Pre-industrial historical music epic megathread

[Semper Victor]

Antonio Vivaldi (Venice 1678 - Vienna 1741) is one of the best known composers of the Late Italian Baroque. He was ordained as a priest, although he led a life not quite appropiate for a priest (to put it mildly). For many years, he was music teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà, one of the public institutions in the city of Venice that took care of abandoned or orphaned girls. Under Vivaldi's tenure, the Ospedale's orchestra became famous across Europe, and one of the main attractions for the foreigners who visited the city of the lagoon.

Part of Vivaldi's massive output of concertos was written precisely for the girls he teached music to, and so he tried to write them with as much instrumental variety as possible, so that as many girls as possible got to have soli in them. The Concerti per molti stromenti (concertos for many instruments) must be adscribed to this part of Vivaldi's oeuvre, amongst them the Concerto per molti stromenti in C major RV 558 (read "Ryom" after Peter Ryom, a Danish musicologist who catalogued Vivaldi's works in the massive Ryom Verzeichnis -Ryom catalog, in German-).
We known that this concerto was performed in one of Vivaldi's last concerts in Venice with the girls of the Pietà in 1740 before he left the city for Vienna where he would die the following year. That year, Prince Friedrich Christian of Poland and Saxony visited Venice as part of his Grand Tour, and he expressed a wish to hear the orchestra of the Pietà, so Vivaldi put together a concert programme for him. Musicologists believe that it's possibe that the concerto RV 558 was composed specifically by Vivaldi for this occasion, which would make it one of his last works. The first movement is unmistakably Vivaldian, starting with the catchy ritornello that will "return" time and again played by the whole orchestra, intermingled with soli by different instruments of the orchestra. It's performed here by the ensemble Europa Galante, conducted by Fabio Biondi (also first violin):

 

[Semper Victor]

In 1650, it was published in Venice a collection of the late Claudio Monteverdi's sacred works under the title Messa et salmi (Mass and Psalms). Monteverdi had died seven years before, and this publication was edited by his disciple, the opera composer Francesco Cavalli. Musicologists have guessed that the sacred works contained in this compilation were composed by Monteverdi towards the end of his life, while he was maestro di cappella at the basilica of Saint Mark in Venice.

One of the Psalms contained in this collection is Monteverdi's second setting to music of Psalm 122, known in Latin as Laetatus Sum (translated into English in the KJB as I Was Glad). Musicologists are unsure if Monteverdi ever got to perform this piece during his lifetime, as it is radically innovative for a piece of church music; in it he sets the Latin text to music according to his seconda pratica which marked the beginning of Baroque music and that was seen as revolutionary by his contemporaries already when applied to secular music.

The piece is charming and bright, and it displays a full use of the basso continuo as invented by Monteverdi, upon which the different voices and the instruments engage playfully in a declamation of the Latin text, with the mature Monteverdi displaying a wide array of musical techniques that show his long experience in writing for voices. This Psalm was usually performed during the service of Vespers, and in this video it has been put together with other pieces of religious music by Monteverdi in an imaginary "reconstructed" service of Vespers at the Church of Nostra Signora della Salute in Venice (a church which was built during Monteverdi's lifetime), preceded by an antiphona, as it would've been done during a Catholic service of Vespers at the time. It's performed by the ensembles La Fenice and Akadêmia, conducted by Françoise Lasserre at the church of Saint Walburga in Bruges:

 

[Semper Victor]

Tudor and Stuart England witnessed a great flourishing of music, particularly songs and chamber music, mainly suited for private, intimate settings. One of the composers of this era was Thomas Campion (London 1567 - 1620), who wrote several theoretical treatys, masques for the aristocracy and the royal court and four Bookes of Ayres.

In one of these books, Campion included a wonderful song titled Never Weather-Beaten Sail, which unusually for Campion is a sacred song, intended to be sung in private lithurgical settings (at home or in private chapels). I'll post here two recordings of this song. The first one is sung by the Welsh countertenor Iestyn Davies, accompanied by lute and viol:

The second song is sung by an a cappella choir in a polyphonic arrangement, by the British ensemble Stile Antico:

 

[Henry IX]

This is (as far as I know) the oldest folk song in the world (in that it survived in oral form not as a written song).

https://www.scotssangsfurschools.com/apps/podcast/podcast/329156

It is basically a rowing song in a version of old Norse that was still sung in Shetland in the 1940s, where it was recorded. It survived due to the particular circumstances of how it was passed down: each fishing boat was oared by 12 men, and they would be replaced one at a time as they retired. Hence each new oarsmen would learn the song from 11 other men, meaning that they learned it exactly, with virtually no drift in the tune or lyrics. 800 years later the lyrics are still comprehensible to speakers of Old Norse. There is also a nearly identical version still sung in Iceland.

