Antonio Vivaldi - Gloria!
Our Fall Concert this season features Vivaldi's "Gloria":
Surprisingly for a composer who produced so many sacred vocal works, Vivaldi never held a post which required him to compose music of this kind as part of his regular duties.
At the Ospedale delia Pieta, the Venetian institution for foundlings which boasted a famous orchestra and choir of girls and women, with which Vivaldi was associated for most of his working life, he seems to have provided vocal music for the chapel only during those periods which occurred between the departure or death of one choirmaster and the arrival of his successor, the most principal of which spanned the years 1713-19.
We know that a Mass for full choir and instruments was performed over a certain period on every grand feast at the Pieta and the Gloria, RV 588 may well have formed part of this famous Mass. Its style suggests a relatively early date of composition, perhaps around 1714. It is cast as a cycle of nine movements, contrasted in tempo, scoring, tonality, style and mood.
The better-known Gloria setting RV 589, performed in Spokane several years ago by the North Idaho Symphony and the Northwest Sacred Music Chorale, might well have been a replacement for RV 588, and what is remarkable is how faithfully the basic devices of RV 588 clothed in different notes, are reproduced in the other setting.
This setting of the "Gloria," which is in the same key (D major) as Vivaldi's better-known setting, RV 589, contains three movements closely based on their counterparts in a "Gloria per due chori" dated September 9, 1708 by the Veronese composer G.M. Ruggieri. Vivaldi possessed Ruggieri's autograph score, and from annotations in his own hand it appears that he supervised a performance of it. The borrowed movements are the opening "Gloria in excelsis Deo," the "Qui tollis peccata mundi," and the concluding double fugue on "Cum Sancto Spiritu," which Vivaldi also adapted independently for RV 589.
Whereas the paper on which RV 588 IS written suggests that it postdates RV 589, a comparison of the style of the two works conveys the opposite impression. Whichever of them came first was undoubtedly taken as the model for the later setting, for there are some extraordinary parallels between the two works.
So, those of you familiar with “the” Vivaldi “Gloria” take note: This is not your mother’s Vivaldi “Gloria.”
Join us on November 15th, 2008 at 7:30 PM or on November 16th,
at 2:00 PM for our opening Fall Concert.
Copyright 2008, NWSMC.com
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