Antonio Lotti Crucifixus
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ANTONIO LOTTI CRUCIFIXUS THE SYRED CONSORT | ORCHESTRA OF ST PAUL’S | BEN PALMER 1 Dixit Dominus in G minor [8:30] Credo in G minor solos: Kate Ashby, Felicity Hayward sopranos Ciara Hendrick alto Choir I: Felicity Hayward soprano Ciara Hendrick alto Hugo Hymas tenor Ben McKee bass Hugo Hymas tenor Oliver Hunt bass Choir II: Rachel Ambrose Evans soprano Lucy Goddard alto Ruairi Bowen tenor Oliver Hunt bass 13 Credo in unum Deum [3:33] Miserere in C minor solos: Lucy Goddard, Ciara Hendrick alto [4:50] solos: Rachel Ambrose Evans soprano Ciara Hendrick alto 14 Et incarnatus est – Crucifixus a 6 [2:36] Ruairi Bowen tenor Ben McKee bass 15 Ritornello – Et in Spiritum 2 Miserere mei Deus [4:16] solos: Rachel Ambrose Evans, Felicity Hayward sopranos Oliver Hunt bass [2:15] 3 Quoniam iniquitatem [4:14] 16 Et unam sanctam 4 Auditui meo [4:34] 5 Cor mundum crea [7:13] Total playing time [79:28] 6 Quoniam si voluisses [6:01] All tracks except 9 and the ‘Crucifixus’ in 14 are premiere recordings Missa Sancti Christophori 7 Kyrie [4:36] solos: Rachel Ambrose Evans soprano Lucy Goddard alto Robbie Jacobs tenor Michael Craddock bass 8 Gloria [8:33] solos: Rachel Ambrose Evans soprano Ciara Hendrick alto Hugo Hymas tenor Oliver Hunt bass 9 Credo – Crucifixus a 8 [10:20] 10 Sanctus [2:16] solos: Felicity Hayward soprano Lucy Goddard alto 11 Benedictus [1:56] 12 Agnus Dei [3:37] With sincere thanks to Richard Syred for his generous support of this recording solos: Rachel Ambrose Evans soprano Lucy Goddard alto Robbie Jacobs tenor Michael Craddock bass Recorded on 7-8 October 2015 in Photography © Maky Manole Join the Delphian mailing list: All Hallows’ Church, Gospel Oak Editions by Ben Byram-Wigfield www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter www.ancientgroove.co.uk 24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks Chamber organ supplied by Like us on Facebook: 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Malcolm Greenhalgh www.facebook.com/delphianrecords Design: Drew Padrutt Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK Follow us on Twitter: Booklet editor: Henry Howard www.delphianrecords.co.uk @delphianrecords Notes on the music Despite composing more than 140 works of work, providing music and musicians for his masterful variety, incessant invention and shock and awe of the tutti sections and sacred music, twenty-three highly successful special occasions at many of the hundred defiant refusal to fit any one genre matches the the calm supplication of solo ensembles. operas and numerous other works in a career or so churches on the island city. This would eclectic expectations of a modern audience. The work is for a five-part chorus with five of more than fifty years, Antonio Pasqualin Lotti have included patronal festivals (for each soloists, one taken from each of the vocal is now known almost exclusively for only three church’s patron saint) or the investiture of Some of the difficulty in ‘resurrecting’ Lotti’s parts. Lotti weaves extraordinarily daring works: his ‘Crucifixus’ settings for six, eight and Venetian noblewomen into a convent. Most music may lie in his use of large vocal forces: harmonies under the lyrical vocal lines, and ten voices. It is not widely known that these of his ‘concert’ sacred music – for choir, a Gloria in G requires 14 separate vocal interjects instrumental cadences that contain ‘motets’ are in fact parts of three settings of soli and instruments – is likely to have been lines for just one movement; his concertato some startling chromatic contradictions. the complete Credo: the six-part setting comes written for such festivities, when expense and Requiem needs 10 voices in the chorus Pensive tenor and alto solos seamlessly from a Credo that is otherwise for double choir extravagance were not spared, and the chance and a sextet of soloists. Seven of his Kyrie bridge the last verse of the psalm to the start in G minor; the ten-part is from a Credo in D to write modern, daring music for Mass and settings are scored for two choirs plus nine of the Gloria. It ends with a fugue and Amen minor for four voices; the eight-part is from Vespers was welcomed, rather than the more soloists. His string sections are frequently that is every bit as impressive as the opening a Credo in F major for four voices. All three austere and devotional four-part choral works, written as a quintet with two viola parts, of the work. works have an accompaniment for strings and backed by organ, that were the more usual fare rather than the more conventional quartet of organ. Two of these settings – the eight-part at San Marco. two violins, viola and basses. A trumpet and The Miserere in C minor is one of five