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The Origins of the Roman ‘Colossal Baroque’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1979

Graham Dixon
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Extract

The mention of the term ‘colossal baroque’ brings to mind the Missa Salisburgensis in fifty-three parts, which was long thought to have been written by the Roman composer Oratio Benevoli and performed at the Consecration of Salzburg Cathedral in 1628. While it has often been cited in standard text books as the prime example of music of the Roman ‘colossal baroque’, it has been shown by Ernst Hintermaier that the work is not by Benevoli and, far from being performed in 1628, it dates from the second half of the century. In the wake of the historical vacuum created by this discovery it will be the purpose of this paper to examine archival and musical evidence of multiple-choir music in the period in which the mass was originally thought to have been written and so to outline the development of large-scale music in Rome.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 106 , 1979 , pp. 115 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 While the term ‘colossal baroque’ is used throughout the paper because it is generally accepted and understood, it would perhaps be clearer if the German term ‘Massenstil’ were adopted so that the adjective is applied to the style and not to the name of the period.Google Scholar

2 Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (London, 1948), p. 68; this volume derived its ideas from Robert Hass, Musik des Barocks (Potsdam, 1929), p. 78, and influenced later writers such as Hans F. Redlich, ‘Early Baroque Church Music’, New Oxford History of Music, iv (London, 1968), 531, and Jerome Roche, ‘Liturgical Music in Italy, 1600–60’, New Oxford History of Music, v (London, 1975), 368.Google Scholar

3 Ernst Hintermaier, ‘The Missa Salisburgensis’, The Musical Times, cxvi (1975), 965. The music at the consecration of Salzburg Cathedral was for twelve choirs and directed by the Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishop, Stefano Bernardi, who, though a native of Verona, had been active in Rome as maestro at S. Maria dei Monti in 1610; it was perhaps there that he first encountered the multiple-choir style.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Jerome Roche, Palestrina (London, 1971), p. 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Missarum liber XIII (Venice, 1601).Google Scholar

6 Sacrarum modulationum … liber primus (Rome, 1593).Google Scholar

7 Motectorum … liber primus (Rome, 1600).Google Scholar

8 Sacrarum cantionum … liber promts (Rome, 1602), Sacrae Laudes … liber secundus (Rome, 1603) and Sacrarum cantionum … liber tertius (Rome, 1603).Google Scholar

9 Girolamo Bartei, Missae octanis vocibus (Rome, 1608).Google Scholar

10 Curtio Mancini, Liber primus motectorum (Rome, 1608).Google Scholar

11 Missarum liber primus (Rome, 1609); reprinted in Two Settings of Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli, ed. Busch (Madison, 1973).Google Scholar

12 Vesperae, et motecta … opus nonum (Rome, 1609).Google Scholar

13 The Palestrina collected edition contains a small number of psalms and motets for twelve voices and a Missa tu es Petrus for eighteen, that of Victoria includes a mass, a Laetatus sum and a Magnificat for three choirs.Google Scholar

14 I am indebted to M. Jean Lionnet for information about this church. Cf. carton 42, liasse 1601, f. 91; carton 44, liasse 1606, f. 172; carton 44, liasse 1608; carton 44, liasse 1609.Google Scholar

15 Cod. Barb. Lat. 6339, f. 77.Google Scholar

16 A practice described in the preface of Agostino Agazzari, Salmi sex … opus duodeconum (Venice, 1609): ‘dichiarando che detti Salmi si debbono cantare con l'organo, overo con accompagnatura d'altri stromenti come Leuto, Tiorba, &c. perche altrimenti l'armonia sarebbe troppo povera. …’Google Scholar

17 Reproduced in full in Jerome Roche, North Italian Liturgical Music in the Early Seventeenth Century (Diss., University of Cambridge, 1967), p. 191; this work discusses in some detail North Italian music which is only mentioned in passing here.Google Scholar

18 Orbaan, J. A. F., Documenti sul barocco in Roma (Rome, 1920), p. 233.Google Scholar

19 Entrata e uscita della sacrestia … 1626–1652: libro 120 of the archives of this church, contained in the Archivio di Stato, Rome, makes frequent reference to this.Google Scholar

20 Giacomo Gigli, Diario romano (1608–1670) ed. Ricciotti (Rome, 1958), p. 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Raffaele Casimiri, ‘Disciplina musicae’ e ‘mastri di capella’, Note d'Archivio, xxii (1942), 129.Google Scholar

22 Busta 118, f. 111 onwards. The archives of this church are housed in the Archivio di Stato, Rome.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., f. 132.Google Scholar

24 Libro 269, Sagr.a entrat & usata del 1618 sin al 1623, f. 62. Contained in the archives of this church. A full discussion of music in this church is contained in my forthcoming article in Music & Letters.Google Scholar

25 Casimiri, op. cit., Note d'Archivio, xviii (1938), 63.Google Scholar

26 Terzo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1588).Google Scholar

27 Cf. Sancte tui Domine, Motecta sive sacrae cantiones … liber secundus (Venice, 1617). Quae est ista, together with Ugolini's two other twelve-part motets from this publication, will be published in my own edition in late 1981.Google Scholar

28 Civico Museo, Bologna R. 29.Google Scholar

29 Psalm ad Vesperas, et motecta duodenis vocibus (Venice, 1630).Google Scholar

30 Cappella Giulia MS V. 71.Google Scholar

31 Missa sexdecim vocibus concinenda (Rome, 1627).Google Scholar

32 Robert Eitner, Quellen-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1904), Band 8, 135.Google Scholar

33 Franz Waldner, ‘Zwei Inventarien aus dem XVI. und XVII. Jahrhundert’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, iv (1916), 134.Google Scholar

34 Vincenzo Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica, trans. MacClintock (American Institute of Musicology, 1962), p. 71.Google Scholar

35 For a more detailed survey of music in this church cf. Graham Dixon, ‘Musical Activity in the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome during the Early Baroque’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, xlix (1980), 323.Google Scholar

36 Libro 2006; the archives of this church are housed in the library of the Society of Jesus in Rome. This volume is unfoliated, but arranged chronologically.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., Libro 2060 (also unfoliated).Google Scholar

38 Ibid., Libro 2006.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., Libro 2006.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., Libro 2009, f. 10.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., Libro 2009, f. 31.Google Scholar

42 Original text in André Maugars, Response faite à un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique d'Italie, ed. E. Thoinan (Paris, 1865, repr. London, 1965), p. 27.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., p. 27.Google Scholar

44 Giuseppe Baini, Memorie storico-chritiche della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Rome, 1828), p. 316, n. 636.Google Scholar

45 Relouant della solenne festa … – nella chiesa professa della Compagnia di Giesù (Rome, 1639).Google Scholar

46 Original text in Pietro delle Valle, Della musica dell'età nostra in Angelo Solerti, Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903), p. 172.Google Scholar

47 Archives of S. Maria in Trastevere, Armad. XII. 17, f. 53 and Libro 68, f. 46v.Google Scholar

48 Walter Gürtelschmied, ‘Oratio Benevoli’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. I am indebted to Dr N. Fortune for allowing me access to this article.Google Scholar

49 Manfred Bukofzer, op. cit., p. 68, lists Paolo Agostino, Abbatini, Benevoli, Domenico and Virgilio Mazzocchi, Massini and Crivelli as the chief proponents of the style.Google Scholar

50 It is no longer possible to maintain the position enunciated by Laurentius Feininger, ‘La scuola policorale romana del sei e settecento’, Collectanea historiae musicae, ii (1957), who stated that Benevoli was ‘il vero fondatore di questa tradizione gloriosissima’.Google Scholar