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Sergio RENDINE Passio et Resurrectio Soloists • Chorus and Orchestra of the Marrucino Theatre, Chieti • Marzio Conti Sergio Rendine (b.1954) Passio et Resurrectio PASSIO DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI 7 Quinta Parola Sitio - 2:38 Orologio della Passione III A ventun’ora 1 Chorus Tristis est anima mea – 9:12 l’acqua li cercò Orologio della Passione Cristo all’una de notte – Prima Parola Pater dimitte illis 8 Chorus and Mezzosoprano Agnus Dei – 13:34 Sesta parola Consummatum est – Settima Parola In manus tuas, Domine, 2 Cantus per tromba e strumenti a fiato 5:14 commendo Spiritum meum Seconda Parola Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso 9 Orologio della Passione IV Ventidue ore 2:30 3 Terza Parola Mulier ecce filius tuus 2:23 un colpo gli fu dato 4 Concerto per flauto e archi 5:36 Stabat Mater RESURRECTIO DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI 5 Orologio della Passione II Alli vint’ore 1:47 steva addenucchiata 0 Alleluja 1:06 Quarta Parola Eli, Eli, Lemà, Sabachtani ! Voices of the people: Exultate Deo 5:00 6 Oblio 1:10 @ Voice and Chorus: Alleluja, resurrexit 8:02 Voice in Orologio della Passione: Nando Citarella Speaker: Manuele Morgese Mezzosoprano: Damiana Pinti Folk Voices: Emanuela Loffredo and Elio Tacconelli Soprano: Lucilla Galeazzi Saxophone: Pierpaolo Pecoriello Flute: Gabriele Di Iorio Percussion: Maurizio Trippitelli Chorus and Orchestra of the Marrucino Theatre, Chieti (Chorus Master: Fabio D’Orazio) Marzio Conti 8.557733 2 Sergio Rendine (b.1954) Passio et Resurrectio This music is made of flesh, as well as spirit; nerves, as My music, therefore, is only that of a man, for men; well as spirit; anxiety, uncertainty, fear, pain and of a child, for those who, like him, stand before the risen confusion, as well as spirit. Christ as if before a pumpkin transformed into a Anyone who believes that sacred music is no more carriage, open-mouthed in amazement. This is non- than music written of or for the spirit, will not intellectual music, in that it seeks to be free of the understand it. This, this is music of love. And the love of banality that some foolishly call “intelligence”. This is the Father is clear in the terrible humiliation and intuitive music, written without thinking, or rather by suffering of His only Son, a Son who is God and at the thinking along different lines. It is music... and this is the same time is no longer God: in his final moment he is point...Talking about music is like trying to wear clothes alone. He is only the Son of Man. Through him, made of water... Sometimes it is useless, and yet it bathes humanity cries out,“My God, my God, why hast thou us. It is better to listen to music, and even better to make forsaken me”. And I, a speck of humanity, want to cry it ourselves. As always... out with them. Sergio Rendine The Teatro Marrucino and the “Passio et Resurrectio” In spring 1977, the Teatro Marrucino in Chieti, in the in different forms, had long existed across southern Italian region of Abruzzo, opened its doors for the first Italy. Not long afterwards, on 13th April 2000, the time to groups of non-professional singers and Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Marrucino gave the musicians. During Holy Week these groups travelled première of the Passio et Resurrectio (texts by Vincenzo from house to house around Chieti, singing Passiontide De Vivo) in Chieti’s San Giustino Cathedral. songs. They performed two each day throughout the The concert was recorded by RADIORAI and week, ancient pieces of music, often dating back to the broadcast on Good Friday immediately after the Pope’s days of Gregorian chant, and handed down from traditional Via Crucis ceremony in Rome. It went on to generation to generation over the centuries. be broadcast by RAI SAT and RAI International in 58 More than a hundred miles away, in Naples, where different countries. The Marrucino Orchestra has since this Easter tradition has its roots, Sergio Rendine was performed the work in both Abruzzo and Rome, while composing the cantata that was to become the Passio et the Exultate movement formed part of the Christmas Resurrectio for soloists, “folk” voices, chorus and 2003 concert broadcast by RAI from Bethlehem. orchestra. At that time, we did not know him, and he did not know us or the Teatro Marrucino. Aurelio Bigi, Fate brought us together in the summer of 1997 and Special commissioner of the Teatro Marrucino we soon began to talk about this lovely tradition which, Nicola Cuculo, Mayor of Chieti 3 8.557733 The Easter cantata Passio et Resurrectio is a musical della Passione (the 24 hours of the Passion) which setting of the feelings expressed by ordinary people would then join the later practices of the Via Crucis (the about the most important event in the church