Italian vocal music
2005; Oxford University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/em/cah174
ISSN1741-7260
Autores Tópico(s)Musicology and Musical Analysis
ResumoTo find a new recording offering four previously unknown relatively major works by a major composer is mouth-watering. Giacomo Carissimi: Oratorios from Musica Fiata (CPO 999 983–2, rec 2003) more or less lives up to its promise. Strictly speaking, only two of the four oratorios (using this term in its broadest sense)—those entitled Persarum rex maxiumus Assuerus (Regina Hester) and Interfecto Sisara principe exercitus Cananeorum—are complete novelties, since Cum vidisset Deus (Diluvium universale) exists in an incomplete copy in Hamburg, while the subject, at least, of Stabat adversus Israel Philisteus in valle Terebinthi (Dialogo del gigante Golia) was previously known from a reference by André Maugars in 1639. Unhelpfully, and also rather discourteously, the booklet fails to mention the source of all four scores: the castle library in Kromĕříž, Czech Republic. All four works are up to Carissimi's usual very high standard. The recitatives are elegantly patterned in the composer's usual manner, slipping in and out of arioso style effortlessly. The choruses crackle with crisp declamation. It strikes me that Carissimi is the one composer of the Italian Baroque who can bear comparison with Schütz (and a few other Germans, including Schein) as a setter, as distinct from merely a painter, of words: by choosing an appropriate speed, rhythm and melodic contour, he miraculously makes the simple sound of a word or sequence of words (for example, ‘expellatur, dissipetur, prosternatur, extirpetur’—Haman's command to expel the Jews from Persia) evoke its meaning without any added pictorial or rhetorical effect.
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