"Lotti's extraordinary fame as a composer of sacred music originated already during the eighteenth century. In 1770 the English music scholar Charles Burney heard 'a mass sung in four parts, without other instrument than the organ', by him at San Marco. From these years on he was regarded as an outstanding master of the 'a cappella' style. Exponents of reform movements in sacred music during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century celebrated him as 'one of the greatest sacred composers of all time', as a composer who together with Fux and Caldara 'elevated polyphony to new height in the musical focal points of Southern Europe, in Vienna and Venice, by drawing on the pure 'a cappella' style of the sixteenth century' (Vinzenz Goller, 1913). On the basis of such an elevation, Lotti's works in the traditional 'stile antico' gained a certain degree of dissemination, while his large-scale masses, mass numbers and psalms composed in the 'stile concertato' have met with the interest of musicians and musicologists only in very recent years. For example, the so-called 'Missa Sapientiae' met with some notice, and Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, as well as the Dresden church composer Jan Dismas Zelenka had copies of it. Other works of no less importance, however, continue to await their rediscovery today. The trail of this music leads to Dresden, among other places, where Lotti, together with a few outstanding singers, arrived in the autumn of 1717. These Italians were initially engaged for the opera but also assumed responsibility for the performance of sacred music on special occasions. Of their first performance on the Feast of St. Cecilia, the court church chronicler reported in absolutely rapturous terms (in an original Latin text), 'In what here is still an entirely unaccustomed manner the Ialian musicians who have been sent by His Serene Highness the Prince Elector from Venice to Dresden enlivened our church, when in honor of St. Cecilia, within the octave after her feast day, they presented a sung high mass that lasted almost three hours with such a marvelous artistic skill, both with respect to the vocal parts as well as the instruments, as one had never yet heard before in Dresden.'
"The Prince Elector of Saxony Friedrich August I, better known as August the Strong, had converted to the Catholic faith in 1697 in order to be able to present himself as a candidate for election as King of Poland. The sacred music in the Taschenberg opera house redesigned as a Catholic court church in 1708 had occupied a rather modest level until the arrival of the Italians and gained public attention only after their arrival. It is no longer possible to determine which compositions were performed in this church during the two years that Lotti spent there. As music director he may have written his own works for the use of this church or had works copied that had been composed earlier. The scores of the psalms recorded here are extant in the holdings of the Library of the German Land of Saxony - State and University Library in Dresden and are from the court church archive. These works do not belong to the tradition of Catholic church music proper in Dresden (since this tradition formed only later on) but instead very much adhere to proven Venetian models. Of them, the 'Credidi' and 'Laudate Dominum' also later found their place in the repertoire of the court church; they thus represent the Venetian component within the Dresden tradition, a component that would make its influence felt for some two generations.
"Large-scale psalm compositions played a central role in Venetian sacred music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries both in the Basilica of St. Mark as well in the famous conservatories for girls. Such compositions found their place in the vesper service, during which the opening versicle 'Domine ad adjuvandum me festina', the hymn of the particular feast, and the 'Magnificat' were also usually performed with figural music. In such compositions Lotti and his contemporaries to a great extent followed standardized models in the overall design of their works, and these models for the most part remained unchanged over several generations. The task of the individual consisted not in the invention of completely new possibilities but in the greatest possible original realization of the models set by the tradition. This applies in special measure to the 'Dixit Dominus', which was set very often as the opening psalm of the vespers on all the Sundays and feast days of the liturgical year and in which above all the assignment of the individual verses to choral and solo numbers was by and large set. Only a few of the individual versions realized by Lotti in his composing can be named here: at the beginning the alternation between 'Dixit Dominus Domino meo' (in each case two or three soloists) and 'Sede a dextris meis' (five-part chorus) on various degrees of the main key produces a large-scale entry portal taken up at the end again in 'Sicut erat in principio' ('As it was in the beginning'). Likewise, the ensuing six-part vocal number on 'Donec ponam inimicos tuos' (three altos and three basses), embedded in a simple string accompaniment, hardly finds parallels in the compositions of those times. The solo instruments employed in the individual movements of this composition also contribute not insignificantly to its musical diversity, with the oboe in 'Tecum principium' and the violin in 'De torrente in via bibet' offering two examples. In contrast, the only trumpet is employed only together with the tutti; in this function it was normally reserved for the opening and concluding psalms of a vesper service in Venice. A catalogue of musical compositions of the Catholic court church from 1765 lists not only the complete version but also an abbreviated version, but neither the score nor the part of this latter version are extant. Lotti's original composition was probably too extensive for Dresden circumstances and therefore reworked in keeping with them.
