Pietro Lappi

Pietro Lappi
(b Florence, c1575; d Brescia, 1630). Italian composer. He became a member of the Congregazione Fiesolana, a religious order, and spent his working life as maestro di cappella of the Madonna delle Grazie, Brescia, from about 1593 until his death.

His works, whether vocal or instrumental, are all for church use. They span the period of transition from the polyphonic to the concertato style, though he tended to adhere to the former, and only one or two of his collections include motets for the more intimate scorings of the new style. Working in Brescia he was in contact with the school of instrumental musicians and instrument makers that flourished in that city. He produced a volume of canzonas in 1616 as well as contributing three others to an anthology of 1608 and including six sinfonias in his own 1614 motet collection. Like several composers at this period he sought to demonstrate his mastery of both old and new styles in the same publication: the masses of 1613 comprise two which can be sung without organ and three ‘concertate a voci sole nell’organo’. The latter have more quaver movement, chordal writing and dotted rhythms in melismatic solos. The motets of 1614 show that Lappi was concerned with problems of musical form, trying out ternary and rondo schemes, with alternating solos and tuttis, while the Compline music for three and four choirs (1621) fuses antiphonal writing with the new ripieno concept of the mixed concertato. But the hymns of 1628 hark back to the previous century: he set alternate verses only and paraphrased the plainsong in a polyphonic idiom, and only the last verse of each setting is in a simple chordal style in triple time.