The organ builders Locatelli from Bergamo, during the years of their activity (1870-1917), represented an alternative in the reform of the Italian organ, in particular from 1880 to 1885 through the building of important organs. In a difficult time, for the change of the national organ, they were the last representatives of the exceptional eighteenth, nineteenth century organ building school in Bergamo, which contributed to the development of the Italian organ.

The Locatelli went on the very famous Serassi's school, because not only did they inherit their workers, equipments, orders and the title "Successore alla vecchia ditta Fratelli Serassi", but even their mentality and style: the Locatelli were very able to elaborate, develop and export all this to South America where many Italians, included people from Bergamo, found their job and future. During his intense activity, Mr Locatelli published illustrative booklets about his most importan organs, in order to spread the knowledge of his works. The firm, as he himself said "attends with unselfishness the constant improvement of an art which is an honour to our Bergamo": as a matter of fact "not only is it the most in demand in Italy thanks to its wonderful works [...], but it is the first and the only of the National Firms to have used the systems of the main French, German firms keeping at the same time the character of the Italian organ".

Giacomo Locatelli, founder of the organ building firm, was born on Genuary 3rd ,1829 in Bergamo. When he was still young, in 1842, he started working as an apprentice at the Fabbrica d'Organi dei Fratelli Serassi close to his house. Very soon, he got a "precious, skilled" worker thanks to his cleverness and learning of the organ building work (plan, joinery, foundry, mechanics, assemblage, intonation, tuning and so on), to such a point that, when he should have been due for call-up (1851), the Serassi paid 700 fiorins for his exemption. In that highly professional environment "he got very soon the best artist in that Firm".

The first public recognition of the Giacomo Locatelli's skill occurred in 1858 on occasion of the building of the majestic Serassi organ opus 649 in the new St. Paul's Basilica Ostiense in Rome: it was an exacting work, both for the importance of the church and for its size. When he was only twenty-nine, he was liable for one of the most difficult stage in the building of an organ, that is the assemblage. For his excellent work, he was awarded a silver medal and fifteen scudi by a special commission presided by the Secretary of the papal State and deputed to the reconstruction of the St. Paul's Basilica. The organ was praised to such a point that his two collaborators Prospero Foglia and Giuseppe Santanbrogio were awarded too, and the Serassi Brothers were honoured with money, medals, books and prints.

An other bewitching recognition occurred in 1865, for the building of the stately Serassi organ opus 680 in the illustrious S. Lorenzo's Royal Basilica in Florence; it was a three manual colossal organ, each keyboard had a seventy-note compass, there was a rückpositif and sixty-four stops. The thirty-six year old Giacomo Locatelli, was liable for the assemblage which lasted many months. For the marvellous work he was confered an honour by the Ministero di Agricoltura Industria e Commercio which consisted in a gilded bronze medal striken with the words GIACOMO LOCATELLI DI BERGAMO 1865, along with a merit certificate.

The Locatelli's talent and professional seriousness were so much that "in the last ten years (from 1860 to 1870) he sustained the honour of the Serassi firm where he built the most important organs of those years".

In 1870 the forty-one year old Locatelli left the Serassi firm; he took some of the workers and established his own organ firm. The reason of such a decision was due to the financial difficulties of the Serassi firm. Among the workers, there was Luigi Giudici, Luigi Parietti and the Serassi's general agent Castelli. Locatelli established the firm "Giacomo Locatelli", forming a partnership with Luigi Parietti at the rate of 3/5 the first and 2/5 the second.

The new firm took place in Bergamo, firstly at the beginning of the today's Pignolo street, then at 76, Borgo Palazzo in a rented building.

Giacomo Locatelli had so many human, professional qualities that the famous organist Petrali defined him as a "reliable, practical, unequalled honest man", and then said "I respect him, and I think he is the best artist". Such a sentence was very important, because Petrali was a well-known musician and an organ concert artist, therefore he knew very well the organ building world of that time (1872).

