Benevoli - Missae Angelus Domini & Dum complerentur
£14.73
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Label: Coro
Cat No: COR16219
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 3rd April 2026
Contents
Works
Missa 'Angelus Domini'Missa 'Dum complerentur'
Plorabo die ac nocte
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da
Dum complerenturArtists
I FagioliniConductor
Robert HollingworthWorks
Missa 'Angelus Domini'Missa 'Dum complerentur'
Plorabo die ac nocte
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da
Dum complerenturArtists
I FagioliniConductor
Robert HollingworthAbout
Two multi-choir masses from mid-17th-century Rome (one for Easter, the other one based on Palestrina's motet for Pentecost) complete I Fagiolini's dazzling series exploring the ‘Colossal Baroque’ and tribute to the 'lost' music of Orazio Benevoli.
Maestro of the Cappella Giulia at St Peter's, Rome, Benevoli's mastery of surround-sound is clear in these very different works. The sheer quality of his music shines through and, sung by a group at the height of its powers, changes our view of 17th-century multi-choir music.
All the masses in I Fagiolini’s Benevoli series are premiere recordings.
Maestro of the Cappella Giulia at St Peter's, Rome, Benevoli's mastery of surround-sound is clear in these very different works. The sheer quality of his music shines through and, sung by a group at the height of its powers, changes our view of 17th-century multi-choir music.
All the masses in I Fagiolini’s Benevoli series are premiere recordings.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Grandi: Plorabo die ac nocte
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2Benevoli: Missa Angelus Domini: 1. Kyrie
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3Benevoli: Missa Angelus Domini: 2. Gloria
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4Benevoli: Missa Angelus Domini: 3. Credo
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5Benevoli: Missa Angelus Domini: 4. Sanctus
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6Benevoli: Missa Angelus Domini: . Agnus Dei
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7Palestrina: Dum complerentur dies Pentecostes
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8Benevoli: Missa Dum complerentur: 1. Kyrie
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9Benevoli: Missa Dum complerentur: 2. Gloria
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10Benevoli: Missa Dum complerentur: 3. Credo
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11Benevoli: Missa Dum complerentur: 4. Sanctus
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12Benevoli: Missa Dum complerentur: 5. Agnus Dei
Europadisc Review
J.S. Bach’s great-grandfather Hans Bach (and founder of the musical dynasty) started out as a baker; Rossini and Wagner both had maternal grandfathers who were bakers. But the Italian Baroque composer Orazio Benevoli (1605–1672) went one better: his father, who had moved to Rome from Lorraine, was a confectioner. We don’t know whether Benevoli was born with a sweet tooth, but judging by his swift rise from chorister to maestro di cappella in a succession of prominent Rome churches, his musical gifts must have been evident from an early age. Apart from a brief stint in Vienna as Kapellmeister to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (brother of Emperor Ferdinand III), Benevoli spent his entire career in Rome, rising to become, in 1646, maestro di cappella of the prestigious Cappella Giulia at St Peter’s, a post he occupied until his death some 26 years later.
For many years, Benevoli was best known when the vast, polychoral Missa Salisburgensis was misattributed to him, but it is now thought to have been composed by Heinrich Biber more than half a century later than once erroneously thought. Benevoli did, however, write in the polychoral style (best known from the output of the Gabrielis in Venice), and the fruits of his labours have been brought to light in a series of splendid recordings by Robert Hollingworth’s I Fagiolini on the Coro label. We welcomed the first instalment in October 2023, declaring that ‘the pure-voiced singers under Hollingworth’s direction maintain a rock-steady underlying pulse, while bringing out all the beauty of Benevoli’s assured vocal writing.’ Now the third and final disc in the series includes two further polychoral masses from Benevoli’s pen, one for three choirs, another for four (each performed with one voice per part), the first possibly for Easter, the second for Pentecost.
The original model for the three-choir Missa Angelus Domini is lost, so the disc opens with a brief excursion to Venice courtesy of Alessandro Grandi’s Easter morning drama Plorabo die ac nocte (‘I shall weep day and night’). This skilfully interweaves Old Testament texts with the words of Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of Jesus, at Christ’s tomb. Composed for just four singers and continuo, this is a wonderfully sensitive exploration of emotional desolation and mourning, the textures of the tutti sections becoming enriched (particularly at the return of the opening phrase), and the words of Mary, Jesus’s mother (sung by soprano Martha McLorinan), are especially moving. There’s an unhurried quality to the pacing that allows the music to make full impact without becoming overwrought.
From this powerful yet contained opening, we move to the three-choir splendour of the Missa Angelus Domini. It is not known for which occasion this was composed, but the descending lines in the opening Kyrie strongly suggest that the original text might have been ‘the Angel of the Lord descended from Heaven’ (as Hollingworth points out in his excellent booklet notes). Whether or not the faster moving lines would have been heard to best effect in Rome’s resonant churches, they are perfectly captured in this recording, made in the Church of St Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead Garden Suburb, which also lends plenty of warmth to the large-scale tuttis. Just how powerful and rich a sound this one-voice-per-part ensemble can make is abundantly evident throughout the disc. There are dramatic moments in the Gloria, as well as harmonic surprises, and a specifically Roman ‘mule’ (where the cantus firmus is slowed against rapidly-moving lower parts) which Handel later made famous use of in his ‘Hallelujah’ chorus in Messiah.
The Credo is particularly imposing, with slow-moving harmonies but a myriad of fine details that leap out to illustrate the text. The ‘Et resurrexit’ is for upper voices, raising the listener’s ears (and minds) upwards, while ‘Et in spiritum’ begins in triple time (signifying the Trinity), and there is upward quaver motion at the word ‘resurrectionem’. All these details and more are wonderfully projected by I Fagiolini’s singers, with pinpoint intonation, while Hollingworth never loses a grip on the underlying pulse. There is no Benedictus setting in Roman masses of the period, but the Sanctus builds steadily from a restrained opening, the Agnus Dei is radiant, and the work as a whole makes a magnificent impression.
So, too, does the even more sumptuous four-choir Missa Dum complerentur, based on Palestrina’s eponymous six-voice Pentecost motet which here precedes it. Benevoli masterfully transforms the original model, with its trademark combination of textual clarity and gloriously uplifting counterpoint, into a particularly imposing musical edifice by taking just isolated themes or figures and building them up in a very forward-looking manner. While the opening Kyrie is in effect scored for three choirs (the third and fourth doubling one another), the Gloria is (after the opening incipit) for the full complement of sixteen parts at the very outset, and indeed it makes a gloriously euphonious impression. In both this and the Credo, the listener feels positively bathed in sound, yet even so, nothing quite prepares you for the astonishingly rich refulgence at ‘Et incarnatus est’, where the words ‘de Spiritu Sancto’ (‘and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost’) assume particular importance at Pentecost and are subtly underscored. The ‘Crucifixus’ brings sparer textures, the ‘Et resurrexit’ is infectiously animated, and the concluding ‘Amen’ – with its proliferation of irregularly overlapping voices – is a tour de force of both composition and performance. The last two movements are, once again, brief but dazzling in their opulence.
In 1639 a French visitor to Rome wrote of its choirs, ‘These Italian musicians [...] never make mistakes, though the music is very difficult [...]. All the choirs sing to the same beat without dragging.’ One could heap similar praise on Hollingworth and his forces, with the added observation that their phrasing, shaping and responsiveness to the texts are second to none. Listening to this Easter and Whitsun music by Benevoli during Holy Week feels like something of an indulgence: it’s certainly hit a sweet spot!
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