Born on March 4, 1678, in Venice; died on July 28, 1741, in Vienna
Gloria, R. 589
Gloria in excelsis
Et in terra pax
Laudamus te
Gratias agimus tibi
Propter magnam gloriam
Domine Deus
Domine Fili Unigenite
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei
Qui tollis
Qui sedes ad dexteram
Quoniam tu solus sanctus
Cum Sancto Spiritu
Composed: 1715
Estimated length: 30 minutes
First performance: First modern performance in September 1939 in Sienna, Italy.
According to an old joke, Antonio Vivaldi was able to produce such a prolific legacy of concertos—more than 500—by writing the same one over and over … and over. While the quip (attributed by some to Igor Stravinsky) may have once come off as clever, at least when cliches about Vivaldi and early music in general abounded, nowadays it simply reveals an ignorant incuriosity about one of the most influential—and in fact innovative—composers of the Baroque.
True, Vivaldi did pen an enormous number of concertos—among them The Four Seasons, which represent anything but a cookie-cutter approach to the format—and he was moreover an astonishingly productive composer of opera and sacred vocal music as well. Both of these areas comprise a significant proportion of Vivaldi’s output and demonstrate his brilliant use of virtuoso singing as a complement to the virtuosity demanded by his instrumental music.
Scholars know of at least three settings by Vivaldi of the Gloria, a Christian hymn that is a fixed part of the Roman Catholic Mass. But there is little specific information about the context for which the most famous of these, the Gloria in D (RV 589), was composed. It is likely that Vivaldi produced it around 1715 or 1716 (though it may date from several years earlier).
The Gloria was probably intended for performance by the talented ensemble of young girls at the Ospedale della Pietà (Hospital of Mercy) in the composer’s native Venice, which was located close to the Piazza San Marco. The Pietà was an important charitable institution of the era, a combination orphanage, convent, and conservatory whose origins go back to the Middle Ages.
By Vivaldi’s time, the Pietà’s focus was on providing support for abandoned and orphaned girls. Musical training was believed to be a way to supply them with skills that would make them more self-reliant as well as desirable for marriage. They gave concerts of such quality that their performances attracted donors, earning the Pietà a reputation as a first-rate conservatory in its own right. It represented an extraordinary beacon of opportunity for talented young women in an otherwise thoroughly patriarchal society.
Starting in 1703, when he was 25, Vivaldi held a variety of posts at the Pietà on and off until near the end of his life (apart from a few years in which his contract was not renewed). The young Venetian had been ordained a priest the year he began his association with the Pietà and, because of his flame-colored hair, became known as il Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”), but he soon withdrew from his liturgical duties on account of a mysterious ailment (identified as possibly bronchial asthma).
Instead, Vivaldi focused on his musical duties at the Pietà as head of violin instruction. During his lifetime, he was widely praised by his peers as one of the leading violin virtuosos. He also began laying the ground for his reputation as a composer, writing both instrumental and choral music for his young charges as a kind of resident artist. Vivaldi had the advantage of having excellent singers and instrumentalists at his disposal.
All of the soloist parts in this setting of the Gloria, Vivaldi’s most famous work of sacred music, are for female voices, and it is thought that the choir would have taken on the male vocal lines as well (tenor and bass), with the bass line transposed as needed. (In J.S. Bach’s Leipzig, on the other hand, where girls and women were not allowed to sing, the reverse was the case: alto and soprano parts would be taken on by men or boys.) Along with the four-part choir and three soloists, the ensemble calls for oboe, trumpet, strings, and continuo (to reinforce the harmonic framework in the bass).
The text, from the Ordinary of the Latin Mass, is the second prayer normally included in musical settings of the liturgy (following the Kyrie). Vivaldi’s setting of the Gloria is, however, an independent work. He divides the text into twelve separate movements, resulting in a kind of cantata or vocal concerto that encompasses an astonishing variety of moods that mirror the prayer’s widely ranging paean to the divine force of the Christian cosmos.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Vivaldi opens with music of pure joy and energetic rhythm as the chorus resounds in triumphant raiments of D major, buttressed by oboe and trumpet. But the music veers into darker harmonic regions in the slower second movement (“Et in terra pax”), set in B minor. Vivaldi foreshadows his later preoccupation with opera in the enchanting duet “Laudamus te” and in the lilting, pastorally tinged soprano aria (or duet with violin) “Domine Deus.”
Between these are the simple chords of “Gratias agimus” and the tightly woven fugal texture of “Propter magnam gloriam.” A nod to French style characterizes “Domine, Fili unigenite,” with its dotted rhythms. “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” antiphonally combines a solo alto aria with chorus. The choral “Qui tollis” leads into another B minor movement in the alto aria “Qui sedes,” preparing the way for a concentrated reprise of the music of the D major Gloria opening in “Quoniam tu solus sanctus.” Vivaldi crowns the work with an impressive double fugue that he adapted from an older contemporary composer, Giovanni Maria Ruggieri.
Along with 2 sopranos and an alto as soloists, and a mixed chorus, scored for oboe, trumpet, strings, and continuo.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Featured on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons & Gloria — October 12, 2024
Nashville Symphony & Chorus
Tucker Biddlecombe, conductor
Peter Otto, conductor and leader
Peter Otto, violin
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