"According to a recently discovered source, Antonio Lotti was born not in Hanover, as had been presumed previously, but on 5 January 1667 in Venice. His parents - the 'sonatore' Matteo Lotti and Marina Gasparin, the daughter of a 'baracol' - married in 1662 in the Venetian church S. Marino, and it was also there that their son Antonio Lotti was baptized on 25 January 1667. Antonio Lotti spend the greater part of his life in the city on the lagoon, where he received his training from the Maestro di cappella of San Marco, Giovanni Legrenzi, and the local tenor and counterpoint teacher Lodovico Fuga. In 1689 Lotti himself was hired as a falsetto, and in 1702 also as second organist at San Marco. He occupied various positions in the chapel until in 1736 he was able to prevail in the competition for the coveted office of 'Maestro di cappella'. He occupied various positions in the chapel until in 1736 he was able to prevail in the competition for the coveted office of 'Maestro di cappella'. He held his post until his death in Venice on 5 January 1640. Lotti wrote numerous sacred music compositions for San Marco and for other institutions such as the ospedali, the orphanages that were famous for the well-grounded musical education of their pupils. At the same time, with nearly twenty successful stage works, Lotti was considered as one of the leading representative of Venetian opera, and it was above all this reputation that led in 1717 to an invitation to Dresden by the Prince Elector of Saxony, Friedrich August. Lotti spent about two years, with his opera troop at the Saxon court, until the conclusion of the festivities in honor of the marriage of Friedrich August and Princess Maria Josepha of Hapsburg in 1719. Five large-scale stage works were written during this time. The Italian musicians also occasionally performed in the court church, and a number of sacred works by Lotti have survived in the Saxon State Library: Masses and individual Mass movements, a requiem, and various psalm settings. In terms of style and because of the high quality of their performance, Lotti's church music compositions were perceived by his contemporaries as being novel. In a report by the Dresden Jesuits, for example, it is written:
"'In a manner completely new here the Italian musicians, who were sent by his Highness the Prince Elector from Venice to Dresden, brought our church to life when they [...] embellished a High Mass, which lasted almost three hours, with such admirable artistic skill both in terms of the voices as well as the instruments, such as one has never before heard in Dresden.'
"Even outside Dresden these performances did not remain unnoticed. Johann Sebastian Bach's predecessor in the position of Thomaskantor, Johann Kuhnau, pointed out Lotti's exemplary stylistic separation of opera and church music, and praised the 'admirable gravity, strong and perfect harmony and art, in addition to the exceptional charm' of Lotti's work which he had heard in the Dresden court church.
"As far as we can see, Lotti seems in later years to have written works above all in the old church style originating from Palestrina. Perhaps with Lotti in mind, the Dresden Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen sarcastically remarked in the foreword to his 'Generalbaß in der Composition' ('Thorough bass in Composition'): 'I have observed in other places various notable examples, that when formerly renowned theater composers in their old age had lost all their fire and inventiveness, they then finally started to become good church composers and, contrary to their former habit, to work hard on counterpoint. One could deduce various things from this.'
"Soon after Lotti's death his church music, like that of most of his contemporaries, began to disappear from the repertoire. Only in Venice were a few of his stile-antico compositions, which were less tied to a particular period, still occasionally still performed into the early nineteenth century. Thus, in 1770 Charles Burney, the writer on music who toured in Italy and France, heard in the Venetian church of San Giovanni e Poulo 'a mass sung in four parts, without other instrument than the organ. [...] The composition [...] consisting of fugues and imitations in the stile of our best old church services. [...] Upon the whole this seems to be the true stile for the church: it calls to memory nothing vulgar, light, or prophane [sic]; it disposed the mind to philanthropy, and divests it of its gross and sensual passions.'
