Alexander [Alessandro]  Merlo [Merulis]  {Pius IV-Clement VIII}

Bass; Rome; brother of Giovanni Antonio  Merlo; in the Cappella Giulia (beginning as a soprano puer, February, 1553-January, 1555; October 1560-May 1561 as a tenor); admitted 12 December 1561 along with Cristóbal de Oggeda with 18 votes in favor (his brother noted proudly in his diary that Alessandro had received more votes than were required for acceptance);  mandati : January 1562-October 1571 (see mandati  910, fol. 27v for a special payment for December 1561); list of 1573; January 1580-May 1583; March 1584-November 1586;  DS  lists of 1587-1589;  died  in Rome on 22 April 1601 and a funeral Mass was celebrated in Santa Maria in Vallicella on 30 April.

On 10 March 1574, the same day that Federigo Lagisio asked to be allowed to retire from the chapel on full salary claiming old age as the reason, Merlo requested the same permission claiming illness as the cause. This is a period for which there are no  mandati  lists, but Merlo is not mentioned among the regular singers in  DS  lists in 1577 and 1578, yet is in the  mandati  lists of 1580 as an active singer. This suggests that the "retirement" was short lived. On 30 October 1585, Merlo was briefly dismissed from the choir by papal order along with other singers, but was reinstated in November (this apparently was punishment for being involved in a plot to make Palestrina the  maestro di cappella , see discussion on p.). Giustiniani in his  Discorso sopra la musica , states that Merlo, along with Giovanni Andrea Napolitano and Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, was a virtuoso bass singer with a range of 22 notes (3 octaves); this may explain Merlo's designation as "Tenor" in the Cappella Giulia in 1560 and in the Cappella Sistina list of 1573.

I must agree with  ROSTIROLLA  that Merlo cannot be identical with the composer called Alessandro Romano whose first publication appeared when Merlo was a boy singer in the Cappella Giulia ( La Vergine con la gionta di alcuni altri madrigali  [Venice:Scotto, 1554]), nor could he possibly be the Alessandro Romano who was the  maestro di musica  at the Accademia Filarmonica of Veona in 1553 and again in 1566 (when Alessandro Merlo and his brother are both listed as living in their mother's house in Rome see p.000). The origin of the confusion appears to have been Giuseppe Baini, who refers to ‘Alessandro Merlo Romano detto della Viola’ as a composer, thereby conflating Merlo with the ‘Alessandro Romano della Viola’ whom ADAMI had erroneously listed as entering the papal chapel in 1560 (ADAMI lists Merlo as a separate singer). This identification was accepted by CELANI and followed by modern scholars (e. g. Claudio Sartori in MGG, Patricia Meyers in TNG). The dictionaries of Pitoni, Gerber, Fétis, Eitner, and Grove1 do not make the conflation.

 

DOCUMENTS

DS 6

40r: entry dated 12 December 1561 [FREY, p. 170]

Alexander Merlus habuit vota 18.a

41v: entry dated 20 December 1561 [FREY, p. 172]

Rev.dus D. sacrista una cum cantoribus congregatis dedit cotas Cristofaro de Ogeda et Alexandro Merlo in camera ipsius sacriste.

41v: entry dated 22 December 1561 [FREY 173]

Alexander Merlus solvit sua regalia ducatos 12 de camera.

VatS 651

2v [SHERR (1985), p. 83]

In Nomine Domini Amen

Addì 12 de decembre 1561 Alessandro mio fratello fu votato dalli cantori de Nostro Signore et hebbbegli a sufficentia quanti bisogniavano et de più.

Addì 20 de decembre 1561, Alessandro Merlo mio fratello fu recevuto in Cappella de Sua Santità per suo cantore, Die sabbati.

 DS  10

56r: entry dated 10 March 1574

See Lagisio.

DS 14

24v: entry dated 30 October 1585

See Conforti

 

27r: entry dated 22 November 1585

See Conforti

 

From Vincenzo Giustiniani's  Discorso sopra la musica  (ca. 1628) [NEWCOMB, p. 48]

L'anno santo 1575 o poco dopo si cominciò in modo di cantare molto diverso da quello si primo, e così per alcuni anni seguenti, massime nel modo di cantare con una voce sola sopra un istromento, con l'esempio d'un Gio. Andrea napolitano, e del sig. Giulio Cesare Brancaccio e d'Allessandro Merlo romano, che cantavano un basso nella larghezza dello spazio di 22 voci, con varietà di passaggi nuovi e grati all'orecchie di tutti.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: ADAMI, Andrea. Osservazioni per ben reggolare il coro dei cantori della Cappella Pontificia (Rome, 1711), pp. 174-175; BAINI, Giuseppe. Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Rome, 1828), vol. I, p. 21; CELANI, p. 754; FREY, Di Diarien, pp. 149-150, 170-173;  ROSTIROLLA, Giancarlo. "La Cappella Giulia in San Pietro negli anni del magistero di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina." In LUISI, Francesco, ed.  Atti del Convegno di Studi Palestriniani  (Palestrina, 1977), pp. 154-155; MACCLINTOCK, Carol , trans.  Vincenzo Giustiniani: Discorso sopra la musica , Musicological Studies and Documents 9, American Institute of Musicology, 1962, p. 69;   SHERR, Richard. "From the Diary of a 16th-Century Papal Singer." Current Musicology  25 (1978): 83-98; NEWCOMB, Anthony. The Madrigal at Ferrara 1579-1597, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1980);  SHERR, Richard. "The Diary of the Papal Singer Giovanni Antonio Merlo." Analecta Musicologica  23 (1985): 75-128.