I Fagiolini, The City Musick/Robert Hollingworth
CORO COR16201 58:00 mins
This revelatory project unveils the shadowy Franco-Italian composer Orazio Benevoli – born in 1605 in Rome, the son of a French baker, he became choirmaster of the celebrated Cappella Giulia of St Peter’s in the mid-17th century. As this world premiere recording of his Mass Tu es Petrus amply demonstrates, Benevoli was a vital figure in forging the so-called ‘Colossal Baroque’ style, developed to fill the vast spaces of Roman basilicas with resplendent sound.
The Missa Tu es Petrus is a tour de force of the Catholic revival, sumptuously scored for four choirs and intended to be performed in the new basilica of St Peter. The latter had been recently completed, hence the Mass’s dedication to the apostle Peter – the foundation ‘stone’ (‘petrus’) of both the musical and the architectural edifices. While much has been made of the polychoral tradition in Baroque Venice, Benevoli’s work shows that Rome, too, boasted a similarly extravagant tradition of sacred music that exploits the contrasts and combinations of multiple choirs of voices and instruments, creating colossal blocks of sound.
The composer’s idiom looks both backwards and forwards, as sober stile antico polyphony (recalling Palestrina) gives way to ornate soloistic writing. Above all, the Tu es Petrus Mass is a highly expressive work, with its evocative word painting, ‘angelic’ vocal lines and rhythmic vitality and variety. Recorded here in the round, with a battery of instruments enriching the vocal ensembles, the work engulfs the senses just as it must have done in Benevoli’s day in the echoing spaces of St Peter’s.
I Fagiolini and the instrumentalists of The City Musick produce a multi-hued tapestry of sound, colouring each of the four choirs with different instrumental timbres: choir one is a cappella, the other three are fleshed out, respectively, with cornett/trombone, violin/bass violin and recorder/dulcian, so highlighting the four different choirs with textural contrasts and a distinctly Roman chiaroscuro. Ever responsive to the words and their liturgical context, director Robert Hollingworth and his singers find just the right equilibrium between balanced ensemble singing and a more highly charged soloistic delivery. Using one or two voices to a part (as seems to have been Roman practice in Benevoli’s day) ensures that the polychoral sound remains clean and transparent – yet it never lacks opulence. The instrumental playing, expertly led by William Lyons, is controlled, stylish and beautifully integrated into the vocal ensemble.
Benevoli’s Mass is based on Palestrina’s venerable six-voice motet Tu es Petrus, a radiant and liquid performance of which opens the recording. The Mass movements are then interspersed and contrasted with works by Benevoli’s contemporary Bonifazio Graziani: four intimate motets scored variously for three to six solo voices and accompanied by a delicate continuo ensemble. Again in world premiere recordings, we hear Domine, ne in furore tuo, a sensuous confection redolent of Monteverdi, and Venite gentes, whose florid vocal melismas are exquisitely sung by the five soloists. The honeyed Ad mensam dulcissimi and the fervent, six-part Justus ut palma bring this glorious disc to an ecstatic conclusion.