Leandro Gallerano: Ecclesiastici Armonia de Concerti Libro Primo (1624)

A native of Brescia, Leandro Gallerano’s precise birth year remains a mystery.  Most of his life details can be gleaned from the prefaces of his printed music.  As a young man he became a monk, a member of the Observants order.  By 1615 he was the organist at the convent of San Francesco in Bergamo, followed by a similar position at the convent of San Francesco in Brescia in 1620.  In 1623 he became Maestro di capella at the Basilica of San Antonio in Padua.  It is assumed he died in 1631 because someone else succeeded him at this post then, and no more new music of his appeared in print. 

For someone who is so obscure in the world of early 17th century Italian music, a surprising amount of printed volumes came to light.  Between 1615 and 1629 eleven collections appeared, all printed in Venice.  Only one volume contains secular songs; the rest consist of Mass settings, psalm settings, motets for small groups and basso continuo (as in this volume,) and an impressive Vespers setting from 1629 which has been examined in detail by Dr. Richard Robbins in his 2010 dissertation (see Bibliography in Appendix C.)  Some of Gallerano’s music exhibits stile antico characteristics, while other compositions utilize the modern concertato style.  All require basso continuo, and some motets add obbligato violin and trombone parts.  As Jerome Roche states in his article for New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), such colorful scoring was still novel in provincial church music, and thus shows an innovative composer keen to use the latest techniques in his treatment of sacred texts.