calendar. It procession past St Leonard of Port Maurice’s fourteen takes its inspiration from local folk traditions stations of the cross), the Seven Last Words of Our (themselves rooted in ancient rituals) which survived Saviour on the Cross and the Three Hours of Agony of until very recently in the rural areas of Abruzzo, Christ on the Cross. Campania and Puglia. The text of Passio et Resurrectio is a meditation on The Easter customs of the Kingdom of Naples the “salutary contemplation of the Passion” (St Paul of varied from place to place but all had one thing in the Cross). It combines traditional music with the common: the Passiontide song, for a solo voice or reflective moments of the Seven Last Words, which unison chorus, often accompanied by strings (plucked become an integral part of the popular ritual of the and bowed), wind, percussion and, in later years, Orologio della Passione and which together with the accordion. This musical tradition began in rural areas Gospel text sung by the chorus accompany Mary’s with travelling singers going from farm to farm, but grieving, as expressed through the forms of oral and soon spread to urban centres where they would go from medieval literary tradition. house to house instead. The music they performed was For some time now Sergio Rendine has invested his more or less the same across the different regions: the work with a sense of spiritual longing that transcends the ritual telling of the 24 hours of the Passion, from the human dimension, and in Passio et Resurrectio his Last Supper to the Burial, the Pianto della Madonna religious and naturalistic inspiration is evident. Over the (tears of the Virgin) as Mary looks for her son, and the years his style has developed, becoming linguistically story of Christ’s last hours, ending with the blessing of and formally more elaborate through borrowings from the holy palm. other times and places. Here, in the themes of the The origins of the customs surrounding the Easter Passion and the Resurrection, it finds the ancient life Passion go back a very long way, and encompass many blood of his Mediterranean roots, the structures of the of those originally associated with the passions of the great Neapolitan tradition of rhetoric, be it the sacred middle-eastern gods worshipped by imperial Rome. The “theatricality” of Francesco Durante and Giovanni different versions of these folk-songs, still to be heard in Battista Pergolesi or the severity of Leonardo Leo, the Campania and Abruzzo, have been handed down with Lutheran chorales in the Passions of Bach and others, infinite variety. The language changes from place to the purity of eighteenth-century sacred music, the place, from dialect to Italian, or Italianised dialect. The visceral sounds of street music, the unbridled rhythm of form varies too, and the verses, often irregular in terms ritual dances, and the desperate cry of men relating their of rhythm and rhyme scheme, tend in surviving own day-to-day pain to the suffering of God and seeking transcriptions to conform to a model owing much to the the hope of resurrection. eighteenth century and the musicality of the eleven- All of these come together to form a vast edifice, or syllable lines of poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, polyptych, some of the panels of which have a previous many of whose lyrics can be found alongside more existence, such as the Alleluia, in the Missa pro pace authentically folk-based lines in the Easter music of the conducted by Ashkenazy in Stockholm, or the Exultate Amalfi coast. It was during the eighteenth century in fact and Agnus Dei which, slightly adapted, had earlier that local traditions and more learned literary forms formed part of Rendine’s Missa de Beatificatione in came together thanks to St Alphonsus Liguori, bishop, onore di Padre Pio. musician, poet and moralist. He encouraged the The cantata opens with the words of Christ who is integration of traditional rituals into Catholic orthodoxy, approaching his final hour on earth. “Tristis est anima codifying as “holy practice” the singing of the Orologio mea” (Sad is my soul) sings the chorus. The “folk” voice 8.557733 4 replies, accompanied by percussion beating time to the Heralding the Resurrection, a voice in the distance first nineteen hours of the Orologio della Passione. sings a joyful Alleluia. Then the people’s joy soars in the Then come the Seven Last Words, sung by the chorus rhythmic Exultate, written for two unpitched voices, one and followed by meditative Abruzzian texts. An male and one female. Finally the Alleluia theme returns, instrumental episode, with solo trumpet, represents the recapitulated and developed by the mezzo, and the story of the good thief, while a flute solo depicts Mary’s chorus enters to share in a song of praise.

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