CONVERSAZIONI II Duelling Cantatas Sounds Baroque Anna Dennis soprano Andrew Radley countertenor Julian Perkins director Noelle Barker OBE (1928–2013) Sounds Baroque was privileged to have had Noelle Barker as its first honorary patron. In addition to being a distinguished soprano, Noelle was a formidable teacher and a refreshingly honest friend. Her indefatigable support was invaluable in launching this series of conversazioni concerts and recordings. Conversazioni II is dedicated to her memory. 2 CONVERSAZIONI II Duelling Cantatas Sounds Baroque Jane Gordon and Jorge Jimenez violins Jonathan Rees cello and viola da gamba James Akers archlute, guitar and theorbo Frances Kelly triple harp Anna Dennis soprano Andrew Radley countertenor Julian Perkins harpsichord, organ and director 3 Francesco Gasparini (1668–1727) Io che dal terzo ciel (Venere e Adone) 24:26 1 Recitativo – Io che dal terzo ciel raggi di gioia (Venere) 1:00 2 Aria – Come infiamma con luce serena (Venere) 2:32 3 Recitativo – Se già nacqui fra l’onde (Venere) 0:49 4 Aria – T’amerò come mortale (Adone) 3:22 5 Recitativo – Non m’adorar, no, no (Venere) 0:23 6 Aria – Tutto il bello in un sol bello (Venere) 2:08 7 Recitativo – È il mio volto mortale (Adone) 0:21 8 Aria – Ove scherza il ruscel col ruscello (Venere e Adone) 1:37 9 Recitativo – Del ruscel dell’augello il canto e’l suono (Venere e Adone) 0:34 10 Aria – La pastorella ove il boschetto ombreggia (Venere e Adone) 4:12 11 Recitativo – Qual farfalletta anch’io (Venere e Adone) 1:03 12 Aria – Meco parte il mio dolore (Venere) 1:49 13 Recitativo – Ecco ti lascio, o caro (Venere e Adone) 0:36 14 Aria – Usignol che nel nido sospira (Venere e Adone) 3:54 Antonio Caldara (c1670–1736) Trio sonata in E minor, op. 1, no. 5 (1693) 8:17 15 Grave 2:04 16 Vivace 1:50 17 Adagio 3:10 18 Vivace 1:11 Attributed to George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) 19 Rondeau in G major 2:01 (Giuseppe) Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) 20 Sonata in G major, K 63 Capriccio (Allegro) 2:43 (Pietro) Alessandro (Gaspare) Scarlatti (1660–1725) Questo silenzio ombroso (Il Sonno)† 10:41 21 Largo – Questo silenzio ombroso 1:48 4 22 Adagio – Dolce piange 4:17 23 Adagio – [Andante] – Adagio – Andante moderato – Or mentr’io dormo 4:34 Domenico Scarlatti 24 Sonata in D minor, K 32 Aria 1:28 George Frideric Handel 25 Sonata in G major 4:47 (alternative version of HWV 579) Amarilli vezzosa (Il duello amoroso), HWV 82 24:51 26 Sinfonia (Allegro – Adagio) 1:33 27 Menuetto 1:03 28 Recitativo – Amarilli vezzosa (Daliso) 0:39 29 Aria – Pietoso sguardo (Daliso) 3:27 30 Recitativo – Dunque tanto s’avanza (Amarilli) 0:35 31 Aria – Piacer che non si dona (Amarilli) 4:05 32 Recitativo – Sì, sì, crudel, ti accheta (Amarilli e Daliso) 0:57 33 Aria – Quel nocchiero che mira le sponde (Amarilli) 2:17 34 Recitativo – Amarilli, Amarilli, in vano tenti (Daliso) 0:38 35 Aria (Largo) – È vanità d’un cor (Daliso) 5:20 36 Recitativo – Or su, già che ostinato (Amarilli e Daliso) 1:50 37 Aria – Sì, sì, lasciami ingrata (Amarilli e Daliso) 2:24 Jane Gordon solo violin (tracks 33 and 35) and Sarah Moffatt ripieno violin (tracks 29, 31 and 33) † The viola da gamba enjoyed great popularity in Roman conversazioni as a solo and obbligato instrument, with composers including Handel, Gasparini and Alessandro Scarlatti writing for it in these roles. It was used only rarely as a continuo instrument in late-17th-century Italy, principally in the North, where French culture had its greatest influence. But given the delicate, intimate and transparent qualities which it shares with Alessandro Scarlatti’s cantata Questo silenzio ombroso, one can easily imagine that for this work the gamba might have been used, exceptionally, as a continuo instrument. 5 Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli Marescotti (1672–1731) 6 Duelling Cantatas THE ECCENTRIC QUEEN CHRISTINA OF Sweden led a scandalous life after her exile to Rome during the 1650s, often at colossal expense to her adopted Roman Catholic church. She made a decisive impact upon the cultural life of aristocratic society in Rome by gathering round her a circle of poets, authors, artists and musicians, all of whom were fascinated by the reform of Italian poetry (including libretti for musical entertainments). They felt that the corrupting indulgence of contemporary writing could be purified through the restoration of classical Greek simplicity. Setting their work in the pastoral world of Arcadia (a district of Greece in the Peloponnese peninsula), the authors reimagined a lost paradise in which lovers experienced all sorts of situations: bitter quarrelling, jealous rivalry and cruel rejection frequently simmered close behind the depictions of emotional bliss and erotic satisfaction (and vice versa). Thus the elegance and purity of classical antiquity as reinterpreted by the Italian Renaissance was infused with the dramatic impulse and emotional yearning of the Baroque. In 1690, one year after Queen Christina’s death, fourteen of these Italian literary reformers founded the Accademia