 

[Semper Victor]

The conquest and settlement of vast swathes of the American continent by the Spanish in the XVI century led to the appearance of a great diversity of new musical styles, resulting from the mixture of European (folk and "cultured"), Amerindian and African musical traditions; some of this new musics later crossed the ocean back to ne Old World and in turn influenced Spanish popular music (for example, the fandango and the flamenco in general were born from music that arrived in the Iberian peninsula from the American colonies in the late XVII and early XVIII centuries. I'm going to post a couple examples in here.

Juan García de Zéspedes (sic) (ca. 1619 - Puebla, 1678) was master of music at Puebla cathedral from 1664 until his death. He has left some compositions, one of which is this well-known piece, basically a Christmas song in praise of the newborn infant Jesus, but following the local rythms and folk dances that had already developed in Mexico in his day. The first video displays two pieces performed one imemdiately after the other: first a Juguete a 4 (literary a "Toy" for 4 voices) titled Convidando está la noche in a polyphonic style, followed immediately by a lively guaracha titled Ay que me abraso performed here by the Capella Reial de Catalunya, conducted by Jordi Savall:

The second piece is more than a century older. Mateo Flecha the Older (or Mateu Fletxa, Prades 1481 - Poblet 1553) was a Renaissance Spanish composer who is well-known for his Ensaladas. In Spanish, ensalada means "salad", and these compositions were called so because they combined a confusing array of different musical styles and melodies, all mixed in a single piece (like the ingredients of a salad). His ensaladas are known to us because his nephew (also a composer) Mateo Flecha the Younger had them published in Prague in 1581. This is a fragment of his ensalada La negrina, and it's a villancico (a popular peasant song) infused with African rythms and words that sound like borrowed from African languages (yoruba, etc. but which were mostly invented by the European composers who had no idea of these languages) and wanted to imitate the music played by the African slaves that at the time were beginning to be brought in great numbers both to the peninsula and to the American colonies. This intermingling of Spanish villancico with African rythms and words was known as Negrilla or Guineo; this example is titles San Sabeya gugurumbé (don't ask me to translate it; actually it means nothing in Spanish) and is performed again by La Capella Reial de Catalunya, conducted by Jordi Savall:

 

[Semper Victor]

Today is the feast of Pentecost, and so I will be posting the opening chorus for Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata BWV 172 Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten! (Ring out, you songs; sound, you strings!), which he premiered at Weimar on Sunday May 20, 1714 at the Schlosskirche when he was one of the court composers employed by the Dukes of Sachsen-Weimar. In this video, the opening chorus of the cantata is performed by the Tölzer Knabenchor and the orchestra L'arte del mondo, conducted by Werner Erhardt at the Altenberger Dom:

 

[Semper Victor]

Today, Antonio Vivaldi is ,ostly remembered for his instrumental music, but he was a prolific composer of vocal pieces too, both sacred and profane ones. As almost all important Italian composers of his generation he also wrote operas, and some of the music he wrote for them is truly outstanding. He wrote in total ninety-four operas (recorded to date) although much of the music he used in them was music "recycled" from older compositons of his, or "borrowed" from other composers, a practice known at the time as "parodying" and that was widely used by all composers (even by Bach and especially by Handel; in those time copygrights did not exist). I will post here some arias from Vivaldi's operas that I like.

First, one of Vivaldi's most achingly beautiful melodies, the aria Mentre dormi, amor fomenti from his opera L'Olimpiade (RV 725), premieded at the Teatro Sant'Angelo of Venice in 1734. The libretto os this opera was written by the most successful opera librettist of all times, the poet Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti were put to music repeatedly by dozens of composers across Europe (for example, the libretto of L'Olimpiade was set to music by more than fifty composers between 1733 and 1815). It's performed here by the French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the Ensemble Matheus, conducted by Jean-Christophe Spinosi:

Vivaldi was also an excellent composer of virtuoso arias. This one is a good example of a Vivaldian aria di bravura: Agitata da due venti, from his opera Griselda, premiered in 1735 at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice, based on a libretto by Apostolo Zeno. I's an almost ridiculously difficult aria for soprano, with very demanding coloratura passages and sudden jumps between notes located at the upper high and lowest down of a soprano's normal register. It's performed here by the French mezzosoprano Blandine Staskiewicz and the ensemble Les Ambassadeurs, conducted by Alexis Kossenko. Attention to Staskiewicz's excellent control of the coloratura passages (very difficult for modern sopranos) and the thrills and embellishments she adds in the da capo:

Farnace is an opera that has three versions: the first one that Vivaldi premiered at the Teatro Sant'Angelo of Venice in 1727, with the main character of Farnace sung by a basso. He revised it in 1731 expanding its length and more extensively in 1738, when he rewrote the main character of Farnace for a castrato voice. Here, I will post the aria Ricordati che sei, as sung by the character of Farnace in the 1731 version, performed by the Italian bass-baritone Furio Zanasi and Le Concert des Nations, conducted by Jordi Savall, in a live recording from the Teatro Real in Madrid: