An Inventory of Choirbooks At S. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, January 1628

Extract

Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo was one of the principal churches at which music was made in early seventeenth-century northern Italy. It had built up a considerable reputation in the sixteenth century which was continued into the next under a succession of prominent musicians, the most important of whom was Alessandro Grandi. He occupied the post of maestro from 1627 to 1630, and, as with every newly appointed choirmaster, the choir's accumulated repertory was formally consigned to him. The documents of consignment are preserved in a volume marked Inventarium (LXXIX-1) in the archives of the Misericordia Maggiore, which ran the church. I now print below the inventory that Grandi signed in 1628 – the first one of the seventeenth century; it is on ff. 129v-130 of the Inventarium. I have set it out unedited in the layout in which it appears there.