Magnificat at Grace Cathedral

Last weekend I had the privilege of sharing Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610 with an extraordinary assembly of musicians and three engaged and appreciative audiences. I have often said that the most wonderful  thing about directing Magnificat is that I get the best spot in the hall to experience fine artists at work and that was definitely the case in these concerts.

When I eventually got home from the Grace Cathedral on Sunday, I opened the laptop to check the Inbox and was greeted with the familiar pop-up window “You are now running on reserve battery.” My initial response was “No kidding!,” a response to which anyone coming off a production like the 1610 Vespers could relate. But it also got me thinking about the ‘rhythm’ of vespers how eloquently Monteverdi embroiders that rhythm and ‘recharges the batteries’ as the vespers moves from one multi-layered text to another.

After an audacious tutti opening acclamation that announces the commencement of vespers, Monteverdi sets about painting the five psalms proper to Feasts of the Blessed Virgin, with their mystical, often ambiguous and orthogonal verses so well suited to the Seicento composer’s fascination with color and word painting. Each of the psalm settings is a tightly controlled and sensitive reading of the text and they collectively present the listener with a complex matrix for contemplation. Monteverdi fills these psalms (and the non-liturgical sacri concenti interpolated between them) with a panoply of the most modern virtuosic operatic and madrigalian styles while ingeniously  grounding each in the ancient psalm tones to  provides an harmonic scaffolding as well as motivic and architectural coherence.

After the sheer intensity of the five psalms, some release is necessary and the inclusion of the metrical strophic poetry of a hymn aptly serves this purpose. The hymn was a later addition to the vespers, becoming part of the liturgy centuries after the 6th century Rule of St. Benedict, which had established the basic structure vespers. Monteverdi’s re-introduction of the instruments at this point (they had been silent since the brief ritornelli in the first psalm, Dixit Dominus) highlights the new energy – the reserve battery – that fuels the high point of vespers that follows – the Canticle of Mary, the “Magnificat”.

In a conversation after the Sunday concert, I found myself discussing “re-animation” in relation to Luke’s text “Magnificat anima mea Dominum” (“my sould doth magnify the Lord”) and how the quantum steps of the four statements of the word “Magnificat” in Monteverdi’s setting of the Canticle so exquisitely convey the notion of magnification – of re-animation and expansion, of calling upon the “reserve battery” in order to transcend the ordinary.

In Monteverdi’s Magnificat (the seven-part setting – Monteverdi collection also includes a 6 part setting without instruments, the composition of which most likely preceded and served as the basis for the 7 part setting was based) the instruments are featured in a most colorful and virtuosic manner. In fact, when performed as published, the Hymn and Magnificat create an almost “Wizard of Oz” black-and-white-to-Technicolor moment when the voices are suddenly illuminated by cornets, sackbuts and violins illustrating the shift from prophecy to fulfillment embodied by the Magnificat text.

It seemed to me that the emotional state necessary to sing that first statement of the text “Magnificat” (as Jennifer Paulino did so poignantly in each of the concerts over the weekend) and for the listeners to hear it, requires the experience of the psalms and hymn that precede it in the inexorable flow that is vespers.

The 17th century was a period of pervasive upheaval, a century when the fundamental perceptions of the world in all realms of life were shaken. It was a time when alchemy and empirical science coexisted, a time when the exploration of new worlds and the investigation of the sky challenged traditional conceptions of the place of the earth in the universe, a time of religious persecution and political conflict. And like tumultuous periods throughout history it was also a time that produced some of our most treasured art, architecture, poetry, and music. I would argue that beyond a mere curiosity about the origins of our current musical universe, the music of the this period has a special resonance for us today because we also are living through a ‘paradigm shift’ comparable to the crises of the 17th century, with all the attendant upheaval characteristic of such times.