"'Laudate pueri' was almost used as frequently as 'Dixit Dominus' during the course of the church year. In this psalm too settings on the large scale and of many parts were the rule in Venice. In the present composition Lotti limited his vocal and instrumental resources to the use of three solo voices together with an instrumentarium consisting of strings and oboes. Until 'Qui habitare facit' the division of individual verses into contrasting sections so very frequent in the 'Dixit Dominus' is lacking. The center of the composition is occupied by the soprano solo 'Quis sicut Dominus' on the basis of a basso ostinato. Throughout the eighteenth century it of course was possible to use the traditional 'stile antico' not only in the setting of the 'Ordinarium Missae' but also in the setting of psalms. This style is employed rigorously in 'Credidi', a psalm ocurring not in the Sunday vespers but also in the formularies of some feasts of saints as well as on All Saints' Day and Corpus Christi. As a rule each half verse but often also a shorter part is endowed with a musical 'soggetto', and this subject is then led through several voices or through all four of them. Despite the relatively uniform outer course of the setting, here too the composer has the opportunity to emphasize individual words in the texts. At the beginning and end the eighth psalm tone is heard in the soprano part - and in addition, as the words of the text 'O Domine quia ego servus tuus' in the bass - and thus grounds the anchoring of the piece in the traditional practice on a broader level. On the other hand, the use of the 'stile antico' does not automatically mean doing without instruments. In the music archive of the Dresden court church there is an arrangement of Lotti's 'Credidi' by Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692-1753), who was employed at the Dresden court from the end of 1715, and in this arrangement the strings, oboes and bassoon play together with the vocal parts directly or at the interval of an octave. This performance material offers solid evidence of the further use of the work in Dresden and served as the performance basis in the recording presented here.
"'Laudate Dominum' is the concluding psalm of the vespers of such important feasts as the Epiphany, Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. With its length of only two verses together with the doxology, the text hardly offers the composer all that much space for development. As in the opening psalm 'Dixit Dominus', in his 'Laudate Dominum' Lotti included a single trumpet among the instruments. In the Dresden version, which also goes back to Giovanni Alberto Ristori, the trumpet is eliminated and two oboes are added in its stead, among other changes. The recording presented here, however, is based on Lotti's original version.
"Together with many other works, Antonio Lotti's vesper psalms first of all stand for the outstanding role played by Venice in European sacred music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In contrast to Antonio Vivaldi's works, which were composed at the same time or a little while later but today are much better known, Lotti's personal 'signature' is much more strongly marked by adaption to the resources of the human voice. There is one simple reason for this: Lotti began his career as a singer; Vivaldi as a violinist. With his activity as a singer and organist, Lotti from the very beginning had closer ties to the traditional compositional method. Within Venetian church music Lotti's works form the birdge between the traditional and the modern in unique fashion." (Gerhard Poppe, tr. Susan Marie Praeder. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Batzdorfer Hofkapelle, Sächsisches Vocalensemble, Matthias Jung
1. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Dixit Dominus
2. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Donec Ponam
3. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Virgam Virtutis
4. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Tecum Principium
5. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Juravit Dominus
6. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Dominus A Dextris Tuis
7. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Judicabit In Nationibus
8. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Implebit Ruinas
9. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): De Torrente In Via Bibet
10. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Gloria Patri
11. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Sicut Erat In Principio
12. Dixit Dominus (Psalm 109): Et In Saeculorum
13. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Laudate Pueri
14. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Sit Nomen Domini
15. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): A Solis Ortu Usque Ad Occasum
16. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Excelsus Super Omnes
17. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Quis Sicut Dominus
18. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Suscitans A Terra
19. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Ut Collocet Eum
20. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Qui Habitare Facit
21. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Gloria Patri
22. Laudate Pueri (Psalm 112): Sicut Erat In Principio
23. Credidi (Psalm 115)
24. Laudate Dominum (Psalm 116)
No comments:
Post a Comment