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The Solo Motet in Venice (1625–1775)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1979
Extract
The genre of motet for a single voice of the baroque and pre-classical eras has been little investigated. Bukofzer mentions only its origins in a brief paragraph; Abraham admittedly has half a page in his Concise Oxford History of Music, putting it quickly into context; but Fellerer's ample Geschichte der katholischen Kirchenmusik (Kassel, 1976) treats it only sketchily and even Finscher's article on the motet in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart mentions it only in passing, the more important discussion being devoted to the motet in the stile antico, perhaps not surprisingly, since that was what the term really implied in Germany during Bach's lifetime. But everyone knows at least one solo motet, Mozart's Exsultate jubilate (K. 158a); most people will know a piece in a similar tradition, Bach's Jauchzet Gott (BVW 51), significantly included among the cantatas; to which may be added a work which some of us feel is finer than either, Handel's Silete venti. In monographs on the various composers, these pieces usually get short shrift, being considered either a-typical or at least of minor importance. This paper will attempt to provide a background to these works.
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- Copyright © 1981 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors
References
NOTES
1 Printed in H.J. Moser, Heinrich Schütt: Seat Leben und Werk (Kassel, 1936; English translation by C. F. Pfatteicher, Saint Louis, 1959).Google Scholar
2 Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter A.S.V.), Procuratia de Supra Registro 193 bis, f. 77v.Google Scholar
3 There is a copy of an edition dated 1630 in Christ Church, Oxford, in addition to the reprint of 1636 mentioned in RISM.Google Scholar
4 See Fortune, N., ‘Italian Secular Monody from 1600 to 1635: an Introductory Survey’, Musical Quarterly, xxxix (1953).Google Scholar
5 Ed. D. Arnold (London, 1959).Google Scholar
6 Arnold, O., ‘Alessandro Grandi, a Disciple of Monteverdi’, Musical Quarterly, xliii (1957).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Monteverdi Collected Edition, Supplementary Volume (Venice, 1966), and ed. D. Arnold (London, 1960).Google Scholar
8 A.S.V. Proc. de Sup. Reg. 140, entry for 11 December 1613; Reg. 141 entries for 18 December 1616 and 20 January 1617 (Venetian style 1616).Google Scholar
9 For a fuller discussion of Venetian settings of hymns See Arnold, D., ‘A Background Note on Monteverdi's Hymn Settings’ in Scritti in onore di Luigi Ronga (Verona, 1973).Google Scholar
10 I am indebted to Dr J. Roche for the loan of his transcriptions of several motets by Rigatti.Google Scholar
11 The original is printed in full in G. Gaspari, Catalogo della biblioteca musicale C. B. Martim di Bologna (Bologna 1892, reprinted 1961), ii, p. 465.Google Scholar
12 Bodleian Library, Oxford Rawlinson MSS C. 799, f. 162v—63; see also M.Tilmouth, ‘Music on the Travels of an English Merchant: Robert Bargrave (1628–61)’, Music and Letters, liii (1972).Google Scholar
13 For a fuller account of his career See Smith, J., ‘Carlo Pallavicino’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, xcvi (1970).Google Scholar
14 Settings of music for Holy Week for solo voice seem also to have been common in Rome in the middle years of the seventeenth century according to recent work by an Oxford University research student, Mr John Burke. This may account for the popularity of Leçons de tenèbres as composed by M. A. Charpentier and F. Couperin in France.Google Scholar
15 A.S.V., busta 658 (Pietà parti), resolution dated 28 July 1730.Google Scholar
16 Ibid., 30 August 1737.Google Scholar
17 Bodleian Library, Oxford MSS Eng. Misc. c. 444, f. 7.Google Scholar
18 Chioggia, Library of the Padri Filippini.Google Scholar
19 Festschrift für Heinrich Hüschen.Google Scholar