Early in the century, Monteverdi wrote that he intended to publish a treatise describing the ’secunda pratica’ or ‘second practice,’ the new compositional attitude that he and his colleagues had adopted. Drawing on Plato, he said that his book would be laid out in three parts and would begin with a chapter on oration. How appropriate that a manifesto of the new music of the 17th century should give such prominence to the rhetorical art, given the dominant motivation that the communication of words and the emotions they express provided composers of the period. Through the experiments that led to the creation of the genres of opera, oratorio, sonata, and cantata, composers sought to integrate drama and music into new compositional approaches that reflected the immediacy and engagement so essential to the art of oratory.

Perhaps because the fruits of these experiments remain fundamental to musical perception three centuries later, they take on a special significance for us. The basic elements of what we now call “common practice” tonality, the dominance of the keyboard as the basis of musical conception, the emergence of institutions like orchestras and opera companies and the appearance of professional virtuoso performers – the very notion that the purpose of music was to move the passions and communicate emotions – all took shape in the 17th century.

The culture of late 16th century Italy was marked by sharp philosophical contrasts and an eclectic intellectual climate. Historians typically portray this culture as a confrontation of conflicting intellectual, spiritual and social forces: classical versus Christian tradition, totalitarianism versus republicanism, feudalism versus capitalism, logic versus rhetoric, mysticism versus scientific rationalism. Certainly the “crises” of the seventeenth century was no more appalling than those of other times – wars, famine, recessions, epidemics and religious controversies were not inventions of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless the constant political and economic insecurity of the 16th century had succeeded in shaking the self-confidence of Renaissance society to such a degree that awareness of a sense inescapable crisis, of the absurdity of human endeavor, could effectively replace faith in the creative forces of man as a rational creature.

Just as powerfully, the effect of the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic reaction had shattered any sense of spiritual universality (though this was always a myth in any case). Religious denomination became the pretext of choice in power politics, the most horrific example being the Thirty Years War that dominated the lives of most of Europe for the first half of the 17th century. The human species’ place at the center of the universe had been challenged by discoveries of Copernicus and especially by Galileo’s experiments with telescopes. Though it would not be until the 18th century that a conception of the Earth as a speck lost in an infinite universe would be widely accepted, doubt nevertheless prevailed about the accepted Aristotelian cosmology despite the draconian efforts of the Church to maintain it.

In his influential book Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance, Gary Tomlinson focuses on the dichotomy between scholasticism and humanism in charting the development of Monteverdi’s music. His observations tell us a great deal about the fundamental shift in the attitudes of artists, musicians, and poets of the period and the new techniques and genres of expression that they created. This struggle between authority and innovation can serve as a useful window into the artistic climate of the time that highlights the role of oratory and rhetoric in stimulating its artistic expression.

Scholasticism arouse in the universities of the Middle Ages and was closely associated with the teaching there of theology, philosophy, medicine and law. It was characterized by a reliance on authority in the form of Scripture and Classical texts and a faith in the absolute truth of knowledge gained through rigorous deductive logic. Aristotle in particular appeared to present a systematic exploration of the full potential of human reason itself. Many scholastic writers were confident that complete knowledge was attainable and indeed already had been attained by a few ancient and early Christian writers in their fields of expertise. It can be said that the scholastic vision assumed not only the existence of a universal order but also a substantial capacity of the human mind to grasp this order. The appeal of such a attitude is of course its fundamentally optimistic view of man’s intellectual capabilities and the fact that it reinforced the unity, perfection and authority of an omnipotent God.

However, if reality was closed, systematically ordered, and completely apprehensible as the scholastics believed, then knowledge itself must be limited. Accepting the authority of the ancients could ultimately entail rejecting the possibility of new ideas. Though it may be easy to dismiss the “Schoolmen” as hopelessly old fashioned, their arguments have much in common with the all-too-common arguments of various fundamentalists of our own day. At any rate, facing the geographical, cosmological, technological, and other discoveries of the 16th century, the scholastic deference to authority sometimes hardened into dogmatism – a dogmatism that stimulated important questions about scientific, scholarly, and artistic innovation.

