The eternal city became home to the Christian faith slowly, but eventually the philosophical world of late classic Neoplatonism and the bureaucratic genius of the Romans was absorbed into a robust Catholic church that, unlike its eastern counterpart, survived the assaults of war, of the competing Islamic faith, and even the rebellion that began within by Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century. By the second golden age of the papal choir, led in its height by the (scandalously married!) Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina, the international polyphonic style had settled into its recognizable character, with carefully controlled dissonance and a rhetorically sophisticated method of imitative writing. Nonetheless, the rise of harmony as a separate domain controlled by the new tool of a figured bass brought a new focus to chords and dissonance in the wake of Claudio Monteverdi's "errors" of unprepared dissonances and seventh chords. The Renaissance works you will hear tonight are all squarely within the controlled, rule-based style of the Papal circle. We begin with two simple, sincere hymns of the counter reformation. O bone Jesu was once thought to be composed by Palestrina but later discovered to be written by Monteverdi's teacher, the Venetian master Marc' Antonio Ingenieri. We have paired this hymn with O Crux Ave by Francesco Soriano, Palestrina's maestro di capella of several institutions including San Giovanni Laterano and the Capella Giulia, and in his youth a boy chorister at the former. Giovanni Piccioni's Ut re mi fa sol la - one of several settings from this era - is a beautiful example of the Christian Neoplatonic universe in metaphysical song. The six-note scale, or hexachord, of Guido d'Arezzo rises from the singers' voices from within our mortal sphere, creating what the ancient Roman theorist Boethius reconsidered instrumental music, or music created by performance; this song travels through each of the celestial spheres until the hexachord is inverted and the love of God comes back down and enters through the ear to tune human hearts with the ratios of divine consonance. This madrigal would have been well-suited to the scholarly academy Piccioni served as an example for speculative conversation! A highly productive composer, Piccioni was not a Roman, but his music in many ways echoes the Roman style of the late 16th century. Palestrina's Descendi in hortum nucum is a perfectly balanced, five-voice motet on a portion of the Song of Solomon, and the composer's mastery of harmony in 1:1 counterpoint contrasts subtly with his perfect control of the imitative arguments between voices. His polyphony marks the changes of the text through contrasting contours and cadences, especially in some of his most wonderfully evaded points of closure.
Maurizio Cazzati was one of the great Bolognese composers of the seventeenth century, and the young violinist Archangelo Corelli (known as Corelli Bolognesi in his early Roman days) must surely have played his music during his formative years there. While he did compose and conduct vocal music and write solo cantatas such as his gorgeous Lodasi for two violins soprano, and continuo, Cazzati was known as an innovator of
instrumental music. Without his contributions, totaling 66 volumes of music, the instrumental sonata and concerto might not have had such a strong impetus for future development. Cazzati's sense of harmony in Lodasi is quite striking at times, especially at the point in the text where he uses the verb "rapire" (theft... or worse!). But his lyricism and ability to turn an effective phrase with simplicity is typical of the seventeenth century arioso style. Like Monteverdi, Cazzati was even censured for careless part writing by contemporary theorists, which somewhat stifled his career, though his critics were applying the outdated standards of the Palestrina prima prattica to an essentially dramatic musical voice of the seconda prattica. Cazzati was a member of and composed for many Academies in Italy, though apparently he stopped attending the famous Accademia Filarmonico after this controversy.
Archangelo Corelli, Bernardo Pasquini, and Alessandro Scarlatti - three of the most famous musicians in late 17th to early 18th century Rome – were all active at the Academy of the famous Exarch Queen Christian of Sweden, who settled in Rome in 1689 after converting to Roman Catholicism and renouncing her throne. At her famous Academy, music was always featured, occasionally including works involving over a hundred musicians. When Corelli led the strings, they bowed in perfect unison and played remarkably. Pasquini often accompanied Corelli, and all three composers wrote large oratorios and cantatas for the academy and for the princely courts associated with the Popes. Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni helped to found the Arcadian Academy in 1690, and in 1706 Corelli, Pasquini and Scarlatti were inducted into its membership together. Corelli's rich continuo accompaniments and sure contrapuntal technique were highly regarded and ensured many reprints of his music. His solo violin sonatas with continuo Op. 5 launched a craze, and versions with his and others' ornamentation continued to be published and copied for decades after the original, plainly printed music appeared in Rome in 1700. Corelli's trio sonatas, either church sonatas found in his Op.1 collection or chamber sonatas like those of his Op. 4 featured many harmonic dissonances, with continuo in stile pieno (full style). Trio sonatas for two violins and continuo had been written before, particularly effectively by Pietro Sanmartini in 1688 and by the Roman lutenist Lelio Colista, but after Corelli, the trio sonata became a staple of the repertoire, with a long afterlife both in Italy and England, where Roman violinists including Francesco Geminani and in particular the Haym brothers settled and became influential musicians, leading to new editions of Corelli’s music in Amsterdam and London. Pasquini composed some of the most innovative keyboard works of the time, all of them surviving in manuscript including sonatas in the incipient partimento style, even going so far as writing duets for two lightly figured bass parts. Scarlatti was a pre-eminent composer of the solo cantata and composed operas and works for the church; his cantatas number more than 600. Tiranna,
ingrata, an aria from one such work, takes a particularly sharp tonal turn as the narrator begs his lover to show mercy.
