START.....
START.....
Site-Map
Concerts (MP3-files)
Course participants
Exercise support
Theory
-Bibliography
-What is music?
-What is folk music?
-My folksongs
-Early Vocal Music Map
--Composers
--Gregorian chant
--Central Middle Ages
--Early Renaissance
--High Renaissance
--The Italian Seicento (17th C)
--German Baroque Music (17th C)
--Western Europe 1650-1760
--The Italian Settecento (18th.C)
---The Concerto (HOASM)
---The Neapolitan Group (HOASM)
---The Harpsichord (HOASM)
---The Solo and Trio Sonata (HOASM)
---Vocal Music
---Sacred Music of the Italian 18th C
----Francesco Durante
----Antonio Lotti
----Benedetto Marcello
----Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
----Giacomo Antonio Perti
----Alessandro Scarlatti
----Antonio Vivaldi
--The Works of J.S. Bach
--Georg Frederick Händel
--The German Preclassics (1700-1760)
-Sing á la Renaissance.
-Early Music Examples
-Örjans folkmusik-exempel
-Arranging & Composing
-Renaissance musical learning
-Renaissance - moving emotions
-Early Music in Swedish Libraries
Links
Internal Information

Umeå Akademiska Kör

Early Vocal Music Map

Search for
  • Research and text by Chris Whent at HOASM (Here on a Sunday Morning - WBAI 99.5 FM New York)
  • Composer Bibliography - links to Wikipedia and HOASM
  • Discography - lists of commercial musical recordings - links to HOASM
  • Vocal PDF-files (music scores) and MIDI-files - links to CPDL (Choral Public Domain Library)
  • Vocal MP3-recordings - public MP3-files at choir home-pages (and some password-protected files, PWD)

VIII. The Italian Settecento (18th Century)

VIIIf. Sacred Music of the Italian 18th C



We have noted that in the 17th century. although the Roman school kept up the old a capella tradition, Italy was also the country in which the new musical style, nuove musiche, emerged, and this dichotomy survived in the eighteenth century. We also noted that most opera composers of the time., also wrote church music, and this continued into the new century with composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti. in this vein, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater from about 1730, a cantata-like work with Latin text, is a 'fine example' of good Italian church music.

In the 18th century, the main influence on church music was exercised by the Neapolitan school, the exponents of which were mainly trained by the conservatories that initially were foundling homes where musicians were first trained in church music and subsequently turned to the more profitable opera and spread their music all across Europe. Although the source of this style was homogenous, the music that emerged out of it showed a great variety, and that particularly due to the fact that the composers of the Neapolitan school were active throughout the entire century and that they had taken part in the major developments of this time. Thus one cannot say that there exists an actual 'Neapolitan mass or cantata' style, but rather, a general, basic outlook that prevailed during the 18th century. Most composers studied the stile antico, although not all of them wrote entire masses in this style. Alessandro Scarlatti, who wrote eight of his ten masses in the stile antico, showed in them a strict approach that left little room for expression; others, such as Franceso Durante, applied chromaticism and irregular harmonies even in works that he had initially described as written 'in Palestrina'.

Nevertheless, the stile antico also permeates many masses that were written in the more general 'stilus mixtus.' This mixture arose out of the combination of three main elements: of choirs in the stile antico with orchestral accompaniment of the voices, of choirs where the orchestra plays an important part in the formal organization, and of music for solo voices. In order to incorporate these, the mass text was subdivided into smaller sections, as this was also done in certain 17th-century compositions, with the difference that, in the Neapolitan style, the sections were more independent from each other, and many important mass compositions actually only consisted of the Kyrie and the Gloria. Some pieces served structural purposes, such as the emerging fugues of the 'Amen' at the end of the Gloria and the Credo, while others applied the expressive manner to solemn moments such as the 'Crucifixus', as, for example, in Leo's ten-part mass. The choirs with independent accompaniment reflected the emergence of orchestral forms. In these, the choir was mostly monophonic, with a vowel-emphasized declamation of the words, often in stereotypical, regular rhythms, thereby fulfilling the function of the recitative and strengthening the continuo harmonies; the most important thematic material was left to the orchestra. At the beginning of the 18th century, themes in concerto style were used, as in Alessandro Scarlatti's St. Cecilia Mass.

The Composers

Name and link to Whent´s Bibliography Years Country # of PDF/Midi Discography MP3
Pietro Paolo Bencini c.1670-1755 Italy . . .
Ferdinando (Gasparo) Bertoni 1725-1813 Italy cpdl=1 . .
Giovanni Battista Casali 1715-1792 Italy cpdl=1 . .
Girolamo Chiti 1679-1759 Italy . Discography .
Giovanni Battista Costanzi 1704-1778 Italy . . .
Francesco Durante 1684-1755 Italy cpdl=2 Discography MP3
Francesco Feo 1691-1761 Italy . . .
Bernardo Gaffi 1679-1759 Italy . Discography .
Baldassare Galuppi 1706-1785 Italy cpdl=2 Discography .
Geminiano Giacomelli c.1692-1740 Italy . Discography .
Giovanni Giorgi ?-1762 Italy cpdl=2 Discography .
Antonio Lotti 1667-1740 Italy cpdl=24 . MP3
Benedetto Marcello 1686-1739 Italy cpdl=2 Discography MP3
Padre Giovanni Battista Martini 1706-1784 Italy cpdl=15 . .
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi 1710-1736 Italy cpdl=4 Discography MP3
Giacomo Antonio Perti 1661-1756 Italy cpdl=3 . MP3
Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni 1657-1743 Italy . Discography .
Luigi Antonio Sabbatini 1732-1809 Italy . . .
Alessandro Scarlatti 1659-1725 Italy cpdl=16 Discography MP3
Francesco Antonio Vallotti 1697-1780 Italy . . .
Francesco Maria Veracini 1690-1768 Italy . Discography .
Antonio Vivaldi 1678-1741 Italy cpdl=37 Discography MP3
Domenico Zipoli 1688-1726 Italy cpdl=1 . .

This page has been visited
6852 times since 2007-12-30.
Updated
2013-07-30.
Totally 10191623 file-openings.
(frequently updated)
Generated in EditPadLite
with W3schools support.
Located at
ubuntu servers
Mutually linked with
WIKIPEDIA
Web-composer: Göran Westling
akadkor@accum.se