By Andrew Dziedzic
Is the Judgement of History Fair?
On Good Friday, 18 April, we will broadcast a program of Good Friday music, Baroque sacred music. The main focus of the program will be the Lamentations – Liturgy for Good Friday by Giacomo Antonio Perti, which concludes the program.
The program also includes three Stabat Maters – traditionally performed during Easter. It opens with the justly famous Stabat Mater by Vivaldi, followed by a local recording by the Parson’s Affayre of the haunting Stabat Mater by Domenico Scarlatti, one of his rare liturgical choral works. The last Stabat Mater is by Agostino Steffani, composed, as was Vivaldi’s, in the 1720s. Steffani, like Perti, is a composer whose music has only recently been re-discovered and recorded, and this work is the main pillar of his claim to fame. Interspersed among the three Stabat Maters in the first half of the program are three keyboard works by J S Bach composed specifically for the Easter period.
Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661-1756) is one of the longest-lived significant Baroque composers. During his lifetime his name was almost as well known as that of his great predecessor, Monteverdi. While much of Monteverdi’s music has survived and the composer is revered today, Perti’s music has all but disappeared. Is Perti’s fall into obscurity a fair and understandable judgement of history or the result of unfair and unjust neglect?
For the last 60 of his 95 years Perti was Maestro di Cappella at the Church of San Petronio in Bologna. During that time, he served as Principe (Head) of the Accademia Filarmonicadi di Bologna, an academy that gained Europe-wide fame for the quality of the works produced under its aegis. Among its members were such august composers as Arcangelo Corelli and Padre Martini and the famed castrato, Farinelli. At the Accademia Perti taught, among many others, Giuseppe Torelli and Padre Martini, who, himself, taught Johann Christian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Perti was a prolific composer of both sacred and secular works, most of which, particularly the secular works, have been lost. Starting his compositional career at the age of 16 he said he was influenced by Cavalli, Cesti and Luigi Rossi, although he showed many original traits and innovations during his career, modifying his style to include more recent musical developments over his long life. Nearly all his 26 operas have been lost, but in the sacred sphere he composed 120 psalm settings, 534 motets, 28 masses and numerous other smaller liturgical works. He also composed 142 secular cantatas and other sinfonias and sonatas.
During the initial period of his appointment as Maestro di Cappella at San Petronio, musicians were hired for masses and holidays, but after a few years, in 1701, the finances of the Cappella Musicale were restored and he had at his service 24 and, still later, 36 regular musicians. That number was expanded to up to 153 for large religious occasions such as Easter and Christmas.
He gained the patronage of Ferdinand III, the Grand Duc of Tuscany, and was commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, who made him a royal councillor. It is clear from his letters that Perti was held in high esteem by his contemporary colleagues, composers such as Fux, Caldara, Pasquini and Corelli, as well as by his pupil Padre Martini, who always held up Perti’s works as the finest of their type.
The Lamentations consist of a solo voice (or voices) for the lamentations themselves, followed by choral responsaries. Each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, with those initial letters making up an acrostic of the word for lamentations in Hebrew.
Why did Perti’s work fall into obscurity even though he was revered during his lifetime by other composers whose music we greatly admire? One can argue that it’s an accident of history – there simply weren’t any prominent composers or performers who championed his works after his death. That was the fate of many otherwise worthy and celebrated composers whose music fell out of fashion and disappeared, sometimes for centuries.
Other examples are Italian-born German composer Agostino Steffani, whose Stabat Mater we hear in the first part of this program and Jan Dismas Zelenka, a contemporary of J S Bach, whose music was greatly respected by Bach himself, and whose fortunes are now being restored as his music is rediscovered. Lully, Biber and Rameau, all composers celebrated in their own eras, suffered the same fate. It was only in the 20th century that their fortunes were restored, thanks largely to the music recording industry and insightful musicians who sought to record their works. Obscurity is thus not necessarily a reliable judgement of history.
The Maestro di Capella at the church of San Petronio in Bologna is Sergio Vartolo, harpsichordist and conductor and one-time counter tenor. Vartolo, who has been in the position since 1996, is doing his bit to restore the prominence of composers associated with both the church and the Accademia Filarmonico of Bologna, including by making a recording of Perti’s Lamentations, performed by the Cappella Musicale of San Petronio and it is that recording that will conclude the Good Friday afternoon program. After hearing the recording, which takes full advantage of the wonderful acoustics of the church of San Petronio, listeners will be able to make their own decision about whether Perti is unjustly forgotten or whether his music could be described as ‘understandably obscure’.