ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741) Sacred Music - 10 Excerpts from the sleeve notes

Before the 1920s, the suggestion that Vivaldi had composed a significant corpus of sacred vocal music would have seemed absurd. Almost no church music by him was known to have survived and, since he had never been maestro di cappella at any church, it was difficult to conceive of circumstances in which he would have been asked to provide such music in bulk. True he was a priest, and for that reason would have been familiar with the sacred repertoire and, one supposes, sympathetic to its aesthetic, but that in itself proves nothing. After all, several clerics among composers, Tartini being the most pertinent example, eschewed vocal music altogether. The situation changed only when Vivaldi’s own huge working collection of manuscripts came to light and was acquired for the National Library in Turin. It then became evident that his production of church music was substantial – over fifty works have survived, and the existence of many more is recorded – and that this music was varied, ambitious in form and expression, and on an artistic level at least equal to that of his concertos.

Raised as a violinist, Vivaldi probably wrote little or no church music until the second decade of the eighteenth century. But his travels with his father as a ‘jobbing’ player often placed him in situations where commissions for sacred works might have occurred. Such was the probable origin of the earliest sacred work by him on which a date can be set, the Stabat mater, RV621 (‘RV’ numbers refer to the standard modern catalogue of Vivaldi’s works by Peter Ryom). Vivaldi had visited Brescia in 1711 to play in the patronal festival of the Philippine church, Santa Maria della Pace; among the compositions acquired by this church in the following year and listed in its account book we find the Stabat mater for alto and strings, commissioned for the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin, which in 1712 fell on 18 March.

In 1713 an event of the greatest importance for Vivaldi’s career occurred. Francesco Gasparini, who was choirmaster at the Pietà, the Venetian charitable institution for foundlings where Vivaldi worked as a violin master and orchestral director, went on a leave from which he never returned. Until as late as 1719 the Pietà failed to replace him, which meant that Vivaldi (together with a colleague, the singing teacher Pietro Scarpari) found himself invited to take over the main task of the maestro di coro: to supply the singers of the institution with a steady stream of new compositions which would attract a well-heeled congregation to the chapel services and so encourage donations and bequests. For reasons of decorum, mixed church choirs were not acceptable in Catholic Europe at this time, and since the Pietà’s male wards left the institution during adolescence to take up apprenticeships, it had no option but to train and use exclusively female residents as musicians. Remarkably, the choir was laid out exactly as a normal male choir, with tenors and basses in addition to the expected sopranos and altos. The tenor parts, which have rather high compasses, were certainly sung as written; the bass parts were probably also sung much of the time at notated pitch by a handful of women with exceptionally deep voices. In case of difficulty, the bass parts could be transposed up an octave without damage to the harmony, since they were nearly always doubled by instruments. Solo parts, however, were overwhelmingly for high voices: soprano or alto. More than the choir, the orchestra or even the composers of the music, these soloists were the ‘star attraction’ of music-making at the Pietà – their names recorded for posterity in the letters and memoirs of visitors to its chapel. The triumphant solismo of the contemporary opera houses could hardly fail to spill over into the sacred domain.

Little of Vivaldi’s church music composed during this period (1713 to 1719) circulated in Italy outside the Pietà’s walls, but some works reached the Habsburg domains in central Europe. A visitor from Bohemia, Balthasar Knapp, acquired a number before his return to Prague in 1717, and his collection appears to have been the nucleus of a modest Vivaldi cult which flourished in such centres as Prague, Osek (in north Bohemia), Brno (in Moravia) and even Breslau (in Silesia). Vivaldi’s sacred works were also known in the capital of Saxony, Dresden, where the Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka took a few pieces into his extensive collection of church music.

The surviving works from this ‘first’ period account for just under half of the total. A similar number date from a ‘middle’ period stretching from the mid-1720s to the early 1730s. These include nearly all the compositions laid out for two ensembles (in due cori, as Vivaldi describes this form of setting). Whereas the earlier works are restrained in expression and generally quite simple in texture, this second group is characterized by flamboyance and contrapuntal ostentation. Many of these works appear to have a connection with the Feast of St Lawrence Martyr on 10 August; Vivaldi may have written them for the convent church of San Lorenzo in Venice (which every year celebrated its patronal festival with great pomp, commissioning music for Mass and Vespers from external composers), or perhaps for the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, whose protector was his Roman patron, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. What is certain is that these works were composed for male voices – the energetic writing for the bass voices in such works as the Dixit Dominus, RV594, would be unthinkable for a female singer.

