Il primo libro de motetti a due, tre, quattro, cinque, & otto voci, con una Messa à Quattro (1610) ed. by Dennis Collins & Steven Saunders (review)

Abstract

THE FIRST VOLUME IN THE GRANDI EDITIONAlessandro Grandi. Il primo libro de motetti a due, tre, quattro, cinque, & otto voci, con una Messa a Quattro (1610). Edidunt Dennis Collins & Steven Saunders. (Alessandro Grandi Opera Omnia, I.) (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 112.) Munster: American Institute of Musicology, 2011. [Abbrevs., p. ix; acknowledgements, p. x; introd., p. xi-xxxiv; sources, p. xxxv-xxxvii; editorial methods, p. xxxix-xlii; crit. report, p. xliii-lvi; 2 plates; score, p. 3-137. ISBN-10 1-59551-503-8, ISBN-13 978-1-59551-503-2. $110.]The North Italian composer Alessandro Grandi (ca. 1585-1630) has long been recognized as a highly significant figure, albeit one whose music has been largely unavailable in modern editions. His reputation is based on the good press he has received from scholars such as Denis Arnold, Jerome Roche, James Moore, Martin Seelkopf, Jeffrey Kurtzman, and Roark Miller, rather than on any real knowledge of his music, a few select pieces apart. The appearance of this first volume of a projected opera omnia, published in the American Institute of Musicology's Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae series, is thus extremely welcome. Under the watchful eyes of general editor Jeffrey Kurtzman, volume coeditors Robert Kendrick, Dennis Collins, and Steven Saunders have started the process with Grandi's Il primo libro de motetti of 1610. Given that he was a very prolific composer with over twenty sole-author publications involving motets, Masses, psalms, and madrigals, plus works in various anthologies, this is a major undertaking, and the institute and its director Paul Ranzini are to be congratulated in taking it forward.Grandi's first publication contained twenty motets, as well as a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass. It also included a motet, Quae est ista, by Alvise Grani, a trombone player at S. Marco in Venice, and the editor of Giovanni Gabrieli's 1615 Symphoniae sacrae. Including a piece by another composer was not unusual, and indicates some sort of relationship between the two, though the editors here do not speculate as to what that might have been. By the time Grandi published this volume he had already spent about three years as a singer in S. Marco, before returning to Ferrara where he had earlier had an appointment. Grani's motet is included here in an appendix in two versions: one at original pitch and the other transposed a fifth lower, since the piece's clefs fit into the chiavette or high-clef combination (using the F3 clef for the bass). The only one of Grandi's own pieces with an analogous clef configuration (with a C4 clef in the bass) is also given in its original form in the appendix, while the transposed version is included in the body of the volume. All of the other pieces use chiavi naturali.Of the twenty motets, six are for two voices, five for three, and seven for four. There also are single pieces for five and eight voices, while the final Mass Ordinary setting is for four, though with considerable sections to be sung by two and three voices. All have a basso continuo part, given without realization in this edition. The twovoice motets are mainly for two sopranos or two tenors; those for three voices use various combinations; while the four-voice pieces favor the adult male ATTB combination, also used for the Mass. The eight-voice setting of the Marian text, Nativitas tua, is for two equally-cleffed choirs. The most texturally-varied piece here is the five-voice Missus est Gabriel Archangelus, set as an extended Annunciation dialog between a narrator (Texto), Gabriel, and Mary, with a pair of sopranos labelled far away and hidden who sing the phrase Tota pulchra es, Maria twelve times, presumably representing a choir of angels. The piece ends with a five-voice commenting chorus in which the characters lose their individuality. The text is compiled from a variety of mainly biblical sources, while the extended dialog, or mini-oratorio, format suggests that it might have been written for one of the two Ferrarese confraternities at which Grandi worked as maestro di cappella: the Accademia dello Spirito Santo, or the Accademia della Morte. …