Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus

I Fagiolini

Released on 06/10/2023 by CORO
Main artists: I Fagiolini
Genre: Classical

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Orazio Benevoli was a major composer in mid-17th century Rome, attached to the Vatican and to several of the great Roman churches. He wrote music on a grand scale for multiple choirs, but he has never been nearly as well known as Heinrich Schütz or the Venetian composers who worked in this style. From this recording by the vocal-instrumental group I Fagiolini of his Missa Tu es Petrus, for four choirs, it is not at all clear why this should be so. It is a remarkable work that weaves together a variety of idioms in a highly expressive way. The mass is based on a motet by Palestrina, and Benevoli, at times, writes in what was by then the stile antico, but he deploys the resources of his four choirs fully. The Kyrie builds in force as it proceeds. Most remarkable of all is the Credo, where the music shifts to a noble chordal structure that then explodes into ecstasy with the subsequent Resurrexit. Sample this movement well; neither Schütz nor Giovanni Gabrieli ever wrote anything like it. Interspersed among the movements of the mass are motets by an even less familiar composer, Bonifazio Graziani, and these, too, are compelling. The performances are muscular, but one may question the one-voice-per-part setting in music as grand as this. Director Robert Hollingworth points to payroll records of the time as justification but also notes that witnesses reported a large choir, and he gets points for admitting that it was "partly because of the sheer expense" that this was not attempted. He expresses a willingness to explore the repertory further with larger groups if funders were to step up. Based on the music here, that would be a worthwhile project indeed; the big Benevoli mass is a unique find. This release made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023.

© James Manheim /TiVo

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Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus

I Fagiolini

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Tu es Petrus a6

00:06:06

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Composer - I Fagiolini, Ensemble, MainArtist - Robert Hollingworth, Conductor - The City Musick, Orchestra - CPDL, MusicPublisher

Missa Tu es Petrus: I. Kyrie

00:05:08