Near the end of his career, in 1739, Vivaldi once again supplied sacred vocal compositions to the Pietà during an interregnum between choirmasters – this time for payment, since he was no longer its employee. Only four of the works are extant in complete form today. They exemplify very clearly Vivaldi’s turn, in his last years, to the fashionable galant style cultivated by younger Neapolitan composers, among them Vinci, Leo and Porpora.

A clear majority of the surviving works are for solo voice or voices. These include all the motets, introduzioni (an introduzione is a special kind of motet designed to precede the setting of a Psalm or a section of the Mass), hymns and votive antiphons, besides a few of the Psalms themselves. The remaining works are either – in the language of the time – pieno (for choir only) or concertato (for choir with one or more soloists). The supporting orchestra is most often made up merely of strings and continuo, but several of the compositions include wind instruments or obbligato parts. The vitality and idiomatic quality of the instrumental writing in these works is unrivalled in Italian sacred vocal music of the period.

A clear distinction must be made between the works on liturgical texts – texts which are unalterable and have their appointed place in the church calendar – and those on freely invented poetic texts (motets and introduzioni). The former mostly employ forms either peculiar to church music (for example, the so-called ‘church aria’ resembling the outer section of a da capo aria) or freely derived from instrumental music, while the latter follow secular models in their adoption of recitative and the da capo aria. A very few movements in the ‘liturgical’ works observe the stile antico based (at some remove, and not without modification) on the polyphonic language of sixteenth-century vocal music. Vivaldi seems to have had great difficulty in reproducing this style, since the specimens contained in his works include several instances of plagiarism.

The greatness of Vivaldi’s sacred vocal music resides not in its historical influence, for it seems not to have circulated very widely in his day and (unlike his concertos) not to have initiated any practice copied by other composers, but rather in its consummate artistry and high level of inspiration. If Vivaldi does not quite have the musical gifts of a Bach, a Handel or even a Pergolesi, he has a manner of expression which is entirely individual and unmistakable, even in his least substantial works. In his best movements one discerns an almost shocking radicalism: a willingness to strip music down to its core and reconstitute it from these simplest elements. There is also a powerful instinct for thematic integration at work; time and again, analysis reveals how the same simple ideas inform each movement of a composite work and impart unity to it. The often unexpectedly subtle word-painting testifies to the thoughtfulness which Vivaldi brought to these compositions. They can accurately be described as the bridge between his imagination as a musician and his conviction as a priest: the point on which all facets of his complex personality converged.

Is there anything new to say about this favourite work of choral societies, which, ever since Alfredo Casella revealed it to the world in the Vivaldi ‘week’ held at Siena in 1939, has been revered as a locus classicus of its composer’s style? The audacious simplicity of the pounding unison octaves with which it opens is as eloquent and dynamic as anything in Vivaldi’s concertos, and the siciliana-like movement for soprano, obbligato instrument (the composer allows the alternative of oboe or violin) and continuo on the text ‘Domine Deus, rex coelestis’ is the epitome of melting Vivaldian lyricism. Strange to say, it is difficult to establish a context for its composition. It was apparently written for performance at the Pietà around 1715, but the autograph manuscript hints at the existence of one or more prior versions. As a repertory piece, endlessly repeated at the Pietà, this Gloria may have had a complex gestation. Moreover, its relationship to the ‘other’ Gloria, RV588, which it parallels in many respects (notably, in the ‘profile’ of its individual movements), defies a simple explanation. Perhaps the two works matured in parallel, each continuously evolving.

RV589 typifies what the Pietà understood as a concertato setting of a long liturgical text. Each sentence or comparable unit generates a separate musical movement, and the movements are differentiated among themselves to the maximum extent in scoring, tonality, metre, tempo, style, texture and mood. Some movements employ solo voices, alone or in small groups, while others (in particular, the movements framing the work) employ choir. Rather exceptionally for Vivaldi, one movement of the present Gloria, the ‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’, features both a solo singer (mezzo soprano) and the choir, which are treated in responsorial style. Generally speaking, however, Vivaldi and his north Italian contemporaries liked to segregate solo and choral singing in separate movements.