Humanism, by contrast, was native to Italy – a response to the imported scholastic ideas that seems to have been nurtured by the circumstances of Italian urban life. The necessities of business and self-governance encouraged a pragmatic view of the uses and ends of knowledge – learning was applied to everyday concerns and human actions, foreign to scholastic thinkers. A whole class of educated men emerged who were employed to work out contracts and negotiate with foreign traders and man the government bureaucracies. Soon a new breed of scholars, referred to as humanisti, appeared. They stressed moral philosophy and teachings derived from poetry and above all history. The humanisti promoted a new dialectic that blurred the distinction between scientific demonstration and plausible argumentation, marking a shift from syllogistic to topical logic. In this new view, human will attained a centrality and importance that was at odds with its scholastic position as merely a mediator between reason and passion.

Petrarch, one of the first humanists, wrote that “It is safer to strive for the good and pious will, than for a capable and clear intellect. The object of the will is to be good; that of the intellect is truth. It is better to will the good than to know the truth. ”The Humanists esteem for man’s will and their pragmatic view of knowledge arose in interaction with the requisites of republican self-governance and commercial necessity. Through the will, more than the intellect, man’s passions could be swayed and channeled to result in right action. The importance of rhetorical persuasion to this new vision is obvious. Behind the humanistic exaltation of oratory lay a recognition of the passions as dynamic forces directing human actions and thought and a need to control and exploit these forces. The humanist had little faith in the encompassing theories of the ancients, recognizing instead the validity of practical experience and accepting its fragmentary and unsystematic nature as the inevitable impression of a complex reality on the imperfect human intellect.

This humanist perception of reality encouraged a reconsideration of the relationships among the intellectual disciplines and the consideration of their differing methods and goals. Natural philosophy or science was seen by the Schoolmen as governed by universal laws and they distinguished their discipline, characterized by its logical search for universal truth, from the lower disciplines like astronomy, which merely observed phenomena. But in the face of ever more exact and diverse empirical observation humanists tended to admit their meager understanding of the laws of nature and came to a healthy realization of the limitations of classical authority. The unpredictable actions of man, ruled as often by his passions as by his intellect, became the focus of their study.

So how did this opposition of humanism and scholasticism play out in music?

In the first decade of the 17th century a controversy has been preserved in an exchange of published letters between a Bolognese academic named Giovanni Maria Artusi, often under the guise of the pseudonym Bracchino da Todi (they were gentlemen after all) and Monteverdi. Monteverdi figures so prominently not only because he was arguably the most celebrated musician of the time but also because we are fortunate to have so much of his correspondence – so many of the composers of the 17th century left little beyond their music for our consideration. He also serves admirably as a representative of the new music of the 17th century, just as Artusi aptly represents the the old.

Monteverdi was by no means a radical like Peri or Caccini or Galileo’s father Vincenzo. Rather, he was a synthesizer, taking the avant-garde techniques of the time and fashioning them into powerful enduring masterpieces that exerted a profound influence on all that followed. Artusi objected to certain contrapuntal practices he had observed in some as yet unpublished madrigals of Monteverdi, noting that they violated the rules of correct composition as laid down in the magisterial treatise of Zarlino in 1555 that was widely accepted as the authority on musical composition.

Monteverdi eventually responded in the preface to one of his madrigal collections that was later expanded by his brother, Giulio Cesare. Essentially Monteverdi couldn’t really be bothered to engage with a pedant like Artusi but felt he must make some defense of new musical practices, which he saw as already well established by that time. It is here that he promised his treatise on the seconda prattica, or second practice, second as in following chronologically not as superior to or superseding the older or prima prattica. This new practice was not based on a compositional principle or a new set of rules but rather on a new attitude toward the respective roles of text and music.

For thinkers like Artusi, the intellect and not the feelings, were the last resort when judging a work of art. Monteverdi, by contrast, perceived the goal of music as an appeal to the emotions of the audience, not to their understanding and in attaining this goal, music was justified in using any means necessary – even if it infringed on the established rules. For Artusi ‘art’ meant artistic skill, a craft at the highest level, constrained by a theory, which established its rules and thus made it teachable and learnable, debatable and controllable.

