Posted on 8/11/2005, 9:30:35 PM by sitetest
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A small part of a newly identified choral work by baroque Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi was played for the first time in about 250 years on Tuesday after being uncovered by an Australian academic.
Janice Stockigt of the University of Melbourne said the 11-movement "Dixit Dominus" for choir and soloists, which she uncovered in Dresden this year, would be played in full in the German city next year.
Stockigt said the work had previously been attributed to Baldassarre Galuppi, a Venetian contemporary of Vivaldi, since it first appeared in Galuppi's name in Dresden's Catholic Court Church in the 1750s.
"I think the music was probably performed during Vivaldi's lifetime and then went to ground under another composer's name," Stockigt told Reuters by telephone from Melbourne.
"I don't think it would have been played at all since then."
Stockigt said she had stumbled across the music while working on a larger project researching the repertory of the 18th century Catholic Court Church in the Saxon capital.
"Something just struck me about the music, it seemed awfully familiar to me," she said.
Stockigt referred her find to Vivaldi expert Professor Michael Talbot, of Britain's University of Liverpool, who examined the manuscript and pronounced it the work of Vivaldi.
While the original work has never been found, Stockigt said copies turned up in Dresden under Galuppi's name during the Seven Years' War about 15 years after Vivaldi's death in 1741.
"Dresden was besieged at this time and so, by the time things got back to normal, Mozart and a whole new style had come in yet again," she said.
Stockigt said "a small snippet" of the 35-minute work was played by a University of Melbourne baroque ensemble and sung to an audience of music students, academics and journalists, with counter-tenor Christopher Field giving the work its first modern performance.
The same piece was played several times over for an enthralled audience.
"It's magic to hear this and it will be even greater when I hear the whole work, I am just longing to hear the choral sections," Stickigt said.
Next year she hopes a complete "premiere" will be performed at the same court where the manuscript had lain since the 1750s.
Vivaldi, the son of a Venetian baker, was ordained a priest before becoming a violin teacher at an orphanage for girls. A prolific composer, he wrote more than 500 concertos but was buried in a pauper's grave after his death in Vienna.
Vivaldi, whose work influenced later musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach, is best known today for Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons), four concertos from his Opus 8 which remains one of the world's most recognizable pieces of music.
Classical music ping list ping!
Interesting.
I'm reading the book "Dresden" about the 1945 firebombing of that city.
I'm amazed that anything near there could have survived. The manuscript must have been somewhere else or maybe on the outskirts of the city.
I love Vivaldi...thank you for posting:)
May I please be added to the classical music ping list? Thank you!
Vivaldi didn't write 600 works; he wrote 1 work 600 times. I guess it's now 601 times.
Just kidding, Antonio. I'm sure the work will bring much joy to your many fans the world over, and for centuries to come.
I am thrilled by the idea of the "lost work." There's an obscure but brilliant British composer named Havergal Brian whose summum opus "Prometheus Unbound" was lost by the BBC, which was supposed to have kept it in safekeeping. Maybe in 250 years they'll find that one.
Would you kindly add me to your ping list? Thanks in advance.
ping
Absolutely!
Anyone else who would like to be added to this list, please let me know.
Also, if you see interesting snippets related to classical music (and we define that rather broadly here at FR - I've got everything from Renaissance dances by Michael Praetorius all the way up to Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, and the list will ping on both and anything in between), please let RepublicanProfessor or sitetest know.
Thanks!
Wow, can it be downloaded yet? j/k
Please add me to your ping list. Thanks!
Add me, too!
Vivaldi is one of my favorites from the Baroque era. This is very cool stuff.
This is exciting! Thanks for posting :)
I'd be delighted to!!
The Red Priest is one of my favs, too!!
If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.
You're welcome!!
Anyone who wants on the Classical Music Ping List, just let me know!
What delightful news - I adore Vivaldi. Thanks for the ping.
Now, that's a 'miracle'.....
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