![]() ![]() Generally speaking, however, Vivaldi and his north Italian contemporaries liked to segregate solo and choral singing in separate movements. ![]() Rather exceptionally for Vivaldi, one movement of the present Gloria, the ‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’, features both a solo singer (mezzo soprano) and the choir, which are treated in responsorial style. Some movements employ solo voices, alone or in small groups, while others (in particular, the movements framing the work) employ choir. ![]() ![]() Each sentence or comparable unit generates a separate musical movement, and the movements are differentiated among themselves to the maximum extent in scoring, tonality, metre, tempo, style, texture and mood. RV589 typifies what the Pietà understood as a concertato setting of a long liturgical text. Perhaps the two works matured in parallel, each continuously evolving. Moreover, its relationship to the ‘other’ Gloria, RV588, which it parallels in many respects (notably, in the ‘profile’ of its individual movements), defies a simple explanation. As a repertory piece, endlessly repeated at the Pietà, this Gloria may have had a complex gestation. It was apparently written for performance at the Pietà around 1715, but the autograph manuscript hints at the existence of one or more prior versions. Strange to say, it is difficult to establish a context for its composition. Is there anything new to say about this favourite work of choral societies, which, ever since Alfredo Casella revealed it to the world in the Vivaldi ‘week’ held at Siena in 1939, has been revered as a locus classicus of its composer’s style? The audacious simplicity of the pounding unison octaves with which it opens is as eloquent and dynamic as anything in Vivaldi’s concertos, and the siciliana-like movement for soprano, obbligato instrument (the composer allows the alternative of oboe or violin) and continuo on the text ‘Domine Deus, rex coelestis’ is the epitome of melting Vivaldian lyricism. ![]()
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