Last weekend Magnificat completed our 18th season with three performances of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in three beautiful venues for three large and appreciate audiences. We still have performances at the Berkeley Festival and a CD release party at Yoshi’s in June, but it is a good time to reflect on what has been Magnificat’s most successful and regarding season yet. Above all, we thank the musicians (full list below) who devoted so much love, devotion and talent to each of Magnificat’s projects this season.
The primary focus of our concerts this weekend is the music of Alessandro Grandi, including the modern premieres of the first cantatas from his 1620 collection Cantade et Arie a voce sola. We will also be playing instrumental music by several composers associated with Venice during Grandi’s tenure at St. Mark’s. It turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to re-visit some old "friends" like Cavalli's extraordinary Canzon a 3 from Musiche sacrae, and some music that's "new" to Magnificat.
Though musicologists have speculated that Dario Castello probably worked at St. Mark's and probably played violin and/or cornetto, in fact nothing Read More...
The three works in Grandi’s Cantade et Arie a voce sola of 1620 that bear the designation of “cantata” are all constructed using the technique that musicologists now categorize as “strophic bass” cantatas. In its classic form as represented in these pieces, the same bass line is used for each stanza of a strophic poem with varying melodies in the vocal part.
San Francisco Classical Voice posted the following excellent preview by Steven Winn of Magnificat's upcoming concerts featuring the music of Alessandro Grandi. The original post is here.
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 Read More...
In 1620 Alessandro Grandi, published a second edition of his ground-breaking Cantade et Arie a voce sola. The first edition has long been lost. The importance of this collection of secular pieces 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 the sectional organization of the later solo cantata.
Like most I suspect, when I think of Venice I imagine a sun-baked Piazza of San Marco, but of course winter visits Venice each year and it seems that before the advent of modern heating, the experience was particularly brutal. In his engaging journals recounting his three years in Venice during the 1860s, W.D. Powell describes the attitude of the locals to winter:
"The Venetians pretend that many of the late winters have been much severer than those of former years, but I think this pretense has less support in fact than in the custom of mankind everywhere to claim that Read More...
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 Read More...
Magnificat's February 12-14 concerts will feature soprano Laura Heimes in a recital of songs, cantatas and motets by Alessandro Grandi. Laura most recently sang with Magnificat in a program of Charpentier divertissements in October 2008. Her first appearances with Magnificat were in September 2005 in a program featuring setting's of Guarini's Il Pastor Fido.
Magnificat audience's will especially remember her captivating performances in the title role of Stradella's La Susanna in 2007. The San Francisco Classical Voice described her performance and the audience's response in glowing terms:
"Soprano Laura Heimes alone was worth the price of a ticket. Her clear, expressive sound Read More...
Alessandro Grandi (c. 1586-1630) was associated first with the Accademia della Morte, Ferrara, then as a singer and vice maestro under Monteverdi at St Mark’s Venice. In 1627, he became maestro of S. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, where he died of plague in 1630.