F Scarlatti - Dixit Dominus, Mass
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Label: Signum
Cat No: SIGCD740
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 14th April 2023
Contents
Artists
Armonico ConsortConductor
Christopher MonksWorks
Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2
Artists
Armonico ConsortConductor
Christopher MonksAbout
For their tenth album with Signum Classics, the Armonico Consort, directed by Christopher Monks, return with two works by Francesco Scarlatti. This recording has been made using new editions of the works (made especially for this recording) that follow only the autograph scores.
Armonico Consort began life in 2001, set up by Christopher Monks and a group of university colleagues with a shared passion for music from the Renaissance to Baroque, coupled with the imagination to find new and unusual ways to present concerts. Audiences seemed to love their engaging and imaginative approach, and most concerts in the first years sold out.
The founder and Artistic Director of Armonico Consort and its ground-breaking education programme AC Academy, Christopher Monks has established himself as a versatile and prolific conductor and keyboard player. Specialising in the performance of music from the Baroque and late Renaissance, Christopher is equally at home with major and modern choral repertoire.
Armonico Consort began life in 2001, set up by Christopher Monks and a group of university colleagues with a shared passion for music from the Renaissance to Baroque, coupled with the imagination to find new and unusual ways to present concerts. Audiences seemed to love their engaging and imaginative approach, and most concerts in the first years sold out.
The founder and Artistic Director of Armonico Consort and its ground-breaking education programme AC Academy, Christopher Monks has established himself as a versatile and prolific conductor and keyboard player. Specialising in the performance of music from the Baroque and late Renaissance, Christopher is equally at home with major and modern choral repertoire.
Sound/Video
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1Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 1. Dixit Dominus
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2Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 2. Donec ponam
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3Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 3. Virgam virtutis
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4Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 4. Tecum principium
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5Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 5. Juravit Dominus
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6Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 6. Dominus a dextris tuis
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7Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 7. De torrente
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8Dixit Dominus a 16 voci con instromenti, Tono 8 8. Gloria patri
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9Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 1. Kyrie
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10Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 2. Et in terra pax
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11Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 3. Gratias agimas tibi
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12Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 4. Domine Deus rex celestis
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13Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 5. Domine Fili unigenite
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14Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 6.Domine Deus Agnus Dei
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15Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 7. Qui tollis
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16Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 8. Qui tollis (b)
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17Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 9. Quoniam
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18Messa a 16 voci con instromenti, Toni 2 10. Cum Sancto Spiritu
Europadisc Review
A Dixit Dominus and Mass by Scarlatti? Fair enough. Oh, wait: Francesco Scarlatti? Who he? The younger brother of Alessandro – regarded as founder of the musical Scarlatti dynasty – Francesco was born in Palermo, Sicily, in May 1666, six-and-a-half years after his more celebrated sibling. He studied music in Naples, and in 1684, upon Alessandro’s appointment as maestro di cappella at the Naples court, Francesco was one of several family members brought by Alessandro into the cappella, earning the displeasure of jealous locals. In 1691 he returned to Sicily for over two decades. Although he had been employed as a violinist in Naples, Francesco was also a composer: an opera and two oratorios by him were performed in Rome. He returned briefly to the Italian mainland, but in 1719 travelled to London (perhaps at the invitation of Handel or Geminiani), his name appearing with some frequency on London concert advertisements in the early 1720s.
By 1733 Francesco had moved to Dublin, where little is known of his activities save that his second wife, Jane, apparently deserted him, and by early 1741 he was living in ‘distressful circumstances’ when a concert was mounted for his benefit. It is likely he died soon after. Francesco’s career was one of disappointments (applications for important posts in Milan and Vienna were unsuccessful), and his surviving musical legacy is patchy. The Messa and Dixit Dominus, both scored for 16 voices in the fashionable polychoral style, date from 1702 and 1703 respectively, during his Palermo period, but are only preserved in copies and autograph scores in Oxford, no doubt brought by him to England to boost his credentials.
It is fortunate that these works have survived, for they reveal a composer who – if not endowed with the same level of genius as his brother, nor his nephew Domenico – was highly accomplished in the effective deployment of vocal and instrumental forces for maximum impact, and with some idiosyncratic twists. This recording by the Armonico Consort and Christopher Monks is a return by the performers to works they had previously recorded almost 20 years ago on the Deux-Elles label. On that occasion they were coupled with a five-voice Miserere (also by Francesco) dating from 1714. This time, they stand alone, but in a new edition prepared from the autograph scores, which corrects some mistakes and restores omissions made in the previously used copies.
The earlier recording had soprano Emma Kirkby as guest soloist, but in every other respect this remake is superior. Only Monks and one violinist (Kelly McCusker) remain the same, but the ‘new blood’ seems to have injected an added level of accomplishment into the music-making. All the instrumentalists are now credited together with the 16 voices, under the Armonico Consort banner (previously they had been the ‘Concerto Gallese’). The acoustics of All Hallows, Gospel Oak, also provide better focus than those of Douai Abbey on the earlier disc, though still with a pleasing amount of resonance.
Both works are eminently worth investigation. The Dixit Dominus has moments of grandeur quite out of proportion to the relatively modest forces employed. In the tuttis, the strings, continuo and lone trumpet bring additional lustre to the chordal passages, and there is some engaging solo instrumental writing. But it is the unusual deployment of the voices that is most interesting, with several movements scored for four soloists from each of the choirs: not, however, mixed voices, but four singers of the same voice type (the ‘Donec ponam’ section, for example, is scored for four basses, solo violin and continuo). Catchiest of all is the penultimate movement, ‘De torrente in via bibet’, for soprano, obligato trumpet and continuo. Throughout the work, textural and musical variety maintains the interest, and the performances are both polished and stylish.
The Messa is similarly interesting. It is a ‘short’ mass (Kyrie and Gloria only), but among its peculiarities is the lack of a central ‘Christe’ section in the Kyrie; and while the Gloria begins with the words ‘Et in terra pax’ (implying a priestly intonation of the opening line of text), the words ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ are then set in the music’s second. With forces identical to those of the Dixit Dominus, this short mass was likely written for the same performers (although the context – sacred or secular – is not entirely clear), and the deployment of forces is similarly idiosyncratic. Once again, the performers raise what could in less accomplished hands seem workaday music to a level of uncommon interest. The gleaming quartet of sopranos – Eloise Irving, Elizabeth Drury, Hannah Fraser-Mackenzie and Laura Moretto – make a particularly vivid impression in the ‘Gratias’, while Kelly McCusker’s violin solos are a constant delight. Monks injects a sense of vitality into the faster passages, and sensitivity as well as careful delineation of the part-writing into the slower ones, culminating in a splendid concluding ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’.
If you don’t yet know the name of Francesco Scarlatti, do try to hear this disc. Expertly recorded by the team at Signum Records, it is a tribute to the advocacy of these performers, and it makes the listener want to discover more about this unfortunate and neglected figure from one of the great musical dynasties of the Italian Baroque period.
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