The young Handel arrived in Rome and took the city by storm, and found patronage with princes of the church, including Cardinal Carlo Colonna and Benedetto Pamphilii, who wrote the libretti for some of his works; he also composed significant works for Cardinal Pietro Ottobani and Francesco Ruspoli. Even Corelli was confused by the rampant virtuosity of this German enfant terrible, who once ripped the violin from the shy master's hands to show him how to play one of his fiercely wrought passages. Corelli absorbed the Arcadian style and wrote many fine works including a large number of cantatas and an oratorio in Rome, as well as many chamber duets. He wrote his expressive Giù nei tartari regni as he left for Venice to compose operas. This duo is perhaps one of the most tortured of his early works, with both singers trying to outdo each other for "loving too much" or "loving too little" and either burning or freezing for their sins. We present the first two movements of the work tonight, though the full text is given below. Castrati would have sung these works at the Academy, adding a transgressive bit of gender-bending to the drama.
If anything unites the music of this concert, it is the Roman penchant for full harmony and simple melodic arcs, as well as a classic sense of proportion, a topic discussed endlessly in Italian Academies.
O bone Jesu, miserere nostri/nobis, quia tu creasti nos, tu redemisti nos sanguine tuo pretiosissimo.
O Crux ave, spes unica, hoc Passionis tempore! piis adauge gratiam, reisque dele crimina. (Vexila regis, v. 9)
Ut re mi fa sol la: ogni armonia abbraccia con dolcezza, come il viso gentil d'Urania mia. Accoglie ogni bellezza. Dunque spesso cantate:
O good Jesus, have mercy upon us, for thou hast created us, thou hast redeemed us by thy most precious blood.
- tr. by St Ann choir
Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime! In the mournful Passion-time; grant to the just increase of grace, and every sinner's crimes efface.
- tr. CPDL.org
Ut re mi fa sol la: every harmony embraces with sweetness, as the gentle face of my Urania welcomes every beauty. So sing often: la sol fa mi re ut, O blessed voices
la sol fa mi re ut, voci beate che 'lalma si compiace quando sente cantar con meraviglia ciò ch'a lei si somiglia.
Descendi in hortum nucum ut viderem poma convallium, et inspicerem si floruisset vinea, et germinassent mala punica.
Lodasi
Se parlate ò se tacete belle labra amorose il mio cor rapir potete, Ma se liete, quelle gemme pretiose, che mi fecero invaghire, dovresete esser rapite e non rapire.
Suon de musici instromenti si soave no s'udí, come sono i vostri accenti qual hor dicono di si, ma se vostra crudeltà mai v'ispira il dir di nò, ahi tacete per pietà ò se voi non tacete io mi morrò ch'ad un Amor verace no dice mai di nò lingua che tace.
Si si che tacia bei labri meglio è, s'un oro è la fè, mostrarlo che prò; Tesor, che sepolto, furar non si può.
E d'un bel volto à chi al fin sà l'usanza parlan gli occhi à bastanza.
that the soul takes joy in when it hears singing with wonder that which resembles her.
- tr. Allen Garvin
I went down into the nut-grove to see the apples of the valley, And to see if the vines had ripened and whether the pomegranates had bloomed.
Whether you speak or remain silent, beautiful, amorous lips, you can steal my heart. If they are happy, those precious gems which first ensnared me should be stolen and should not ensnare (me).
I've not heard such gentle sounds from musical instruments!
How they are like to the sound of your voice when it says "yes"!
But if your cruelty ever inspires you to say "no", ah, be silent for pity's sake! Or if you are not silent, I will die. For to a truelove a silent tongue never speaks.
Yes, yes, better that beautiful lips be silent. If faith is treasured like gold. It is better to show love than to take it; for one cannot break into a buried hoarde.
In the end, the eyes of a beautiful face - for those who know how to read them - speak for themselves.
Giù nei tartarei regni v'andrem, madonna.
Soprano:
Ioperché troppo amai sarò dannato. . .
Basso:
Tu perch'amato hai poco sarai dannato
A due . . . ove maggior è il foco. Ioch'ardendo mi sfaccio sarò gettato ove maggiore è il ghiaccio.
Ma perch'il ghiaccio estremo è nel tuocore, nel mio estremo ardore, avrem in sempiterno io neltuo cor e tu nel mio l'inferno.
Down into the Tartarean kingdom we will go, my lady.
Soprano I will be damned because I loved too much
Basso: You will be damned because you loved too little...
Both.: where the fire is greatest. I, who am destroyed by burning, will be cast where the most ice is.
But because the thickest ice is in your heart, in my extreme ardour we will have Hell in eternity, I in your heart and you in mine
- tr. Händel Hallische Ausgabe
Tiranna ingrata
Che far dovrò
Se vuoi ch’io mora
Morrò per te
Se vuoi ch’io t’ami
Non più rigor.
Costante e fido
Per te sarò
Saprò serbarti
La pura fé
Pur che non godi
Del mio dolor.
Ungrateful tyrant What shall I do? If you want me to die I will die for you. If you want me to love you Do not be severe with me! Constant and faithful shall I be for you. I will know how to keep Your pure faith, So long as you do not enjoy my pain.