O del gran Redentor madre e bella from Bill Cunningham on Vimeo.

Silentium tenebant from Bill Cunningham on Vimeo.

Hodie salvator mundi from Bill Cunningham on Vimeo.

Surgamus, eamus from Bill Cunningham on Vimeo.

Annuntiate Gentes from Bill Cunningham on Vimeo.

Gran Tesoro de' mortali from Bill Cunningham on Vimeo.

Here are pieces from two of our performances for your listening pleasure.  The second piece is courtesy of Naxos Digital Services Ltd.  All rights reserved.

Giacomo or rather,  the name “Jacomo” is to be found written on the baptism certificate in Marino, a small town in the southern hills ouside of Rome where Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674) was born and raised. 

Anything concerning his adolescent life or early music training would be purely speculative, since the first concrete information available to us is his first appointment as cantor at Tivoli from 1623 to 1627, later named organist in 1625 till 1627. Carissimi went north to Assisi where he was appointed organist-choirmaster in the Cathedral Church of San Ruffino from 1628 to 1629.   

Don Bernardino Castoro, rector of the Collegio Germanico in Rome, asked Carissimi to come and take the place of Lorenzo Ratti as organist-choirmaster of the already musically prestigious Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare. Carissimi continued to maintain the excellence in church music at Sant’ Apollinare and this soon came to the attention of many. It was on July 18, 1656 that the Queen Cristina of Sweden, who resided in Rome as of 1655, appointed Carissimi as her Maestro di cappella del Concerto da Camera. 

In this intense period of the counter-reformation, the Arciconfraternita del Santissimo Crocifisso and the Oratory at San Marcello al Corso permitted fine composers (including Carissmi) to have their compositions performed for the first time.  

In addition to his duties at the Collegio Germanico, Carissimi also taught composition privately. Musicians such as J.K. Kerll (Vienna), Phillip Jacob Baudrexel (Kempten); Christoph Bernhard, (Dresden); M.A. Charpentier (Paris) came to Rome to study composition with Carissimi. On November 29, 1643, Venice mourned the loss of Claudio Monteverdi and on the December 5 the post as organist-choirmaster was offered to “Jacomo” (as he often signed his correspondence). He turned it down and Giovanni Rovetta was soon later made successor. 

Carissimi was also offered to serve the Court of the Archduke Leopold William in Brussels. This offer too, he declined. It was in the Collegio Germanico and Sant’Apollinare where “Jacomo” remained active as musician and composer until his death on January 12, 1674. This college, to which he intentionally left this great patrimony of sacred (and probably secular) music, obtained a letter from Pope Clemens X which prohibited under pain of excommunication, the removal or loaning of these manuscripts from the College. 

Today, unfortunately not one autograph manuscript is to be found in Sant’Apollinare. The first attempt to seriously search for them was done by Pietro Alfieri (1801-1863) who published his findings in the Gazzetta musicale di Milano in 1851 and again in 1855.

Alfieri concluded that the suppression of the Society of Jesus caused an enormous upheaval at the College, where the manuscripts were most likely sold as waste paper to the cheese mongers at the Campo de’ fiori open market. 

The French occupation in Rome also caused the pillaging of many archives which contained this sacred music. Already in 1851, Alfieri underscores the fact that those manuscripts which survive are due to the enthusiasm and diligence of those who were students of Carissimi, and to those scholars who came to Italy and collected music.

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