Stefano Bernardi

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Aliases: Steffano Bernardi

Life

Born: c. 1585, Verona, Italia

Died: 1636, ?Salzburg

Biography:
Italian composer and theorist. In his early years he sang under Baccusi at Verona Cathedral and was a chaplain there in 1603. He spent a period in Rome, where at least in 1610 he was maestro di cappella of the church of the Madonna dei Monti. He returned to Verona in April 1611 to take up a similar post at the cathedral and was also associated with the music at the Accademia Filarmonica there, at least in 1616. He left in 1622 to become a musician in the service of Archduke Carl Joseph, Bishop of Breslau and Bressanone, after whose death in 1624 he settled at Salzburg for at least ten years. He was involved in the music for the consecration of Salzburg Cathedral in 1628: he wrote a Te Deum for 12 choirs and a dramatic work, which does not survive. He became a Doctor of Law in 1627.

Although he was primarily a church composer, Bernardi wrote a good deal of secular music, and a few of his volumes of vocal music include at the back a number of instrumental works. He published his counterpoint treatise when he was hovering on the brink of the new concertato style while still adhering to a traditional polyphonic idiom. The dichotomy between old and new is typified in the exactly contemporary 1615 collection of masses, some of which are a cappella and some concertato. The former are in a kind of watered-down post-Palestrinian idiom, fluent and occasionally expressive; one is based on Arcadelt’s famous Il bianco e dolce cigno, then almost 80 years old – a testimony to that madrigal’s incredible popularity. Bernardi had, however, already espoused the concertato principle in the motets and psalms of 1613. In some of the former there are contrasting solo and tutti sections (though otherwise they are pale and inexpressive works), and the psalms are among the earliest to include such contrasts of texture, which an organ continuo made possible. Other psalm and mass collections by him are in a conventional stile antico, whether double choirs are used or not. But in a late volume, the Salmi concertati of 1637, he returned to the concertato manner: most interestingly he singled out only one soloist, a soprano, in all the psalms, while punctuating the solos with a four-part ripieno singing excitingly rhythmic, contrapuntal music. It is as if the solo concerto had already arrived, even if thematic integration had yet to be worked out. A number of the motets in the 1621 collection have parts for instruments, including cornett, lute and theorbo as well as the more common violins and trombones. The 1634 volume contains three dialogues.

Bernardi’s instrumental works are for three to six players and continuo. Their style renders them adaptable to various combinations, as is suggested on the title-page of the Madrigaletti of 1621. In the six-part works in the Concerti academici of 1616 Bernardi made the top two parts more agile, perhaps with violins in mind. His three volumes of five-part madrigals show the transition from unaccompanied to concertato texture: the first book recalls early Monteverdi with its attention to word-painting and its rich scoring, though the writing is often syllabic; the second book introduces a continuo, but only as a gesture to taste, for the textures are not very varied. Bernardi made an interesting contribution to the delicate art of the madrigaletto in the three-part volume of 1611 as well as that of 1621. The former was published in Rome while he was living there and lacks a continuo; its contents were perhaps directed towards the amateur market that Marenzio had supplied with just this sort of music in the 1580s. The collection ends with a ‘peasants’ masquerade’ in six parts.

View the Wikipedia article on Stefano Bernardi.

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