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Alessandro Grandi
1575 - June 1630
composed during the Baroque period
Biography
Alessandro Grandi is considered by many the most important Italian composer, after Monteverdi, from the first half of the sixteenth century. He is best known for his church music, secular cantatas, and arias.

Grandi may have been born in Ferrara or in the vicinity of Venice, but almost certainly not in Sicily as once claimed. Not much is known about his early years, but his activities began to emerge more clearly as the seventeenth century approached: between the late 1590s (1597-1600) and 1617 he held at least four positions of note.

The first (maestro di cappella) was at a religious fraternity in Ferrara, the Accademia della Morte, while the second, at San Marco Church in Venice, was as giovane di coro, beginning around 1605; the third (maestro di cappella), beginning in 1609-1610, at the Accademia dello Spirito Santo, another religious fraternity in Ferrara; and the final one (maestro di cappella) was at the Ferrara Cathedral, from 1615 to 1617.

In the midst of this activity Grandi published his first volume of motets (1610). The influence of Gabrieli (a composer whose music helped shape Grandi's writing style) is most noticeable in the Mass setting contained in this initial effort.