In five years the firm worked on eighteen organs: of them fourteen were new, three were restored and one had a general reform; that is they averaged five organs a year, a high number for a firm which had just started. All these works, besides documenting the Giacomo Locatelli's very intense activity, were successful for their quality, timbre, mechanical accuracy: moreover, they gave evidence to the constant search for innovations.

In July 1875, while he was putting the organ of the parish church of Ca' di David (Verona), Locatelli beat violently his head against an adge; he died after a few days of illness, and was buried in Bergamo. He was only forty-six; a few months before he was left a widower, so he left six tender aged children. One of the biggest artists of the organ building history of Bergamo died.

The Giacomo Locatelli's organ building activity was the prosecution of the Serassi's one. Unfortunately he lived a too short time to work out completely a personal model of the late nineteenth century organ which could have been very different from the Serassi organ. When Giacomo Locatelli died, his firm was well-organized and strong from an economic point of view as the "Inventario" of the property inheritance attests. Giacomo's brother, the priest Saverio (1826-1912), looked after his nephews. The head of the firm got Luigi Giudici, a very skilful organ builder; the agent was still Giovan Battista Castelli. With this new organizational order, the Locatelli firm went on its intense activity; in 1876 they worked at even ten organs: four new and six restored, included the organ of the cathedral of Treviso. But the fundamental step of the Locatelli firm, an innovation for the national organ building art too, came off since 1880 with the majestic organ of Nostra Signora della Consolazione's church, Genoa. Many other remarkable works were built, and for the first time in Italy - as proudly says the firm - new systems and methods of construction in the organ building art, coming from the other side of the Alps, were applied like in Turin, at Nostra Signora del Suffragio's church (op. 50, 1881), three keyboards of sixty-one notes and a fourth independent one, pedalboard with twenty-seven notes, forty-seven stops, 2,056 pipes; in Bergamo, SS. Bartolomeo and Stefano's church (op.59, 1883) three keyboards of sixty-one notes, pedalboard with twenty, fifty-three stops, 2,366 pipes; in Pesaro, musical Liceo "G. Rossini" (op.67, 1885), three keyboards of sixty-one notes, pedalboard of twenty-seven, sixty-eight stops, 3,505 pipes. About this organ Luigi Giudici, the firm manager wrote that "the firm was glad to show an organ which wasn't afraid of competition".

The Locatelli organ was the result of a clever balance between the timbrical, sonorous, technical, constructive Italian tradition and some sonorous, constructive features of the French, English organ building art. It was a difficult effort which nevertheless succeded very well: so, these organs got models of stylistical, expressive coherence and up-to-date technics in an organ building environment which realized that Italian tradition was better, in particular for the intonation, than other foreign experiences or models.

The company passed under the direction of the young Giacomo junior (1864-1918) as soon as he came of age.

The important organs built from 1880 to 1885 gave notoriety to the Locatelli firm. Giacomo Locatelli wanted to know the organ building activity from the other side of the Alps; he knew the most important treatises about foreign organ building art. He modernized the firm and organized very well its work. His activity was intense, for instance from 1886 to 1896 he worked on fifty-seven organs, of them thirty-four were new; till 1898, the organs were placed in Italy (in particulary in the north but as far as Sicily too); in the Ligurian area, from 1880 to 1917 (when the firm ended) he built even thirty-six new organs.

Through a legal succession, in 1895 Giacomo Locatelli obtained each right and share of the famous firm Serassi, as well as the authorization to add under his trade name the words "Successore alla vecchia ditta Fratelli Serassi"; all the equipments of the Serassi firm went to Giacomo Locatelli junior. In 1897 the very Vittorio Serassi recommended "the skilful, capable artist Giacomo Lacatelli [...] because besides keeping the timbre of the Serassi organs, he will add the last improvements of the art". With such a qualification, he got the heir and surety of the Serassi organ building heritage, not only for the maintenance and the preservation of the Serassi organs, but even for the new organs built according to that very noble tradition. This was not an easy task, in a period in which builders had a conceited attitude both in timbre, sound features, and in constructive, mechanical characteristics. So, Giacomo Locatelli junior, was different from other builders who spoiled organs instead of restoring them.