For Monteverdi art began where it stopped for Artusi. The ingenious idea, the non-verifiable, the non-teachable, the step past the boundaries of instruction, was the essence of art – based, significantly on an otherwise compulsory set of rules, so that a transgression against them could be recognized as such. For Monteverdi a work of art distinguished itself by the very fact that it could not be completely understood, that it possessed something disconcerting, mysterious and not entirely explicable. Within this idea of the seconda prattica are found the origins of the aesthetic theory of genius in which the genius breaks the shackles of tradition and creates his own rules. Fundamental to Monteverdi’s rebuttal of Artusi is his claim that words should be the ‘mistress’ of the music and not the other way around. Later defenders of this new attitude sited with disdain composers who could write whole compositions of perfect counterpoint and afterward hang onto the notes whatever words would fit. For a musician of humanist leanings like Monteverdi, the expressive power of music was a function of its relation to its text.

The highest goal that music could seek was to form a syntactic and semantic union with its text so perfect that the distinction of musical and nonmusical elements seemed to fade before the heightened oratorical power of a single musical speech – “To speak through singing…”

In its specifics, the dispute between Artusi and Monteverdi was over fairly minor compositional procedures that strike us as arcane and inconsequential. Its importance lies in the insights it offers into the changing attitude to authority so characteristic of the period. Artusi grounded an optimistic view of the capabilities of human intellect in the comprehension of an unchanging natural order. He, and others like him, could not admit a universe so disconcerting that the sun itself had stopped moving and the earth was no longer the center of the universe. Monteverdi, as a representative of humanist inclinations among musicians of his time, understood that the artistic authorities of the past were conditioned by their own cultures to express themselves in ways not necessarily relevant to the present – he rejected the scholastic placing of theory over practice. Perhaps most importantly, Monteverdi’s concern for the joining of music to poetry in a single moving and persuasive language links him to the Humanists’ high estimation of man’s will and their urge to sway the passions, associating him with their pursuit of rhetorical eloquence, the key to those passions.

[1] This article, which originated as a lecture at the University Club in San Francisco in September, 2004, benefits substantially from several scholarly works. Due to its nature as an unpublished lecture for a general audience, I was not scrupulous about specific citations. I hope that a general citation in the following bibliography will convey my recognition of the role of the works cited in informing this article and excuse me for any unintentionally un-cited quotes.

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Select Bibliography

Arnold, Denis and Fortune, Nigel. The Monteverdi Companion. New York, 1968.

Bianconi, Lorenzo. Music in the Seventeenth Century. Turin, 1982.

Brouwsma, William. The Waning of the Renaissance. New Haven and London, 2000.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge and London, 1957.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, 1962.

Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1987.

In addition to our two CDs of music by Chiara Margarota Cozzolani, released on Musica Omnia, we also have the Carissimi EP Vanitas Vanitatem, that was available at our concerts during the 2004-2005 season and our 1996 recording of Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo, which has long been out of print.

We will have other live tracks available as streaming audio on the website, which is planned for launch on July 7.

We are also on Twitter, so those of you who dwell in Twitterspace please follow us @MagnificatMusic. We are working to develop a discussion of Baroque music and culture in this new medium as a way of increasing interest in Magnificat and early music in general.

Born in Savoy, Muffat studied with Lully in Paris in the 1660s and then studied law at Ingolstadt. According to the biographical blurb at Goldberg Magazine, he later traveled to Vienna but could not obtain an official appointment and subsequently appeared in Prague (1677), ultimately finding a position in Salzburg in the service of Archbishop Max Gandolf, a post he held for over ten years.He was given leave to travel in the 1680s and studied in Rome with Pasquini ; some of his compositions were performed in Corelli ’s house. From 1690 until his death he was Kapellmeister to Johann Philipp von Lamberg, Bishop of Passau.

