"At the beginning of the 50s of the Eighteenth century, the artistic route of Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1768) seems to have come to its natural end: after being - with Leonardo Leo and Leonardo Vinci - one of the major proponents and promoters of the universalisation of the Neapolitan 'new style', after a career played in the most prestigious theaters of the time (in his hometown and in Venice, London, Milane, Rome, etc.), after creating as a singing teacher stars such as Farinelli, Caffarelli and Porporino, after receiving assignments of primary importance in the Venetian 'Ospedali Grandi' and in the Neapolitan 'Conservatori', Porpora was hired hired at the Dresden court in 1747, being appointed Kapellmeister the following year (with Hasse's great scorn). In 1752/3 he retired to private life, leaving the court of Saxony-Poland with the guarantee of an unusual rich annual pension of 400 tallers.
"The composer then elected Vienna as his city of residence: here he appears to seek no more continuous assignments of absolute important, but only to teach singing and composition (among his students, Franz Joseph Haydn), writing sometimes a few pages of church music. However, in the 1756 the Prussian invasion of Saxony disrupted the life of the old musician, leading to the immediate termination of his pension and bringing Porpora to a state of great economical need: in a poignant letter to Farinelli, Metastasio portrays the composer as 'ridotto alla positiva mancanza del pane quotidiano' ('reduced to a substantial lack of daily bread'). Given the situation and the absence of main patrons in Austria, Porpora went back to Italy - old and tired - to find some job to earn money to support himself. As it is known, the musician died in total destitution, after twelve difficult years.
"In the midst of his stay in Vienna, however, the unlucky composer gave birth to two of his highest masterpieces: two collections that can be read as a kind of musical guidance of his abilities, his taste and his inventiveness. In 1754 the 'Sonate XII di violino e basso' were printed with a dedication to Princess 'Maria Antonia Walpurga di Braviera' (his patroness in Dresden); dated the same year are also the six duets 'da cantarsi nelli venerdì di Quaresima nella Cappella di Sua Altezza Serenissima l'Elettore di Sassonia' ('to be sung on Lent Fridays in the Chapel of His Most Serene Highness, the Electoral Prince of Saxony').
"These six vocal pieces on Latin text form an autonomous cycle, very different in shape and use from the 'Passions' from the Protestant and German-speaking areas, and also from the Italian Oratorios on the Passion of Christ: we have to think of these duets as an organized set of compositions designed to accompany step by step (presumably one for each Friday) the personal reflections of the members of the Saxon royal family in the most crucial period of the liturgical calendar. The collection, known under various titles, had considerable success among some of the greatest admirers of the 'stile antico' music in the late Eighteenth century and at the beginning of the Nineteenth, even leading to a full printed edition by Gaetano Nava (1802-1875) for Breitkopf & Härtel. Mistakenly believed to be the offspring of a commission for the singers of Charles VI of Hapsburg (who died fourteen years before their composition), these duets charmed key personalities in the movement for the rediscovery of early music, such as Fortunato Santini (1768-1861) and Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (1773-1850), both promoters of their performance in private concerts.
"Kiesewetter especially showed great enthusiasm, writing on a manuscript copy of the music the Virgil quotation 'Sic itur ad astra!' ('So you climb to heaven!'). The composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818), among the last Porpora students, described the duets as being made 'di musica divina' ('of divine music'). In Germany during the Nineteenth century, printed editions of the individual pieces of the collection, with piano accompaniment, tailored to the needs and tastes of the time, were in circulation. The first major encyclopedias of music mentioned as some of the main points of Porpora's output the so-called 'Duetti latini sulla Passione di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo' ('Latin duets on the Passion of Jesus Christ, Our Lord') or 'Duetti per la Quaresima' ('Duets for Lent'). To fully understand the choices made by the composer in creating these musical treasures one must first pay attention to two key points: the historical moment in which the 'Duetti' were conceived, and the musical genre they belong to.
"As already mentioned, they are contemporary to the printing of the 'Sonate XII', organized according to a precise plan, clearly stated in the dedication by Porpora: in it the Neopolitan musician proclaims that he wanted to give a demonstation of its technical background and his ability to write in different styles (ancient and Italian, modern and French), mixing them and dedicating two different attitudes (conservative and free) to the two sections into which the volume is divided. Thus the first six sonatas show a more severe attitude compared to the remaining ones, and have complex fugues as second movements, including that well known example of shameless virtuosity: a Diatonic Enharmonic Chromatic fugue, in the 'Sonata VI'. These pieces impressed very much the contemporary counterpoint connoisseurs, as we can see thanks to some Neapolitan manuscript copies of the fugues made by composition pupils and the to the most famous keyboard adaption by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), who published them within the first volume of his 'Selection of Practical Harmony' (1801).