The rousing opening movement, ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’, is not mere ‘noise and thunder’; in the middle of it Vivaldi embarks on a bold tonal excursion that takes him as far as C sharp minor, a key rather remote from the initial D major. But how deftly the composer finds his way back to the tonic! Sophisticated handling of key change rises to new heights in the long, complex and emotionally harrowing second movement, ‘Et in terra pax’. What Vivaldi expresses here is not peace already achieved but peace desperately sought amid the troubles of the world. This would be the movement with which to convince a sceptic that, for all his outward wordliness, the composer was at heart – if only via music – a deeply spiritual person. Incredibly, Vivaldi originally ended this B minor movement with a major chord (a tierce de Picardie), before very wisely thinking better of the idea.

There follow a delightful duet for sopranos (‘Laudamus te’), a sombre chorus in the stile antico (‘Gratias agimus tibi’), the ‘Domine Deus, rex coelestis’ mentioned earlier, a captivating chorus in dotted, or ‘French’, rhythm (‘Domine Fili unigenite’), a pensive dialogue for contralto and chorus (‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’), another sombre chorus (‘Qui tollis’), and a ‘church aria’ for contralto (‘Qui sedes’) heralding the return of the opening material. This duly arrives in the ‘Quoniam’ chorus, which is a simplified (non-modulating) version of the opening movement. The scene is set for the final fugue, which (as in RV588) is an adaptation of its counterpart in a Gloria dated 1708 by Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, of which more later.

‘What RV803?’, I hear someone asking. This magnificent work came to light just in time to serve as the keystone of the present series of CDs devoted to Vivaldi’s sacred vocal music, of which this disc is the final offering. In May 2003 I received a tip-off from the Australian musicologist Janice Stockigt that among the Galuppi sacred vocal works in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden that she was studying there was an anomalous Psalm setting, which contained obbligato parts for viola d’amore, chalumeau (‘salmò’ in Venetian dialect) and an instrument described as ‘tromba marina’ (which turns out to be not an actual trumpet marine but a ‘violino in tromba marina’, a violin with a modified bridge that causes it to sound like this bowed monochord). She suspected, absolutely correctly, that the ostensible composer, Baldassare Galuppi (whose name appears on the title-page of the score as ‘Buranello’, his nickname), was not the real composer, and wondered whether this Nisi Dominus in A major did not belong to an earlier period. I instantly had four thoughts: first, that only the Pietà (with which Galuppi had no known connection) would have used these instruments; second, that only Vivaldi would have had the audacity to use all three together; third, that among the set of Psalms that Vivaldi supplied to the Pietà in 1739 there was a ‘vacancy’ for a missing Psalm answering to the present description; fourth, that since the Beatus vir in its 1739 version (RV795) preserved in Dresden was wilfully misattributed to Galuppi by its Venetian copyist, Iseppo Baldan, notorious among scholars for his forged attributions, this might well be a companion piece from the same stable.

My subsequent work to authenticate the work as a composition by Vivaldi soon established that all of these hunches were correct. (Those who are interested can read an introductory article on it in the first issue of the new journal Eighteenth-Century Music, scheduled to appear in spring 2004.) This was indeed the last of the group of five Psalms for which Vivaldi was paid in 1739 to be identified (the other four are RV604, RV609, RV795 and the incompletely preserved RV789).

And what a work! Vivaldi scores it for three solo voices – soprano, contralto and ‘tenor’ (actually, a contralto whose part is written in the tenor clef) – and five obbligato instruments (in addition to the three mentioned above, solo cello and solo organ appear), with the usual strings and continuo. The setting allots a separate movement to each verse (of which there are six, plus the two for the Lesser Doxology). Its structure is almost perfectly symmetrical. The outer movements, based on common material, employ all three voices with orchestra. The second and sixth movements are for solo voice, one obbligato instrument (viola d’amore and cello, respectively) and continuo. The third and fifth movements are for solo voice and orchestra (with the ‘violino in tromba marina’ added in the latter case). The sensational fourth movement, the ‘calm at the heart of the storm’, is for one voice, obbligato chalumeau and a bass alternating between unison violins and unharmonized continuo. Even the key scheme, A–D–G–C–G–D–A, is symmetrical. This tidy order is broken, however, by the seventh movement, which is in a minor key (E minor) and is scored, like the fifth movement, for a solo voice, orchestra and an obbligato instrument (organ). The solo voices ‘progress’, as the composition unfolds, from alto (movements 2 to 4) to ‘tenor’ (movement 5) and finally soprano (movements 6 to 7).