"Burney's report marks a turning point in the history of Lotti reception: Had Lotti struck the right note for the ears of his contemporaries with his works in concertante style, the music historiography emerging toward the end of the eighteenth century saw in him above all a representative of stile-antico composition, a view that especially in Germany continued to be propagated in the early years of the nineteenth century. A central role was played by the rediscovery and publication of an eight-part 'Crucifixus' by the prominent music theorist Adolf Bernhard Marx in the 'Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung' in 1819. Marx combined the publication of the work with the intention, proposed in a manifesto-like manner, of promoting along with Lotti's easily accessible 'Crucifixus' the acceptance of stile-antico compositions, after previously published works in this genre by Palestrina, Sarti, and Fux had not been particularly well received with the public. The publication received great attention, as a result of which musical historiography, which often displays a tendency toward typification and quick historical classification, for a long time failed to take notice of a substantial part of Lotti's sacred music œuvre. Accordingly, the most extensive edition of selected works up to now, which appeared in 1930 in the series 'Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst', contains works exclusively in the old style.
"Since to the present day the full breadth of Antonio Lotti's sacred music has hardly been explored in its full breadth, and in particular a catalogue of his works is lacking, the context and date of origin of the 'Missa Sapientiae' lie in obscurity. Yet the work, accompanied by independent instrumental parts and fashioned in the modern sacred-music style appears to have been quite well known by Lotti's contemporaries, as shown by the wide dissemination of preserved sources and the unusual fact that prominent composers such as George Frideric Handel, Jan Dismas Zelenka, and Johann Sebastian Bach owned copies of this Mass.
"George Frideric Handel, who probably knew Lotti personally from his time in Venice and from a sojourn in Dresden, copied the Mass incompletely and without the text, as is the case in almost all his copies of works by other composers. In this way, Handel collected a store of so-called borrowing material from which he could take rhythmic models, thematic ideas or even whole sections of movements for his own compositions. Indeed, many fruits of this collecting activity can be found in his works. For example, the chorus 'Blest be the hand' ('Theodora', HWV 68) clearly comes from the 'Domine Deus', 'Agnus Dei', and the instrumental sections in the chorus 'Virtue will place thee' ('The Choice of Hercules', HWV 69) is taken from the 'Gloria in excelsis'. One could list further examples, including some in 'Jephta' (HWV 70).
"In contrast to Handel, Jan Dismas Zelenka, whose official duties in Dresden included the procurement of musical repertoire for the Catholic court church, copied Lotti's Mass ca. 1730 for performance purposes. In so doing, he adapted the work to the usage in Dresden in that he provided for a more colorful wind instrumentation. Thus, for example, he strengthened the string tutti over longer stretches with oboes, added a group of woodwinds to the interplay of the high strings and continuo in the 'Laudamus te', and transformed the oboe part into a trumpet part in the 'Gloria in excelsis'. The name 'Missa Sapientiae' also originates with Zelenka, who gave Mass compositions by other composers nicknames of this sort, apparently to be able to tell them apart more easily. Strictly speaking, the name 'Missa Sapientiae' therefore refers not to Lotti's original work, but to Zelenka's Dresden version of it, which is also to be heard on this recording.
"At the beginning of the 1730s, Johann Sebastian Bach, who like Zelenka had a large music library at his disposal, started collecting Latin sacred music by Italian composers. While doing so, he selected works of older masters as well as those of his own contemporaries, among these Lotti's 'Missa Sapientiae'. This copy of the Mass traces directly back to Zelenka's version, and was made in part by Bach, in part by a scribe. Whether Bach performed the 'Missa Sapientiae' in Leipzig is not known, at least no set of parts has been preserved. Moreover, the use in the 'Gloria in excelsis' of a variant of the eighth psalm tone not usual in the Protestant north may speak against a performance of the work in Leipzig. The reason for Bach's increased interest in Latin church music was his own productions of Masses which began at this time. They commenced with a 'Missa in B Minor' consisting of a 'Kyrie' and 'Gloria' - dedicated by Bach in Juli 1733 to the new Prince Elector of Saxony and Polish King Friedrich August II in the hope of acquiring a position at the Dresden court and future commissions. In later years, the Mass was completed to become the famous, large 'B-Minor Mass'.