"Porpora, by signing the 'Sonate XII' volume and bearing the most prestigious title of Kapellmeister of the Elector of Saxony, was consciously not only giving life to a monumental and elegant collection of violin sonatas, but also publishing a monument to the various styles and technical aspects he elaborated during his entire life. The duets can also be seen in the same light. These six songs fit perfectly into the definition of the genre of the Italian Chamber Duet (Italianische Kammerduette), with the only peculiarity of presenting a Latin text. Written as 'da capo' arias for two voices and continuo, at this time the Italian Chamber Duets are usually intended as the refined genre par excellence, difficult to perform, requiring listeners able to grasp the subtleties that were expected to characterize it (poignant counterpoint, audacious harmony, and melodies very tied to the lyrics, sometimes almost 'madrigalistic'). The Chamber Duets, for Porpora and his contemporaries were the perfect theater of technical ability of a composer, of the intelligence and skill of the performers in showing the details of his writing, and of the competence of the selected audience that attends to the performance: an aesthetic game of the highest intellectual and performative kind.
"The materical and formal shape of the Latin lyrics of the 'Duetti' by Porpora shows that they probably were not born for this kind of musical treatment. It is likely that his choice should be attributed to an autonomous idea by the composer: to adopt a 'high' musical genre for texts related to the highest topic of Christianity, in order to please his very musically competent patrons. The six duets show between them very different stylistic aims, and thus appear to be designed, as well as the violin sonatas, to show the absolute versatility of the composer: the first one is a magnificent example of sever and strict counterpoint; the second one shows an ivdence initial reference to the model of the 'French' duet, as carefully defined by Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) in his 'Der vollkommene Capellmeister', with two voices involved in parallel running of the test and vocalizations. The third duet makes a strong use of chromaticism, devoting harmony delays to expressive purposes. The fourth seems to makr the abandonment of 'severe' writing, proclaiming the glory of the holy cross with long passages of coloratura in triplets, imitation of writing for trumpet, references to the ancient use of the so-called 'nomina sacra', and a remarkable simplification of the harmonic texture. The fifth duet even becomes a little dramatic scene, completely disrupting the assumption of the imitative writing of the genre: partially different texts (in the first verse of the lyrics) are assigned to the bass and to the soprano, which then are used to describe two different emotional attitudes with contrasting vocal styles (pathetic for the soprano, 'di segno' - 'of anger' - for the bass). The sixth duet, finally, provides a partial concertante role for the organ, for which Porpora also defined the precise registration (octave): here the voices sing music stylistically very far from that exemplified by the first duet, music open to some of the main stylistic features of the so-called Viennese Classicism.
"At the end of this CD you will find an unpublished anonymous 'Miserere' for two voices and basso continuo, in many ways conceptually opposed to the 'Duetti'. Porpora's devotional duets are 'musica reservata' par excellence, written by a famous Neopolitan composer for private devotional use of a strongly competent German court: on the other hand, this 'Miserere' represents a perfect example of 'everday' music; written for the same liturgical season, but for a public performance during vespers in a town church of the remote prince of the Kingdom of Naples (presumably Campobasso or, maybe, the tiny Civitacampomarano). Copied for Lent of 1772, the music combines charming modern stylistic features to deliberately stereotyped archaic ones, resolving itself in a fair and strictly functional satisfaction of the small splendor required by those country holy services, with a vocal cast forcibly restricted for economic reasons and not necessarily technically founded as the one needed to the performance of chamber duets.
"Thanks to the Eighteenth-century devotional expectations of the people, the work of professional but less known composers also inclucded this: to bring the good taste and style encoded by revered masters of the rank of Porpora, Vinci, Leo, Hasse, even in the small villages which constituted the majority of the urban centers of the kingdom of Naples.
"In performing the 'Duetti', we followed the evidences emerging from the score and the context for which it was born: it wasn't difficult to establish that the instrument used at the time for the basso continuo playing was an organ, to which we added as small bow bass instrument the cello. Given the esthetical nature of chamber duets, we choose to flourish very few of the vocal lines, changing in the 'da capo' more emphases, attitudes to pronunciation, expressive colors given to individual words, dynamics, than pitches, making only brief cadenzas where required.
"In the 'Miserere', following the usual practice, the composer scored only the odd lines, leaving the other ones to be sung in chant. For the performance practice of the latter, it was considered appropriate to refer at closely as possible to the nearer geographically and chronologically relevant composition that has been given to analyze: the autograph of the 'Miserere concertante a due cori' (1739) by Leonaro Leo, held at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples. The composer wrote here also the 'Gregorian' chant verses of the text, providing them with basso continuo and with the exact duration of individual values. So, observing the criteria used in a very standardized way by Leo, we performed all the ommitted verses of the Psalm to give a complete picture of the score and its function." (Stefano Aresi. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Stile Galante, Stefano Aresi
1. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto I. Crimen Adae Quantum Constat!
2. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto II. Rigate Lacrimis Facies Populi
3. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto III. Mortis Causa Tu Fuisti
4. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Fuga V
5. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto IV. In Hoc Vexillo Crucis
6. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto V. Tamquam Agnus Immolatur
7. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Duetto VI. Ab Imo Pectore Ede Suspiria
8. Sei Duetti Latini Sulla Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo: Fuga VI. Diatonico Enarmonico Cromatico
9. Anonymous - Miserere
No comments:
Post a Comment