La Cappella Musicale Di Santa Maria Maggiore a Bergamo Dal 1657 Al 1810

From its very creation the musical chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo was always one of the most outstanding of the North-Italian ecclesiastical institutions. Among the maestri di cappella there were musicians of the calibre of Gasparo de Albertis, Pietro Vinci, Ippolito Camatero, Giovanni Cavaccio, Maurizio Cazzati and Giovanni Battista Bassani to mention just a few. To these we should certainly add two illustrious organists: Giovanni Battista Quaglia and Giovanni Legrenzi. Inevitably the presence of these important composers has generated a series of important studies, all of which focus on the 16th- and early 17th-century history of the chapel. The following periods, however, have been substantially overlooked by modern research, or at most approached merely with reference to Johann Simon Mayr and his pupil Donizetti. Paola Palermo and Giulia Pecis Cavagnas book, which aims to fill this large gap, examines the period ranging from 1657, the year of Cazzatis departure, to 1810, by when Mayr had been maestro for some time. An impressive array of documents all of which can be consulted on a CD-Rom attached to the volume help to reconstruct not only the activities of this important institution (with its various maestri, regular members and temporary collaborators), but also the churchs liturgy, an aspect which naturally had a close bearing on the chapels functions. Liturgical aspects are also discussed in Rodobaldo Tibaldis afterword, which assesses the chapels individual features and repertoires against the broader context of the North-Italian chapels from the latter half of the 16th century to the end of the 18th. The book comes with a valuable appendix listing all the musicians (salaried and otherwise) associated with the chapel and mentioned in the documents.