This ‘second’ Nisi Dominus by Vivaldi (the first is the familiar RV608, in G minor) is easily the most attractive work in the 1739 set. It shows how thoroughly Vivaldi was influenced, during the 1730s, by the dominant galant style, and how enterprising he continued to be, even at the very end of his career, in his choice of instrumental colours. This is truly his ‘swan song’ for the Pietà.

This introduzione for soprano, strings and continuo dates from the same period as the Gloria RV589 and, to judge from thematic resemblances such as the ‘pounding’ octaves close to the beginning, may have been designed to precede it. It was certainly written for the patronal festival of the Pietà, the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin on 2 July, since its central recitative refers to Mary’s receiving a visit (‘dum hodie visitatur’).

As usual, Arcadian and Christian forms of imagery mingle. The first aria speaks cheerfully in its first semistrophe of the beauty of a rose, while its second semistrophe (that is, the ‘B’ section of the da capo structure) moves to a contrasting, dark mood as it describes how, come the evening, the rose droops and loses its fragrance. This is the cue for the recitative to explain how all worldly glory is transitory, whereas the humble mother of Jesus is permanently glorious. It remains for the second aria, dance-like in its lilt, to sing Mary’s praise and prefigure some of the liturgical text of the Gloria to follow.

To close our Vivaldian Odyssey, what could be more appropriate than to give a first modern outing to a composition that demonstrably influenced Vivaldi, who ‘borrowed’ music from it in the present Gloria RV589, and even more extensively in RV588? Vivaldi’s private collection of music included the autograph score of a setting in D major for two cori of the same liturgical text, dated 9 September 1708, by Giovanni Maria Ruggieri. This Ruggieri is a shadowy figure. He appears to have been born in Verona and to have worked in Venice as a civil servant, while composing instrumental music, operas and church music fairly prolifically. He demonstrates a naive boldness not untypical of amateur composers, and it is, more than anything else, his striving for vivid effect that links him to Vivaldi, who obviously appreciated his talent and derived from him more than is evident from the straightforward borrowings. For instance, the chugging string accompaniment and lugubrious, ‘terrestrial’ sound of seven solo basses in the ‘Et in terra pax’ movement in Ruggieri’s setting is an obvious background inspiration for the corresponding movements in RV588 and RV589. How Vivaldi got hold of the score is a mystery, but it was very possibly his father, Giovanni Battista, who obtained it, since up to around 1710 Vivaldi père was the ‘senior partner’ of the two in Venetian musical life. This Gloria was certainly not written for the Pietà, and its most likely destination was a Venetian church on the occasion of a major feast.

Each coro in Ruggieri’s Gloria comprises soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices and strings in five parts (dividing the violas). Coro I has in addition two oboes, coro II a trumpet and an oboe. Soloists are extracted as needed. The variety of scoring among the individual movements is quite extraordinary. For example, in the fifth movement, ‘Domine Deus, rex coelestis’, each coro features a string component made up of two violas and cello and a vocal component made up of two sopranos and bass. The next movement, ‘Domine Fili unigenite’, is a three-way conversation between solo alto, two violins and two oboes.

Ruggieri is certainly one of those innumerable forgotten composers who is ‘worth hearing more of’. This Gloria is of interest and value not only for its obvious influence on Vivaldi and exemplification of the Venetian polychoral tradition but also for its intrinsic musical merit and remarkable originality.

And so we reach the end of our road. This is far from being the first ‘collected recorded edition’ of sacred music by Vivaldi – it has been preceded by ones from Vittorio Negri and Michel Corboz – but it is the first to apply (if one may be permitted so grandiloquent a phrase) ‘historically informed’ criteria, leavened, as always, by the imperative to communicate effectively with a modern audience. That there will be more music in the same category by Vivaldi to rediscover and perform in the future seems guaranteed. While this text was being written, I got wind of the mention, in an eighteenth-century catalogue, of a hitherto unknown Salve regina in E minor for solo alto by Vivaldi, already baptized ‘RV804’, that employs two transverse flutes as well as the usual strings and is therefore presumably a late work. All we now need is to find the music answering to that description – and we know from the case of RV803 that the source will not necessarily be so co-operative as to include ‘Vivaldi’ in its title!