Prof. Giovanni Acciai

Biography

Unanimously recognised as one of the foremost interpreters of the Renaissance and Baroque vocal repertoire, Giovanni Acciai graduated in Organ, Composition and Choral Conducting and specialised in Palaeography and Musical Philology at the University of Pavia. He is Professor Emeritus of Musical Palaeography on the Musicology course at the ‘Giuseppe Verdi’ Conservatoire in Milan.

In 1982, he won the competition organised by the "Rossini Foundation" in Pesaro to produce a critical edition of Gioacchino Rossini’s Messa di Gloria, for soloists, choir and orchestra (Naples, 1820), which was published by Casa Ricordi.

Former editor of the vocal music journal La Cartellina, founded by Roberto Goitre, and of L’Offerta musicale, he has to his credit numerous musical revisions, musicological essays and translations, a list of which can be consulted on the website www.giovanniacciai.it.

He was conductor of the Corale universitaria di Torino (from 1974 to 1983), the Coro del Teatro comunale di Bologna (1981–1982) and the Coro da camera della RAI di Roma (from 1989 until the ensemble’s dissolution in 1994), he is currently the artistic and musical director of the Solisti del Madrigale and the Collegium vocale et instrumentale Nova Ars Cantandi, both comprising professional singers and instrumentalists, with whom he maintains a busy concert and recording schedule.

In recognition of his artistic and musical achievements on the international stage, he was elected an ‘honorary member’ of the American Choral Directors’ Association in 1991, and in 2020 he was appointed an ‘honorary member’ of the International Association for the Study of Gregorian Chant in Rome. Also in 2020, the National Association of Italian Artistic Violin Making in Cremona awarded him the 2020 A.N.L.A.I. Prize ‘for a life dedicated to music and art’.

He is the artistic director of the International Choral Singing Competitions in Grado, Lucca (Interkultur Foundation, Germany) and Quartiano (Lodi).

His name appears in the Garzanti Encyclopaedia of Music, the Universal Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Music and Musicians (DEUMM) and the Treccani Foundation’s Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Music.

He is regularly invited to serve as chairman and a member of the jury at the most important national and international choral singing and composition competitions; to give lectures at musicological conferences, and to lead masterclasses and advanced training courses in choral conducting at conservatoires and Italian and foreign musical associations.

On behalf of the record label Nuova Era, he oversaw the recording of Claudio Monteverdi’s ‘Fourth’ and ‘Sixth Books of Madrigals for Five Voices’, performed by the ‘Solisti del Madrigale’.

Conducting the ‘Nova Ars Cantandi’ Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble, he produced, for Concerto in Milan, a recording of Giovanni Giacomo Arrigoni’s ‘Vespers for the Feast of All Saints’; for Sarx Records in Milan, Pasquale Cafaro’s ‘Stabat Mater’, Francesco Durante’s ‘Responsories for Holy Week’ and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s ‘First Book of Motets for Four Voices’; for Stradivarius in Milan, the complete edition of Lodovico Grossi da Viadana’s ‘Lamentations and Responsories for Holy Week’, a CD entitled ‘Europa concordia musicae’, containing polyphonic music from the 15th and 16th centuries, Giovanni Contino’s ‘First Book of Four-Part Masses’ (1561) by Giovanni Contino and the ‘Ecclesiastical Concertos for 1, 2, 3 and 8 voices’ (1604) by Giacomo Moro; for Unda Maris in Palermo, he recorded Pietro Vinci’s ‘Missarum cum quinque, sex et octo vocibus, liber primus’ (1575); for Tactus in Bologna, Isabella Leonarda’s ‘Vespro a cappella della Beata Vergine', opus VIII (1678) and Giovanni Battista Bassani’s ‘Armonici entusiasmi di Davide’, opus IX (1690). (nominated for the International Classical Music Awards – ICMA, in the ‘Early Music’ category, in 2017); for the magazine Antiqua-Classic Voice, he produced two CDs dedicated, respectively, to ‘La musica dei mercanti. I concerti serali della Germania del Seicento’ and ‘La musica del Giubileo’; for Archiv-Deutsche Grammophon, ‘Arpa davidica’, opus XVI (1640) by Tarquinio Merula; Claudio Monteverdi’s ‘Contrafacta’ (‘Album of the Month’ in the magazines Classic Voice and Amadeus), Leonardo Leo’s ‘Confitebor’ and ‘Responsoria’ (‘Album of the Month’ for the music criticism magazine Musica and winner of the 2019 ‘Franco Abbiati’ Prize from the National Association of Music Critics); for Naxos, the ‘Compline’, for five voices, Opus VII (1662) and ‘Harmonia di affetti devoti’, Opus III (1655) by Giovanni Legrenzi, and Francesco Durante’s ‘Psalms and Magnificat’; for Da Vinci Classics, Michel Angelo Grancini’s *Novelli fiori ecclesiastici*, opus IX (1643) (nominated for the International Classical Music Awards – ICMA, in the ‘Early Music’ category, in 2025); Antonio Domenico Nola’s ‘Motetti pastorali’; for the magazine Classic Voice, Giovanni Legrenzi’s ‘Vespro della Beata Vergine’, opus V (1657).

For Pizzicato Verlag Helvetia, he is editing a critical edition of the unpublished Neapolitan sacred vocal repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries, as part of the ‘Unpublished Naples’ series. To date, he has published the following volumes: Francesco Durante, Psalms and Magnificat, for four voices and basso continuo; Antonio Domenico Nola, Mass in D, for four voices and basso continuo; Donato Ricchezza, Stabat mater dolorosa, for four voices and basso continuo. Furthermore, again with Pizzicato Verlag Helvetia, with the aim of recovering and promoting the sacred works of Giovanni Legrenzi, he launched a new series, ‘Musica Mirabilis’, in 2026, with the publication of Giovanni Legrenzi’s ‘Compline, for five voices and basso continuo’, opus VII, Venice 1657.

In 2022, together with Ivana Valotti, he co-founded the international Musica Mirabilis festival in Clusone (Bergamo), dedicated to Giovanni Legrenzi. Since May of that same year, as director of ‘Nova Ars Cantandi’, he has been a member of the Fédération des ensembles vocaux et instrumentaux spécialisés (FEVIS), based in Paris. Since November 2015, he has been a member of the Réseau Européen de Musique Ancienne (R.E.M.A.), the leading European network for early music, which brings together members from eighty-eight cultural institutions across twenty-one European countries.