Muffat was instrumental in bringing the French and Italian styles into German- speaking countries, the prefaces to his published works providing details about Lully ’s and Corelli ’s practice for his German audience. David’s book was reviewed by Kris Worsley in the Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, excerpted below. The full review can be read here. Several pages can be read at Google Books. It can be ordered here.

The complex diversity of Georg Muffat’s musical inheritance causes many problems for the modern performer. The significance of his studies in France (with Lully) may be weighed up against that of his later affinity to Austria and Italy. This book provides an extremely useful translation of Muffat’s own instructions on the correct approach to his works. David K. Wilson (who was handed the project by the late Thomas Binkley) sets out to provide a complete, self-contained guide to Muffat’s writings on performance practice, prefacing the translations with a biographical sketch of Georg Muffat, and following them with a commentary which discusses the implications of these writings on Muffat’s Intentions, Instruments, Pitch and Temperament, Techniques, German Performance Practice, and Performance Settings.

The thoroughness of the study does help to clarify the confusion that all too easily results from Muffat’s own cosmopolitan style (Wilson admits that “questions can be asked about how representative of French music of the seventeenth century Muffat’s writings actually are” (page 119)). The biographical sketch that opens the volume stresses the importance of the political circumstances that framed Muffat’s life, from his beginnings in Savoy, his presumed studies with Lully in Paris, and his further travels to Vienna, Salzburg and Rome and his eventual settling in Passau. This emphasis on Muffat’s travels brings a welcome sense of clarity to the problem of the composer’s stylistic diversity and enlightens many of his comments in the texts in a most direct way.

Marionettes Make Fine Work of Italian Opera

by Phillipa Kiraly (originally posted on April 22, 2007 at the Seattle Post Intelligencer)

Kudos to the Northwest Puppet Center for doing it yet again: opera in miniature with all the trimmings. On Friday night, “The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina,” by Francesca Caccini, opened at the center with five singers, four musicians, more than 30 puppets and a wave machine.

“Ruggiero” was one of the earliest operas, written in 1625; the first written by a woman — Caccini was a younger contemporary of composer Claudio Monteverdi; and the first to be presented outside Italy — in Poland in 1628.

Like many Baroque operas, it was originally presented full size on a lavish scale with complicated stage machinery and effects, and the story is a legend complete with sorcery, battles, gods, animals and talking trees.

Northwest Puppet Center’s production includes a dragon that blasts smoke, dancing fish and seahorses, a sea creature spewing forth the character Pulcinella, a goddess flying in on a griffin and a sheep that, well, I’m not giving away what it does.

Sung in Italian with supertitles, with the spoken words in English, the opera is largely recitative, but with duets and trios as well.

Read the Entire Article at The Seattle Post Intelligencer

The notion of constructing a season as a tour of Italy began in a trip I took in the summer of 2008. While in Milan I made a pilgrimage to Cozzolani’s convent, Santa Radegonda, now a multiplex cinema (“Sex in the City” was premiering that day) and wandered around the marvelous Duomo. I also visited Florence, where so many of the radical ideas that shaped the music of the seventeenth century were first articulated. Throughout the journey, I was struck by how strongly the aesthetic of the seicento survives in spite of the noise of the intervening centuries.

So much of what we consider to be “modern” has its roots in the new ideas of the seventeenth century. The Earth went from being the center of the universe to a speck in the midst of an infinite eternity. Artists and poets sought to depict the subtleties of human emotion through jarring contrast and exaggeration. Composers gave us opera, the virtuoso, and art music for the masses. And almost every bold new idea began in the collection of duchies, independent cities, republics, and colonies that we now know collectively as Italy.

Given the 400th anniversary of the great and complex masterpiece of the seicento, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, it seemed like an excellent idea to explore the various strands of the new music of the seventeenth century in the context of four cities: Florence, Milan, Venice, and Mantua. While certainly not a comprehensive list, these cities offer a broad perspective on the many artistic trends that so powerfully shaped the music of the entire continent.