settings and the six-part – were plucked from their place a woodwind section of two oboes, bassoon by Lotti, all in minor keys. Lotti shows the for inclusion in an 1838 collection of sacred Inevitably, Lotti’s works fell out of use as and occasionally two flutes are additional fecundity of his inventiveness to great effect music by Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (1769–1842), fashions changed, and later maestri supplied requirements for some of his works. in this work. The nineteen sentences are Sammlung vorzüglicher Gesangstücke vom their own new music to supplant what had each set as a separate musical form: some as Ursprung gesetzmässiger Harmonie bis auf die been used before. This was the case for many However, Lotti did write a number of works full sections for four-part chorus and strings, neue Zeit (‘Important Pieces from the Origin composers of previous eras whose music we that call for a more conventional, smaller others as smaller, more intimate ensembles. of Regular Harmony to Modern Times’), and as now enjoy today: Claudio Monteverdi, Lotti’s group of singers and players – most likely Lotti writes an incredible variety: strong, a result became popular throughout Germany predecessor as maestro di cappella at San composed for one of the Venetian ‘scuole singable, melodic lines for voices, often with and the rest of Europe. Marco, has only enjoyed a resurgence since the piccole’ or the Ospedale degli Incurabili – and string interludes in which the first violin plays ‘rediscovery’ of his 1610 Vespers in the 1960s. it is from this group that the pieces in this against the other instruments. The lack of a After hearing these settings, two obvious Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria in D and the Quattro recording are taken. The Dixit Dominus in Gloria Patri at the end of the psalm suggests questions arise: how do the ‘Crucifixus’ sections Stagioni are now perennial concert favourites, G minor is one of six settings by Lotti of this usage in Holy Week. fit in the context of the larger work? And, more despite being almost unknown only a handful text, the first psalm sung at Vespers on feast fundamentally: what else did Lotti write? of decades ago. Even much of the music of a days. His other settings are considerably The Credo in G minor is a rare example of Lotti Baroque master like Bach was revived after a longer and on a larger scale, yet this more using the typically Venetian form of two choirs From the age of seventeen until his death period of neglect, with Mendelssohn famously compact reading manages to convey every in antiphony, one repeating or echoing the aged 73 in 1740, Lotti held a variety of full-time performing the St Matthew Passion in 1829 bit of the pomp and majesty that the text other, then taking the phrase and developing it. positions at the Doge’s chapel of San Marco for the first time since Bach’s own lifetime. demands. Starting with a monumental To this, he adds the orchestra as a ‘third choir’, in Venice. He also took a variety of freelance Today, Lotti’s music is over-ripe for revival: Adagio, it alternates between the rhythmic frequently rotating a phrase between them all. Notes on the music Lotti is a master of word-painting, and while Zelenka compiled a Kyrie, Gloria and Credo, ‘Domine Deus, Agnus Dei’, as Lotti plays with before a solemn, slow cadence on the word some techniques are obvious (descending all in F major. In Zelenka’s native Prague, the chromatic effects above a pedal note. At ‘Qui ‘mortuorum’. A dance-like fugue in triple scales for ‘descendit’, ascending scales for last three sections of the mass were expected tollis’, a chorus responds to the plea of a solo time concludes this affirmation of faith. The ‘ascendit’), he also repeats ‘non erit finis’ (it to be composed in the same style, and so for voice. The ‘Quoniam’ section plays with unison Sanctus has the same pattern of supplicant will not end), and pauses with anticipation performance there Zelenka created a pastiche: lines, before another strong fugue subject solo matched against tutti chorus, with a at ‘et expecto’. The Adagio of ‘Et incarnatus the Benedictus uses the Christe eleison and the that Lotti weaves to a masterful conclusion. joyous contrapuntal theme in the Hosanna. The est’ brings a more solemn and sacred aspect, final fugue of the Gloria; the Agnus Dei uses A driving arpeggiated figure in the continuo Benedictus and Agnus Dei rehearse material before the change of scoring for the apex of material from the opening and closing sections line starts the Credo, whose lengthy text from earlier in the work, but in a different light the work, ‘Crucifixus’. And so from two choirs of the Kyrie. The source of the Sanctus has not is delivered with a forthright efficiency.