Numerous performances by choirs, each newbie {and professional}, and an unlimited crop of recordings testify to the enduring reputation of one among Antonio Vivaldi’s biggest hits, Gloria.
His Gloria in D main RV589 is so deeply embedded within the choral repertory as to fall into the class of everlasting fixtures, a billing that disguises its disappearance for nearly two centuries after the composer’s demise.
When, and for whom, did Vivaldi compose the Gloria?
Vivaldi’s Gloria is a multi-movement setting of ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ – a multi-movement setting of a key textual content from the Latin Mass (there’s additionally a well-liked Christmas carol with the identical identify). Vivaldi’s setting was probably written from 1713-17 – along with a now-lost Kyrie – for the residents of the Ospedale della Pietà, one among 4 charitable establishments for the orphaned and deserted women of Venice, lots of whom had been fathered by philandering noblemen or Grand Tour guests to the north Italian city-state. Vivaldi taught music to and composed for the Pietà’s women, apparently trusting its expertise pool of older singers to carry out refrain components notated for tenor and bass.
The work’s fashionable revival started in Mussolini’s Italy quickly after the outbreak of the Second World Struggle within the autumn of 1939. It was carried out in firm with Vivaldi’s Stabat mater beneath the path of Alfredo Casella throughout his Vivaldi Week in Siena, a mix that launched audiences already accustomed to his instrumental concertos to the truth that the composer, an ordained priest, additionally wrote sacred music. It grew to become established as the Vivaldi Gloria (regardless of the survival of an equally high-quality setting of the identical textual content by the composer) following the post-war distribution of Casella’s 1941 version.
The Gloria’s worldwide attain was prolonged with assist from conductor André Jouve’s pioneering recording, made in Paris in 1954, and David Willcocks’s best-selling album, set down within the chapel of Choir of King’s Faculty, Cambridge in 1966, earlier than discovering favour with period-instrument performers in the hunt for bankable document releases.
What kind of music is Vivaldi’s Gloria?
Vivaldi’s Gloria falls inside the style of cantata-mass, a hybrid type during which snippets of textual content are set for sundry permutations of solo voices, choir and devices. The emphasis all through is on textural distinction and expressive selection, and on the clear communication of feelings arising from the phrases of the mass.
Leaping octaves, rapid-fire trumpet figures and emphatic choral chords set the tone for the opening ‘Gloria’, a mix crafted to amplify God’s glory, plain and easy. A descending sequence in B minor, shared by first and second violins, marks a shift in temper for ‘Et in terra pax’, the longest of the work’s 12 actions; the passing dissonances of its choir components recommend that earth’s peace is fragile at finest and positively transient.
Vivaldi sends introspection packing with the fiddle upbeat to ‘Laudamus te’, preface to an impassioned duet for solo sopranos that may have been written for the opera home, and will get to the guts of the liturgical matter with a powerful choral declamation of because of the creator, ‘Gratias agimus tibi’, and fleet-footed fugal setting of ‘propter magnam gloriam tuam’.
Little creativeness is required to detect echoes of Venetian avenue music within the instrumental introduction and walking-bass line of ‘Domine Deus’. The alto soloist quickly enters into a young duet with the solo oboist and develops the motion’s principal theme with hypnotic melodic variations.
‘Domine Deus, Rex coelestis’ presents a textbook case of Baroque music’s love affair with repeated rhythmic patterns, constructed right here from two-note items comprising a dotted quaver adopted by a semiquaver. The determine pervades the motion’s relentless bass line and leaves its unmistakeable mark on a energetic dialogue between the choir’s higher and decrease voices.
‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’, a prayer of intercession addressed to the Lamb of God, elevates a chamber aria for solo alto, cello and continuo with the best of chordal choir chants, like a name and response from priest to congregation.
Extra like this
The sense of unfolding ritual continues with ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’, an more and more pressing choral plea for mercy, and the drama of the alto aria ‘Qui sedes’, a heroic projection of the redemptive energy of God’s only-begotten son. Vivaldi presents a truncated model of the opening ‘Gloria’, modified to hold the phrase’s ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’, earlier than closing his work with a brisk fugal setting of ‘Cum sancto spiritu’ for choir, strings and solo trumpet, borrowed wholesale from a Gloria by his fellow Venetian, Giovanni Maria Ruggieri.
Can we hear Vivaldi’s Gloria because the composer meant?
What successive generations of choristers knew as Vivaldi’s Gloria owed a lot to the editorial tweaks and ‘enhancements’ made to the unique rating by the Italian composer and musicologist Gian Francesco Malipiero. His version, printed in 1970, has been challenged by latest scholarship and the looks of recent performing variations of the Gloria primarily based on its manuscript supply.
There have additionally been makes an attempt, some extra profitable than others, to recreate the work because it might need sounded within the chapel of the Pietà as sung by an all-female choir. The evolving historical past of Vivaldi’s choral traditional, like all enduring compositions from the previous, incorporates room for contemporary editions and radical approaches to its efficiency alongside outdated favourites, a degree underlined by the hanging range of the work’s discography.