In 1898 the firm Locatelli started exporting organs to South America, where the Serassi had already sent some of their instruments. The Locatelli firm enjoyed great favour in particular in Argentina, where there were many Italians and people from Bergamo; it was the worker Donato Sangaletti who moved from Bergamo to Buenos Aires as a representative of the firm and as an organ technician.

In nineteen years, even forty-one organs were sent from Bergamo to America: some of them were really majestic, as the three manual organs of S. Telmo in Buenos Aires (1903) and of S. Pedro's cathedral at Mar de Plata (1904); of Pilar at Córdoba (1902) and of Santa Rosa at Santafé (1900). Locatelli kept faith with the most noble organ building tradition in these organs too, for the mechanical action, slider chests, first quality woods and metals, fine piece of work even in details..., in short, his organs were very good and earned praises.

The majestic organ of Mar de Plata allows us to examinate the Locatelli's organ building work in Argentina: such an organ was the Giacomo Locatelli's most important, authoritative work, one of the most significant Italian symphonic organs too. Umberto Pineschi, the promoter of the late restoration (1990) wrote: "the Locatelli organ of Mar de Plata, a wonderful example of the Italian symphonic organ, can rightly be considered one of the most strong landmark [...] since at the moment the organ building art is rich in ugly, decaying organs. It is the biggest Locatelli organ in Argentina, where about twenty Locatelli organs have still been surviving. Its tonal disposition shows traces of the French and German influence, and every part of this organ is good in the quality and in the work. The organ wasn't built by saving money; it is an harmonious whole, not a juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements". On occasion of the inauguration ceremony (1906) it was described as a "sontuoso órgano; soberbio y admirable instrumento; instrumento estrictamente litúrgico, con la dolzura de sus voces, y pulsado por manos habiles, vien á ser uno de los más eficaces atractivos del culto católico, ya por los efectos grandiosos que en él produce un competente organista...".

The Locatelli organs were appreciated not only for their sonorous, constructive qualities, but even for their strong resistance to hot climates of South America. The Argentines praised very much the builder Locatelli; for instance, in 1901 "La vox de la Iglesia" of Buenos Aires wrote about the Locatelli organ of a Franciscans' church: "this instrument has got high qualities. In particular the Viola da gamba, the Voce Humana and the Flaute of the Sweller throw into raptures".

The activity of the firm in South America would deserve a deeper study, but at the moment it is not possible for lack of information.

Beginning from the 1905, after the organ of Mar de Plata, Locatelli started reducing his activity because of a chronical illness which made him unable to work. From 1911, it is possible to see that in the catalogue the work began to decrease: in 1918, when he was only fifty-four, he died for an incurable illness. In the meanwhile, the firm Locatelli went on working till 1917, thanks to its head Canuto Cornolti; after Locatelli's death, Cornolti took over the firm with all its equipments and got the legal succession. With Giacomo Locatelli's death, not only did the organ building activity of a great family finish, but even an era: the organ building art in Bergamo came to an end; it was an era rich in ingenious entrapeneurs and in very active work.

The work of the Locatelli firm, with its 211 organs, clearly shows its respect towards ideals and traditions, since it didn't give up history bounds. During its short but very intense activity, only forty-seven years, the Locatelli firm contributed very much to the improvement of the organ building history, taking into consideration important projects and ideas. So, it can be considered as one of the most enlightened firms in the reform of the late nineteenth century Italian organ. As a matter of fact, it was able to bind and blend the different requests spread by the Italian and European musical, religious, cultural and social milieu in a close net and in a good symbiosis of experiences, proposals and expectations.