October 18-20, 2009 – Florence: “The Liberation of Ruggiero” by Francesca Caccini
with The Northwest Puppet Theatre

Magnificat welcomes back the Northwest Puppet Theatre for a production of the only surviving opera by Francesca Caccini. The daughter of the father of the nuove musiche of the 17th century, Giulio Caccini, Francesca had a remarkable career in her own right,as a performer and teacher, and, above all, as a highly respected composer for the Granducato of Tuscany.

December 4-6, 2009 – Milan: Christmas Mass by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani.

By popular demand, Magnificat will revisit the music from the remarkable Benedictine nun, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani. In this program, Cozzolani’s setting of the Mass will be performed together with seasonal motets for solo voices and traditional chant.

February 12-14, 2010 – Venice: “Celesti fiori” by Alessandro Grandi

A student of Giovanni Gabrieli, Grandi served as an assistant to Monteverdi at San Marco and was a prolific composer of vocal chamber music in the evolving concerto style of the first qurter of the 17th Century. His unfailing gift for melody and daring use of harmony resulted in initimate and deeply expressive music that speaks across the centuries with clarity and power. Most of the motets and madrigals performed on this program will be modern premieres.

April 23-25, 2010 – Mantua: Vespro della Beata Vergine by Claudio Monteverdi

With his famous Vespers of 1610 Monteverdi, consciously melded the competing styles of old and new that fueled the great musical debate of the new century. Based on ancient psalm tones, the polyphonic settings of the Vespers liturgy offer a kaleidoscopic tour through the new musical styles that were evolving at the time. Magnificat will be joined by The Whole Noyse in these performances.

Details of the season will be available soon on Magnificat’s new website.

The thing about love, as most people learn sooner or later, is that it stubbornly refuses to be guided by the precepts of logic and rationality. A pretty smile, an enticing gaze, some shapely body part or other, and boom – there goes common sense.

Not so in “Venere, Amore e Ragione” (“Venus, Cupid and Reason”), the comely little musical entertainment presented over the weekend by the early-music ensemble Magnificat. In Alessandro Scarlatti’s serenata, probably first performed in Rome in 1706, Cupid throws off his blindfold, and amid great rejoicing by the pastoral crowds, embraces Reason as his mentor.

Uh-huh. And you thought 19th century operas were unrealistic.

The charms of this work, scored for three singers in the title roles and a complement of six instrumentalists, are slight but genuine. Compared with composers writing even 10 or 20 years later, Scarlatti works on a compact scale, writing terse little arias that make their points and hurry away again.

Paradoxically, perhaps, his music is better appreciated in full-length operas, where these gemlike miniatures acquire dramatic heft through sheer accumulation. In a modest pastoral like “Venere, Amore e Ragione” – which includes scarcely an hour’s worth of music – a listener can sup contentedly enough on musical canapes while waiting in vain for a meatier dish.

Still, there is no denying the vigor, stylishness and sheer beauty of Scarlatti’s score, which moves briskly through its set pieces and culminates, like some Baroque version of “Der Rosenkavalier,” with a lushly scored trio for the three female voices. There’s also a surprise ending (musical, not textual) to rival anything concocted by O. Henry.

Saturday’s performance at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley brought out these appealing qualities without alleviating the essential modesty of the undertaking. The instrumental playing, led from the harpsichord by Hanneke van Proosdij, was lively and evocative, with occasional bursts of recorder to leaven the string textures.

The vocal casting was evidently done in accordance with a principle whereby only singers named Jennifer need apply. Among these, soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani was the standout, singing the role of Cupid with a bright, sweeping tone and effortlessly negotiating the sometimes daunting thickets of coloratura writing in the part. One aria, “D’amor l’accesa face” (“The burning torch of love”), proved to be the dramatic climax of the evening, a bravura showpiece that Ellis Kampani brought home superbly.

Soprano Jennifer Paulino made a cool, sweet-toned but rather impassive Venus. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane’s recessive performance as Reason made that luminary’s ultimate triumph seem all the more implausible.

