Since the beginning of the new century, the land of Bergamo was animated by a great awakening of commercial, economic as well as cultural and religious activities. In the area of Bergamo, Venice opened the only way by land (1593) called Priulia street, which was in communication with the centre of Europe through the Alpi Retiche Pass; this street meandered through the populous valleys of Bergamo (71,400 people in 1593), and the economy, based on woolen clothes, wine, silk, iron, steel and paper exportation, got many benefits. So, Bergamo became the place of meeting between the merchants of Zurigo and the Venetian world.

In the religious field, the enlightened action of the bishop of Bergamo, the Venetian Gregorio Barbarigo (1625-1697), then cardinal and continuator of S. Carlo Borromeo's work, got fruit; there was more consciousness of the values of the catholic faith and culture, in order to obstruct the penetration of the Protestantism, which pressed on the close Valtellina through the Alpi Retiche Pass.

The Tridentine Council wanted to encourage the widespreading of the organ in order to involve chorally the meetings in the liturgy, and to legitimize the use of the organ in the church, defining it as "very suitable for" the liturgy.

In the artistic, figurative field the style called "Baroque" started its development: through it, artists mainly wanted to persuade and to astonish. Also the architecture of the churches adapted itself, in functionality and decoration, to the new conciliar dictates.

Since the second half of the century an unceasing development of artistic and architectural works flourished, with the purpose to insert the already existent structures into the new style; from here the rise of carves', sculptors', casters', cabinet-makers', painters', and architectures' shops.

Even the organ took part to such an extraordinary climate of renewal, supported by a great number of organs which were present (more than a hundred) in the churches of Bergamo in the last decades of the century. And in the new liturgy the organ got a decisive task. As a matter of fact, in the liturgic solemnities the astonishment, the emotion, the choral partecipation, the music, the word in its emotional and hagiographic rhetoric got elements of a new way to assert catholic supremacy and to obstruct the Protestant creed.

The organ perfectly adapted itself to this task, thanks to its timbre and sound of meaningful immediacy, of full emotional participation, of cheerful brightness and of great suggestion. Moreover, the development of the organ building art in Bergamo was favoured by other two reasons: the first was due to the great richness of the religious institutes that had a considerable estate as consequence of testamentary legacies for the terrible plague of 1630 even remembered by Manzoni, which killed the forty per cent of the population; the second was due to the beautiful, numerous Renaissance organs built by the Antegnati, who contributed to enforce the bases of a valuable organ building tradition; their qualified activity was documented till 1650. We have got information about almost fifteen of their new organs built in the second half of the century not listed in the mentioned Arte organaria (1608).

We must stop a little on some organ events out from the local reality, which anyway have deeply, positively influenced the future characteristics of the school of Bergamo.

In the first half of the century the Flemish Jesuit builder Willem Hermans (1601-after 1679) settled here; in the north-east of Italy he was followed by the Slesian Eugenio Casparini (1623-1706). New characteristics of the transalpine organ were transplanted into the local Italian traditions without the Italian organ gave up to its main, characteristic elements which marked it in comparison to the other European organs: that's to say the Ripieno (Principal chorus).

In 1650 Hermans built for the Duomo of Como (the Bossi and the Serassi' s town: as it was already said, they moved to Bergamo at the beginning of the eighteenth century) a two-manual majestic organ in which the Flemish school and the Lombard tradition blend with harmony. This instrument became for more than a century the model to which the Lombard, but in particular the organ building school of Bergamo took its inspiration.

As a matter of fact in 1728 this organ was the model to which the vestry-board of the Duomo of Bergamo would make reference for the construction of the organ of the cathedral, work given to the Bossi, who knew very well the Hermans organ, since they had already restored it.

Also in this century the local organ building school lacked of prominent figures, to such a point that the "foreign" organ builders' activity predominated again; as a matter of fact, close to the Antegnati there was a series of names of builders who weren't from Bergamo, who put their works in the churches of this town; unfortunately we know almost nothing about them; anyway there were well-known artists at that time (the documentation from the archive is scarce because of the provisional inquiries).

Here's the most important:

• the Angelini from Brescia who restored in 1615 the organ of Nembro, and in 1624 the organ built by Costanzo Antegnati in S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo; in the same year they built the new organ of the parish church of Cologno al Serio;
  
  
• the Milanese Tommaso Meiarini, the Antegnati' s pupil, who in 1627 built the organ for S. Agata church in the Carmelite monastery in Bergamo;
  
  
• the Milanese Valvassori, famous builders: their activity occurred during the first decades of the century, but the information about their activity in the land of Bergamo is still vague;
  
  
• the "very skilful" Valtellinese organ builder Giovanni Rogantino form Morbegno (town linked to the valleys of Bergamo through the Priulia street) author in 1636 of the wonderful twelve pitched basis organ of the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine delle Grazie of Ardesio;
  
  
• the Veronese Fedrigotti, whom activity in the land of Bergamo occurred during the last decades of the century; they contributed to put near to the local organ building school the Venetian tradition, different for the timbre, sound style and for the conception of construction. Information about their activity is still vague: their organs were made for Gorlago's (1676) and Tagliuno's parish churches (at the end of the century);
  
  
• the Milanese Carboni, active at the end of the century who inherited Valvassori's activity: among their numerous works, we have to remember the new organs of the parish churches of Trescore Balneario (1696) and Bonate Inferiore (1696).
  