One of the best recordings of Vivaldi’s Gloria
Paul Agnew (conductor)
Sophie Karthäuser (soprano), Lucile Richardot (mezzo); Les Arts Florissants
Harmonia Mundi HAF8905358
If performed straight, because it seems on the web page, Vivaldi’s Gloria can simply affirm cussed prejudices in regards to the yawn-inducing predictability of his music. Paul Agnew’s interpretation with Les Arts Florissants is something however predictable; quite, their recording, launched solely this summer time, reveals contemporary inflections and engenders musical and textual curiosity in every of the work’s actions, a lot in order that it restores a way of marvel, even reverence, to the piece. The latter rises from the context that Les Arts Florissants have created for it, framing the Gloria as a part of a ‘Nice Venetian Mass’.
The speculative reconstruction addresses the perennial query of what to place with Vivaldi’s Gloria: Agnew’s reply is to position it in firm with the composer’s Kyrie RV 587, the motet Ostro picta, armata spina, the Credo RV 591, and different liturgical works by Vivaldi, reworded to supply the remainder of the Mass Abnormal. The mix works a deal with, though anybody accustomed to the well-known Beatus vir RV 807 could be thrown by its use right here for the Sanctus and Benedictus.
Agnew judges every motion of the Gloria in relation to its half in the entire. He flags Vivaldi’s rhetorical prospers with myriad particulars of dynamic shading, shrewdly judged adjustments of pulse and tempos that really feel excellent, a method ideally suited to the eloquence and elan of Les Arts Florissants and backed by recorded sound each clear and heat. Their opening ‘Gloria’, sprightly but by no means rushed, feels like a real response to God’s glory, as if caught within the second of fervent prayer, likewise the conclusion of ‘Et in terra pax’, made all of the extra arresting by unwavering choral intonation.
The interpretative components that make this recording particular are rooted in Agnew’s lengthy expertise as a singer. He encourages his choristers to shine in ‘Gratias agimus tibi’ and ‘Qui tollis’, turning what can readily move as choral filler into dramatic vignettes, full with squeeze-box results on the repeated ‘o’ of ‘gloriam tuam’.
His soloists, soprano Sophie Karthäuser and mezzo Lucile Richardot, take their place as first amongst chamber-music equals, alive to the admirable work of Les Arts Florissants’ instrumentalists and the which means of what they’re singing. Richardot’s subtle account of ‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’ presents an object lesson in phrasing and the expressive use of consonants. That is a type of all too uncommon recordings that develop in stature with every repetition.
Hervé Niquet (conductor)
Alpha Classics ALPHA620
The Pietà’s foundling musicians, whose frequent concert events had been screened from public view by metallic grills, attracted an elite viewers from throughout Europe. Hervé Niquet and Le Live performance Spirituel think about how their efficiency of Vivaldi’s Gloria might need sounded within the Ospedale’s chapel. The omission of trumpet components is wholly offset by the sunshine mix of all-female voices, six unison altos within the solo actions and a heady mixture of continuo devices. Recorded in 2015, Niquet’s experiment, with its brisk tempos and rhythmic vitality, magnifies the music’s radiant magnificence.
David Willcocks (conductor)
Decca 458 6232
Initially launched on the Argo label, David Willcocks’s 1966 recording is way more than a museum piece from the times earlier than traditionally knowledgeable performers totally colonised Baroque territory. The wealthy sound of his King’s Faculty choral students marries effectively with that of the choir’s boy choristers, particularly so within the ‘Qui tollis’ and shutting fugue, and enhances ace taking part in from the Academy of St Martin within the Fields. Better of all are Janet Baker’s peerless efficiency of ‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’ and the choir’s haunting ‘Et in terra pax’.
Harry Christophers (conductor)
Coro COR16162
On this 2018 launch, Harry Christophers takes an unhurried, delightfully lyrical method to Vivaldi’s rating. The Sixteen’s singers and interval instrumentalists let the music circulation whereas mining copious particulars of articulation and color: pay attention, as an illustration, to the ‘Domine fili’ for an introduction to the ensemble’s sympathetic interdependence or the pleasant interplay between Lynda Russell, oboist Anthony Robson and the organ-and-theorbo continuo combo of Laurence Cummings and Robin Jeffrey.
And one to keep away from…
Turkeys abound within the catalogue of Vivaldi Glorias. It’s shocking that one among them was hatched by Hermann Scherchen, who so usually produced persuasive insights into Baroque music. The German conductor’s 1963 dwell efficiency with the Choir and Orchestra of RAI Milan is scuppered by submerged recorded sound, a turgid ‘Et in terra pax’ and ditch-dull ‘Laudamus te’, and what right this moment may pretty be known as inappropriate choral singing. Compensation comes within the form of Anna Reynolds’s ‘Domine Deus, Agnus Dei’, though too little and too late.
