Lodovico Grossi da Viadana (usually Lodovico Viadana, though his family name was Grossi; c. 1560 – 2 May 1627) was an Italian composer, teacher, and

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

friar of the

Order of Friars Minor Observants The Order of Friars Minor (also called the Franciscans, the Franciscan Order, or the Seraphic Order; postnominal abbreviation OFM) is a mendicant Catholic religious order, founded in 1209 by Francis of Assisi. The order adheres to the teachi ...

. He was the first significant figure to make use of the newly developed technique of

figured bass Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below (or next to) a bass note. The numerals and symbols (often accidentals) indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsi ...

, one of the musical devices which was to define the end of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

and beginning of the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

eras in music.

Life

He was born in

Viadana Viadana may refer to: Surname * Lodovico Grossi da Viadana (c. 1560 – 1627), Italian composer, teacher, and Franciscan friar * Gilberto Viadana (born 1973), Italian figure skater Other * Viadana, Lombardy, a town in the province of Mantua, Lom ...

, a town in the province of

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

(Italy). According to a document dating from about 150 years after his death, he was a member of the Grossi family but took the name of his birth city, Viadana, when he entered the order of the Minor Observants prior to 1588. Though there is no contemporary evidence, it has been claimed that he studied with

Costanzo Porta Costanzo Porta (1528 or 1529 – 19 May 1601) was an Italian composer of the Renaissance, and a representative of what is known today as the Venetian School. He was highly praised throughout his life both as a composer and a teacher, and had ...

, becoming choirmaster at the cathedral in Mantua by 1594. In 1597 he went to Rome, and in 1602 he became choirmaster at the cathedral of San Luca in Mantua. He held a succession of posts at various cathedrals in Italy, including Concordia (near Venice), and

Fano Fano is a town and ''comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the '' Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by po ...

, on the east coast of Italy, where he was ''maestro di cappella'' from 1610 to 1612. For three years, from 1614 to 1617, he held a position in his religious order which covered the entire

province of Bologna The province of Bologna ( it, provincia di Bologna) was a province in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Its provincial capital was the city of Bologna. The province of Bologna covered an area of and had a total population of 1,004,323 inhabitan ...

(including

Ferrara Ferrara (, ; egl, Fràra ) is a city and ''comune'' in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital of the Province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream ...

, Mantua and

Piacenza Piacenza (; egl, label= Piacentino, Piaṡëinsa ; ) is a city and in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, and the capital of the eponymous province. As of 2022, Piacenza is the ninth largest city in the region by population, with over ...

). By 1623 he had moved to

Busseto Busseto ( Bussetano: ; Parmigiano: ) is a ''comune'' in the province of Parma, in Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy with a population of about 7,100. Its history has very ancient roots which date back to the 10th century, and for almost five hundre ...

, and later he worked at the convent of Santa Andrea, in Gualtieri, near Parma. He died in Gualtieri.

Music and significance

Viadana is important in the development of the early

technique of

basso continuo Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing th ...

, and its notational method, known as

. While he did not invent the method—figured basses occur in published sources from at least as early as 1597—he was the first to use it in a widely distributed collection of sacred music (''Cento concerti con il basso continuo''), which he published in Venice in 1602.

Agostino Agazzari Agostino Agazzari (2 December 1578 – 10 April 1640) was an Italian composer and music theorist. Life Agazzari was born in Siena to an aristocratic family. After working in Rome, as a teacher at the Roman College, he returned to Siena in 1607, b ...

in 1607 published a treatise describing how to interpret the new figured bass, though it is clear that many performers had by this time already learned the new method, at least in the most progressive musical centers in Italy.

References

Sources * *

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Viadana, Lodovico Grossi da 1560s births 1627 deaths Classical composers of church music Renaissance composers 17th-century Italian composers Italian Baroque composers Italian male classical composers Italian music theorists Italian Friars Minor Clergy from the Province of Mantua Musicians from the Province of Mantua 17th-century male musicians

Life

Music and significance

References

Further reading

External links