Tuesday, 7 June 2011
If you don't like the new ICEL translation ...
... why not have Venetian baroque instead? I found this spirited rendition of Vivaldi on YouTube; its verve and attack made me long more than ever one day to be able to sing High Mass with this setting of the Gloria. There is a debate about the tempo Vivaldi would have preferred for it: this conductor goes for what Private Baldrick might have called the "as fast a a very fast thing" option: a sort of Brands Hatch interpretation.
Below are parts two and three from the set. I know that half an hour for a Gloria is a bit longer than normal but we could all maybe sit down and say some prayers while drawing spiritual edification from such sublime music. As Pope Benedict pointed out, that too is active participation.
This wonderful performance does come apart at the seams once or twice, and there is slightly more shuffling and snorting than I really like, but it has such power that you just have to make allowances. As our friends across the ocean say, "If it ain't Baroque, don't mend it."
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7 comments:
I agree with your sentiments about a Baroque Gloria, but not with this performance please. Its awful. Way, way too fast.
Incidentally, I once attended an ordination where the ordinand had decided on Haydn's St Cecilia Mass for the Ordinary. The Kyrie and Gloria alone take 45 mins, and I well remember the Bishop getting up to sing the collect at 4pm, having processed in at 3pm. It was absolutely wonderful!
Tra le solecitudini, §11 (a) The Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc., of the Mass must preserve the unity of composition proper to the text. It is not lawful, therefore, to compose them in separate movements, in such a way that each of these movements form a complete composition in itself, and be capable of being detached from the rest and substituted by another.
If I'm reading this right, this would unfortunately make Vivaldi's Gloria not usable in the liturgical context...
Quite brilliant!
Does anyone know whether there is an organ reduction of the orchestral parts? This would make it more convenient for use in church. However, much of the beauty is in the string parts, and I am not sure how well these would translate to the organ.
Any information anyone?
Absolutely beautiful.
Most stuff is played too fast these days. I think it's because conductors no longer ally the music and text with the sacred and its need for reflective pauses.
I once attended a performance of the stupendous Bach B Minor under the baton of a much-lauded conductor. Taken at the gallop, it couldn't have been run faster at Epsom.
The poor soloists sounded as though they were singing tongue-twisters.
Instead of exiting uplifted, I came out of the concert hall VERY cross at having paid good money for a travesty.
Et Expecto, nearly all vocal scores contain a keyboard reduction of the orchestral parts for rehearsal purposes.
At the speed of that performance, the runs in the opening movement would be fun, but the other stuff is easily rendered in the ususal ways for keyboard.
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