"Lotti's 'Missa Sapientiae' was probably of interest to Bach in various respects: Lotti, as is generally known, numbered among the composers of whom the prince elector was particularly fond, and the Mass offered an opportunity to study a typical example of the Venetian tonal language. Moreover, the 'Missa Sapientiae' came quite close to the intended dimensions of the 'Missa in B Minor': In spite of the limitation to the 'Kyrie' and 'Gloria', both works call for a large instrumental ensemble, and the choir is expanded from four to five or six voices in individual passages. The division of the movements are similar in many respects, even if the 'Domine Deus' in Lotti is divided into three individual movements. In the first of these individual movements, 'Domine Deus, Rex coelestis', a violin (or alternately a flute in Zelenka's version) and a muted oboe concertize alongside the solo soprano, and are thus at least atmospherically reminiscent of Bach's corresponding setting. A conspicuous analogy in the instrumentation is found in the 'Quoniam tu solus', which in both cases features a soloistic brass instrument. Completely different from the 'Missa Sapientiae', Bach allows the 'Qui tollis' to develop in flowing transition out of the 'Domine Deus', whereas Lotti sets a clear caesura at the end of the 'Domine Deus', 'Agnus Dei' with a concluding fugue. Lottis link the following movements 'Qui tollis' and 'Qui sedes' in that he musically fashions the analogous text 'miserere nobis' nearly identically, and only a crass harmonic tension of the first section is not taken up again later. The choral writing of the 'miserere nobis' section is enveloped by the instruments in a delicate, typically Venetian carpet of sound that Bach unmistakably echos in the 'Crucifixus' of the 'B-Minor Mass'." (Thomas Krümpelmann. From the liner notes.)
"When Johann Sebastian Bach submitted his application for the position of Kantor at Leipzig's Thomaskirche, he already must have sensed that there was a considerable discrepancy between the supposed and the real performing ability of the choir of St. Thomas'. Indeed, Bach saw himself forced to strengthen the choir parts with trombones in his two audition pieces, the cantatas BWV 22 and 23. It can be assumed that this was due not to reasons of timbre, but primarily to insecurities in the performance. The abilities of the municipal musicians, too, were far from adequate, something that Bach realized only with time. After assuming his office at the end of May 1723, Bach went to work with great élan; perhaps he wanted to prove himself to those critics who viewed his appointment with skepticism. Almost all the works of his first year's cycle of cantatas are distinguished by their exceptional difficulty in comparison to the compositions of his predecessor Johann Kuhnae and those of his two co-candidate Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner, who had been favored by the town council.
"Among the festive compositions of the year 1723, the 'Magnificat' occupies an outstanding position. For a long time, it was thought that the work was composed for Christmas 1723, since the score of the work, originally in E-flat Major, contains four interpolated Christmas movements. However, examination of the autograph score shows that the movements related to Christmas were later additions. It would seem obvious that the performance on 25 December 1723 was not the first; yet, since the composition was written in Leipzig - unequivocally proven by the paper of the score - it follows that the E-flat Major Magnificat, BWV 243a, was intended for the feast of the Visitation on 2 July 1723. On this day, which was solemnly celebrated in Leipzig - like the feast of the Purification on 2 February and the feast of the Annunciation on 25 March - the reading is song of praise to Mary from the Gospel of St. Luke; the work was not intended for the main church service, but rather for the vespers service in which the 'Magnificat' could be performed in Latin. This feast, five weeks after his assumption of office, was Bach's first chance to demonstrate his special talents - and the new Thomaskantor did not pass up the opportunity. Instead of the usual four-part vocal setting, the choral movements have been expanded to five parts; Bach found models for this in the library of the Thomasschule, since his predecessors Johann Schelle and Johann Kuhnau likewise preferred five-part writing with three high voices for festive compositions. It remains uncertain, though, how Bach was able to conceal the dearth of capable sopranos among the pupils of the Thomasschule.
