglecting during these years. During his service at St Mark's he wrote a number of works in these smaller forms and published several collections of his own.
After ten years at St Mark's, in 1627 Grandi changed cities again: he moved to Bergamo and took charge of the choir of Santa Maria Maggiore Cathedral. It seems what drew him there was the chance to build up the cathedral's musical life almost from scratch.
In Bergamo Grandi met Heinrich Schütz, who was then visiting Italy for the second time. For the Bergamo cathedral he wrote three cantatas; the first of them was performed in 1629.
Grandi did not get to work in his new post for long. Already in 1630, three years after moving to Bergamo, he died during the plague outbreak that gripped Europe at the time. The Bergamo post remained his last.
Grandi's entire creative life spanned roughly twenty years: from his first collection of motets, published in Ferrara in 1610, to the cantatas written in Bergamo shortly before his death in 1630.
During his lifetime Grandi's music was printed not only in Italy but also in Germany and the Low Countries, and it kept being reissued long after he died. He was one of the most sought-after composers of the age — a sign of how widely his music was heard, both at the time and among later generations of musicians.
Grandi's legacy includes motets, psalm settings, madrigals and cantatas — genres he worked in throughout his creative life, from his first years in Ferrara to his last years in Bergamo.
Historians of music see Grandi's music as one of the links between the stile concertato with which the Baroque era began and the cantata genre, which later flourished in the work of Bach. Although harmonically Grandi was not as bold as, for example, Gesualdo, his works remain part of the same tradition and, in the view of scholars, were almost as influential as Monteverdi's music.
He also wrote monodies accompanied by instruments such as violins, and built the form of a work so that vocal episodes alternated with repeating, purely instrumental sections. This device later developed into the ritornello form, important for the Baroque cantata.
For the history of music Grandi is interesting precisely for this position at the junction of eras: some of his innovations later became part of the common language of Baroque music.
Throughout his life Grandi studied and worked alongside notable musicians of his time — first Giovanni Gabrieli and Giovanni Croce in Venice, then Claudio Monteverdi at the Basilica of St Mark's, and finally Heinrich Schütz in Bergamo.
Almost everything Grandi wrote is vocal music with instrumental accompaniment. His early works are close in style to the music of his teacher, Giovanni Gabrieli: short episodes of contrasting rhythm and texture follow one another quickly, though Grandi himself usually wrote for smaller forces. Most of his early works are motets in the then-new stile concertato, including duets and trios: at the time this was an innovation, since motets were usually written for larger ensembles.
Grandi was one of the few composers of the early 17th century who, alongside monodies, continued to write polyphonic vocal music with a basso continuo part, while most of his contemporaries preferred monodies or a simpler, homophonic texture.
Contemporaries considered Grandi's music exceptionally emotional. In some works he experimented with expressive devices unusual for the time — sharp chromaticism and pronounced ornamentation.
During his lifetime Grandi was published not only in Italy but also in Germany and the Low Countries, and his collections continued to be reprinted long after the composer's death — a rare mark of recognition for the time.
Grandi's creative legacy includes motets, psalm settings, madrigals and cantatas. Some of his works are counted by historians among the earliest compositions that contemporaries began calling "cantata".
The site currently offers one work by Grandi — the choral score "Litania" at an intermediate level. The score is written for choir, so it suits choral classes rather than solo piano classes, but it gives a good sense of Grandi's music overall. It is worth starting an acquaintance with his work here, since no other editions by this composer are on the site yet.
Contemporaries did not call Grandi one of the most inventive composers of his time for nothing: he was among the first to use duets and trios in motets, kept writing polyphonic music with basso continuo when almost everyone around him preferred monody, and experimented with instrumental accompaniment unusual for the era.