degli Arcadi (‘The Arcadian Academy’), holding their early meetings at Roman venues such as the Janiculum Hill or the gardens on the Palatine owned by the powerful Farnese family. The movement quickly grew across Italy; influential members included the poets and librettists Silvio Stampiglia, Apostolo Zeno, Carlo Sigismondo Capece and, later on, Pietro Metastasio (pupil of the founder-member Gianvincenzo Gravina). Prominent members of the academy also included generous patrons of music and the arts such as the powerful Venetian diplomat Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (great-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII, who promoted Ottoboni to the post of vice-chancellor of the Roman Catholic church), the wealthy cardinals Benedetto Pamphilij and Carlo Colonna (both from old aristocratic Roman families), and the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli (raised to the rank of Prince of Cerveteri by Pope Clement XI in 1709). The Arcadian Academy’s Sunday afternoon gatherings (conversazioni) took place in members’ palatial residences or beautiful gardens – the latter perhaps a convenient environment that embodied the literary aim of returning to harmonised idyllic nature. George Frideric Handel’s Amarilli vezzosa (HWV 82) was first performed on 28 October 1708 for such an occasion hosted by Ruspoli at his home, the Palazzo Bonelli (nowadays the seat of Rome’s provincial government). Handel was never a member of the Arcadian Academy, but by the time he visited Rome the group’s membership already included several renowned Italian performers and composers: seven musicians, among them Giovanni Bononcini, had been invited to join in May 1696. The virtuoso keyboard player Bernardo Pasquini, the violinist Arcangelo Corelli and the prolific vocal composer Alessandro Scarlatti (father of Domenico) were admitted as members in April 1706, having already been associated with the Arcadian circle for many years. Like their patrons from the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy, the Arcadian composers-in-residence adopted pseudonyms: Corelli was ‘Arcomélo Erimanteo’ (Arcomélo = the melodious bow), Pasquini was ‘Protico Azeriano,’ and Scarlatti was ‘Terpandro Politeo.’ It is likely that all of the official Arcadian Academy musicians (and some honoured guests such as Handel) contributed to conversazioni with performances of instrumental chamber music and vocal cantatas (often with just basso continuo accompaniment or sometimes with additional instruments). It is impossible to reconstruct an Arcadian Academy conversazione exactly as it may have happened during Handel’s visits to Rome, but it seems unlikely that any would have showcased the music of only a single composer. This recording presents one of the cantatas that Handel composed for Ruspoli within the context of instrumental and vocal chamber music by several of his Italian contemporaries who were closely connected to the Arcadian Academy. Sounds Baroque’s performances invite listeners to imagine the academicians and their guests spending their Sunday afternoon in an elegant 18th-century picture gallery, palatial salon or beautiful Roman garden. 7 In particular, the concept of duels proliferates throughout this album. Handel’s charming and nuanced dialogue cantata Amarilli vezzosa is often known as Il duello amoroso because of its two quarrelling lovers; two voices also contend harmoniously with each other in the selected cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti and Gasparini. The alternating keyboard music by Handel and his exact contemporary Domenico Scarlatti (both born in 1685) gives a speculative impression of the amiable musical duel between the two composers that was reputedly hosted by Cardinal Ottoboni at his sumptuous home, the Palazzo Cancelleria (where Corelli had resided as Ottoboni’s director of music since 1690). We do not know what music the two virtuoso keyboardists played, and whether it represented anything in their best-known publications of solo keyboard pieces; but they probably improvised and responded to each other’s extemporised material (see Duelling Maestri, p. 11). Two violins spar amiably with each other in a trio sonata from Antonio Caldara’s op. 1 collection (published by Giuseppe Sala, Venice, 1693); although Caldara started his musical career as a cellist at St Mark’s Basilica and became an influential and successful opera composer in his native La Serenissima, he also had some significant Roman connections: he was employed as Prince Ruspoli’s maestro di cappella from July 1709 until May 1716, during which time he wrote about 180 cantatas for Ruspoli’s Sunday morning conversazioni. Caldara spent the rest of his life working as vice- kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna, where he was frequently the first composer to set music to new libretti by the imperial court poet Metastasio (another Arcadian Academy alumnus). Francesco Gasparini was from a small town near Lucca in Tuscany, and by 1682 he was working as an organist at the Church of Madonna dei Monti in Rome.