"The biblical song of praise to Mary is - as in numerous other compositions of the time - broken down into its individual statements, which are set as chorale movements and arias. Unusual in Bach's way of treating the text is at all events the splitting off of the concluding words 'omnes generationes' in the 'Quia respexit', and their assignment to the choir. In this manner Bach emphasizes the generations who praise Mary. In spite of the brevity of the sentence fragment, he creates a choral section important for the balance of the work. The choice of text means that none of the arias are in the otherwise still pre-dominant da-capo form. Contrasts are achieved through the choice of new, closely related keys, various compositional techniques, and a varied instrumentation. The unity of the work is established by the use of the music of the opening chorus again for the doxology, the song of praise to God.
"By virtue of an old Leipzig tradition, which can be traced back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, the 'Magnificat', the song of praise to Mary, could be extended on Christmas by inserted movements related to the feast. In comparison to the better-known D-Major version, which recent research has shown to have been first performed on 2 July 1733, the E-flat Major version sounds fresher and, particularly in the trumpet parts, more radical, although at the expense of extreme technical demands. Perhaps the Leipzig town musicians or their superior had told the Cöthen court Kapellmeister, 'who at the beginning could not reconcile himself with the transition from Kapellmeister to Kantor', that they could play anything. Several years later Bach expressed himself about their abilities with great reservation: In the 'Entwurff einer wohlbestallten Kirchen Music' ('Plan for a well-appointed church music') of August 1730 it is tersely stated that decency prohibits him 'however from reporting anything approaching the truth about their qualities and musical skills.'
"The high range of the vocal parts, which was typical of Bach's Cöthen works, also seems to have caused problems at the performances in Leipzig. It is conceivable that Bach therefore had in mind a considerably lower pitch than was usual in Leipzig. The so-called French chamber pitch [...] is a whole tone lower than today's normal pitch and a semitone lower than the pitch usual during Bach's time [...]. The lower pitch adopted for the recording lends the strings and winds a more mellow timbre, which underscores the individual chracter of the E-flat Major version.
"In Bach's time, the pitch level was not standardized, and could therefore be chosen as required. As a result, the organ, which is fixed at a specific pitch level, had to transpose; and with many wind instruments there were several idiosyncracies that had to be taken into consideration, which could explain some of the differences in the instrumentation of the two versions. The revision of this work, which Bach undertook during the period of national mourning after the death of August the Strong, was intended to make the piece easier to perform by means of the transposition from E-flat to D Major, and above all with the simplification of the demanding and, when played on natural trumpets in E-flat, exceedingly difficult trumpet parts. Nevertheless, this revision resulted in a repertoire work no less brilliant." (Ulrich Leisinger, tr. Howard Weiner. From the liner notes.)
Performer: Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble, Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock
1. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Kyrie. Kyrie Eleison
2. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Kyrie. Christe Eleison
3. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Kyrie. Kyrie Eleison
4. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Gloria In Excelsis
5. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Laudamus Te
6. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Gratias Agimus Tibi
7. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Domine Deus, Rex Coelestis
8. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Domine Fili
9. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei
10. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi
11. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Qui Sedes
12. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus
13. Antonio Lotti - Missa Sapientiae: Gloria. Cum Sancto Spiritu
14. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Magnificat Anima Mea
15. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Et Exultavit
16. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Von Himmel Hoch
17. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Quia Respexit
18. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Omnes Generationes
19. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Quia Fecit
20. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Freut Euch Und Jubiliert
21. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Et Misericordia Eius
22. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Fecit Potentiam
23. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Gloria In Excelsis
24. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Deposuit Potentes
25. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Esurientes Implevit
26. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Virga Jesse Floruit
27. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Suscepit Israel
28. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Sicut Locutus Est
29. Johann Sebastian Bach - Magnificat, BWV 243a: Gloria Patri Et Filio