E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.

Manuscript scores and libretti survive for 22 cantatas for two or more voices by Scarlatti bear the term serenata. Like most of Scarlatti’s vocal chamber works, these serenatas were heard in highly exclusive, aristocratic circles. The precise circumstances of the first performance of Venere, Amore, e Ragione are unknown. Musicologist Thomas E. Griffin has suggested that the serenata is associated with Scarlatti’s induction in the Accademia dell’Arcadia in 1706.

The libretto for Venere, Amore, e Ragione is attributed to the Roman poet Silvio Stampiglia, a fellow member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia who collaborated with Scarlatti on many occasions. The libretto recounts a dispute between Venus and Reason over the conduct of Venus’ son Cupid. Distressed at finding her son among the nymphs and shepherds of Rome and a changed under the influence of Reason, Venus fears that he will lose his power. After much discussion Cupid, with the support of Reason, persuades his mother that the quality and quantity of his followers has only improved since he adopted Reason as his guide.

The elegant and highly mannered style, both Scarlatti’s music and Stampiglia’s language are well suited to the aesthetic espoused by the Arcadians, who explicitly rejected what they perceived as the artificiality of the seventeenth century literary style associated with the poet Giambattista Marini. The “Marinists” sought novel and striking contrasts and the poetic inventiveness that created bold and unexpected conceits. The Arcadians sought simplicity and “naturalness” and Scarlatti’s music expresses this sensibility in its sparing use of coloratura and preference for lyrical melodies in conjunct motion.

Scarlatti was born in famine-stricken Sicily in 1660 and it has been suggested that his humble origins made his a compulsive worker and contributed to his prolific and varied output. While his reputation as the founder of the Neapolitan school of 18th century opera may be somewhat over-stated, his works in the genre are highly skilled and original, and marked by innovations in orchestration, strong dramatic characterization and, above all, an unfailing melodic sense. It is in the genre of chamber works for voice and instruments that Scarlatti’s most perfectly realized and imaginative music is to be found, as he excelled in the art of the soliloquy, in detailed imagery, and in dialogue between voice and instruments.

As a boy of 12, Scarlatti had the good fortune of moving to Rome where he most likely studied with Iacomo Carissimi. He married in 1678 and later that year was appointed maestro di capella of San Giacomo degli Incurabili. The composer’s career was established in Rome with the acclaimed production of his second opera Gli equivoce nel sembiante at the Collegio Clementino in 1679, after which he was appointed maestro di capella to the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden.

After several successful operas in Rome, Scarlatti was appointed in 1684 as maestro di cappella at the vice-regal court of Naples, at the same time as his brother Francesco was made first violinist. It was alleged that they owed their appointments to the intrigues of one of their sisters, who were both opera singers, with two court officials, who were dismissed. During his nearly two decades in Naples, Scarlatti wrote a steady output of operas, typically two each year and his reputation grew as many of these operas were performed elsewhere in Italy.

With the death of Charles II in 1700, the political tension that had been brewing was ignited into what would become known as the Wars of the Spanish Succession, and consequent undermining of the privileged status that many his noble patrons in Naples (a contested Spanish territory) had enjoyed, Scarlatti began looking in earnest for employment elsewhere. He was especially eager to find a position for his talented teenage son Domenico, with whom he traveled first to Florence after obtaining his release from his engagement in Naples. After a brief there, he accepted a position as assistant to Antonio Foggia, the music director of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

While the role of church musician suited Scarlatti poorly and the papal ban on operas restricted what had been his primary musical focus, the composer’s second tenure in Rome proved to be very important. He had the chance to work together with great instrumental virtuosi including the violinist Corelli, the violoncellist Franceschino, and harpsichordists like Pasquini and Gasparini.