  

Organ building activity was still made in the convents; in S. Paolo d'Argon's Benedictine monastery it is documented that in the first decades of the century a monk built portative organs; it was an ancient, widespread practice to rent one or more portative organs on occasion of important liturgic solemnities and civil recurrences; they were small instruments with about a hundred pipes; they had lively sounds and clear, distinct timbres; they were very widespread thanks to the reasonable prices and to the easiness of placing. They served to numerous services as liturgy and processions, entertainment in the castles, sitting-rooms and squares, recurrences, parties and concerts. However, differently from fixed or positive organs, they were more subjected to deterioration, tampering and even dispersion; such a thing explains the scarcity of portative organs that have survived up to now; at the moment in the area of Bergamo only few 17th centuy portative organs remain to document this ancient practice. Contemporaries' interest and admiration for the organ were alive, as it is possible to see from the memories of a famous chronicler of that time, the Augustinian fray Donato Calvi; in his Effemeridi, 1676, (chronicle of the main religious, civil events), by describing the churches of the land of Bergamo, he frequently mentions the presence of the organ (he cites almost sixty-five organs) often with judgements of great admiration: "very good" (Adrara S. Martino); "very pleasant, and good" (Almenno S. Salvatore, S. Maria della Consolazione's church); "of singular goodness" (Alzano Maggiore); "very perfect organs" (Bergamo, S. Maria Maggiore's civic church); "of great excellence" (Bergamo, S. Alessandro della Croce's); "very graceful and rich" (Bergamo, S. Agostino's Hermitan frays); "exquisite" (Bergamo, S. Francesco's church); "very good organs" (Bergamo, S. Grata of the Benedictine monastery's church); "very praised" (Caprino Bergamasco); "famous" (Clusone); "very noble" (Martinengo); "great and good" (Nembro, S. Nicola's church); "beautiful and very good, built with many costs" (Palazzago); "beautiful" (Palosco); "very graceful and perfect" (Piazza Brembana); "very excellent" (Pontida); "majestic" (Romano di Lombardia, parish church); "praisworthy" (Romano di Lombardia, S. Defendente's church); "very good" (Sarnico); "almost the best organ" (Sovere); "noble organ" (S. Paolo d'Argon); "perfect" (Vall'Alta); "very perfect" (Zogno) and so on.

Moreover, Calvi do not mention many other churches which surely had organs; so, we can affirm that if at the end of the century the documented organs in the land of Bergamo were about a hundred, it is likely that their real number were surely higher.

In spite of such a high number, at the moment the 17th century organs which has survived are really few; the biggest and the best preserved is in S. Martino Leffe, in the subsidiary church; it has got a very graceful wooden display. The century ended without pointing out the rise of a real and true local organ building school, able to express its own addresses and styles. So, it is significant what the chronicler of the convent of Astino said in 1613 about the organ: "there is no organist who is able to tune it up or to mend it...". However, it is logical that by then the capillary widespreading of organs, their sometimes very high quality, had formed a timbre taste, a sound aesthetic in the people of Bergamo; in this huge organ patrimony they did not refuse to agree to timbre and constructive novelties that the new taste called "Baroque" was spreading.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, the great season of the Italian late Renaissance organ can be considered finished, even if for many decades several instruments were built according to such a manner. It is necessary to say that the organ of the beginning of the period called "Baroque" is considered late Renaissance, because its structure is not different from the Renaissance one: in its tonal disposition it was enriched by colour stops, such as Cornets, Regals, Birdsong stops...; the keyboard usually had a fifty-note compass and the first octave was short or in sixth (it lacked of the first four sharped notes) and it had short and almost large keys; the pedalboards kept an eighteen-note compass; the windchest stored the air with a low pressure; the pipes were tuned up to full air and their mouths were under or over the rackboard, according to the progressive length of the pipes from the lower to the upper; the rackboard was usually made of leather; the tuning was meantone but more mitigated than the previous century; the pitch was quite high. It was not felt the need of an instrument rich in tone colours yet, an organ articulated in several bodies; this would happen from the second half of the century.

This is due to a clear sound executive ideal: on one hand they were still linked to the ancient polyphonic custom, on the other they always looked for sound effects, based on virtuosity, stylishness of the grace-notes, contrast between free and stern style, in order to rise admiration and astonishment into the listener.

The more cultivated musical forms were the classic Toccata, Ricercare, Canzone and Liturgic versicle.

The introduction of divided stops in treble and bass was still a resource almost exclusively left to player's improvisation. And what about portative organs? They were two or four pitched basis organs, with a of forty-two - forty-five note compass, four or five stops with about one hundred pipes. Usually they were very carefully built and looked very pleasant thanks to the elegance of the furniture and of decorations.