With the production of operas limited to occasional private performances staged by noblemen, Scarlatti turned his attention to the genres of the cantata and serenata. In 1706 he was elected, along with Pasquini and Corelli, to the Accademia dell’Arcadia, which encouraged a lively and sophisticated audience for chamber music, and, along with the enlightened “conversazioni” of patrons like the Cardinals Ottoboni and Pamphili, gave Scarlatti the opportunity to compose many of his finest vocal works.

Towards the end of 1708 he accepted the Austrian Viceroy’s invitation to return to his position in Naples, taking the place of Francesco Mancini, who had served in Scarlatti’s prolonged absence. Scarlatti remained in Naples for the rest of his life, but maintained close contacts with his Roman patrons and made several visits there, some of them of long duration. In 1716 he received the honor of a knighthood from Pope Clement XI. His final opera, La Griselda, was written for Rome in 1721, and he seems to have spent his last years in Naples in semi-retirement until his death in 1725.

All three Jennifers are well known to Bay Area audiences. Jennifer Ellis Kampani, who with sing the role of Amore, first appeared with Magnificat in the role of “Jealousy” in our production of Il Capriccio in 1997. She enjoys an international career that has included appearances with the period instrument groups American Bach Soloists, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Apollo’s Fire, Musica Angelica, Magnificat, Washington Catherdral Choral Society, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Solamente (Budapest, Hungary), Ensemble Tourbillon (Prague, Czech Republic), and Musica Aeterna (Bratislava, Slovakia). In addition, Ms. Kampani has sung with the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Charlotte Symphony. Opera highlights include leading roles in Handel’s Acis and Galata, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, Duron’s zarzuela “Salir el Amor del Mundo”, Handel’s “Semele”, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Jennifer Paulino, who will sing Venere, has performed frequently with Magnificat since singing the role of “Daniele” in our production of Stradella’s La Susanna in 2007. In addition to her work with Magnificat, Jennifer has appeared with the Leiden Baroque Ensemble (Netherlands), and the Catacoustic Consort (Cincinnati), and is a founding member of the Baroque ensemble Les grâces. She has sung Messiah selections and Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Southwest Florida Symphony, the title role in Acis and Galatea (Handel), and a concert at the Bach Festival of Gliwice, Poland. She was a founding member of The Choral Scholars (1999-2004), a vocal ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of early music and new works. Her tenure with the ensemble culminated in a recording and concert in collaboration with Trio Mediæval and the Washington National Cathedral girls choir.

Jennifer Lane sings on Magnificat’s rcordings of the music of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, but will mark her Magnificat concert debut with these performances. Jennifer, who will sing the role of Ragione in Magnificat’s performances, is recognized internationally for her stunning interpretations of repertoire ranging from the early Baroque to that of contemporary composers. She has appeared at festivals worldwide, with such noted conductors Michael Tilson-Thomas, Mstislav Rostropovich, William Christie, Nicholas McGegan, Andrew Parrott, Christopher Hogwood, Marc Minkowski, Helmut Rilling, and Robert Shaw, among others. Her performances have brought acclaim from audiences in opera and concert at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Salzburger Bachgesellschaft, National Arts Center in Ottawa, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Tanglewood Festival, Caramoor Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, Bethlehem Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, the New Getty Center, the Frick Collection in New York, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Opernhaus Halle, Opernhaus Dessau, Utah Opera and Opera du Caen.

A noted early music specialist, Jennifer Lane appears frequently with many of the most noted period instrument orchestras: Les Arts Florissants, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, New York Collegium, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, American Bach Soloists, Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society and Le Parlement de Musique. She is also a frequent guest with symphony orchestras and has performed with the Jerusalem Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Honolulu Symphony and the Orchestra della Toscana. She has been seen in opera at Opernhaus Halle, Opernhaus Dessau, Santa Fe Opera, Utah Opera and in New York City Opera, where she has performed over twenty roles, including the role of Amastre in NYCO’s acclaimed production of Georg Frideric Handel’s Xerxes, directed by Stephen Wadsworth and voted “opera production of the year” by USA Today. She joined the Metropolitan Opera in productions of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron and Janacek’s Katya Kabanova in 1999.