| Title | Nino Rota Sacred Works Vol 4 |
|---|---|
| Category | Discography |
| Description |
Disc 1 MYSTERIUM (1962)**
ELENA XANTHOUDAKIS Soprano Disc 2 C’ERA UNA VOLTA NELLA GROTTA
AVE MARIA
CORO DI VOC1 BIANCHE DE laVERDI PSALLITE NATO DE MARIA VIRGINE
DUE SALMI PER CANTO E ORGANO
SALMO VI
SALMO 99
SILVIA COLOMBINI Soprano TOTA PULCHRA ES
SILVIA COLOMBINI Soprano IL PRESEPIO
SILVIA COLOMBINI Soprano IL NATALE DEGLI INNOCENTI
Il narratore DAVIDE GIUSTI Tenore Prima esecuzione mondiale/World Premiere Recording* Casa Dicografica / Record Label: Decca Note alla discografia / Liner Notes Remembering That Evening Unlike the other volumes that make up this complete set of Rota’s works, Mysterium was recorded live at the Auditorium in Milan on January 9th 2015. Only a couple of days had passed since the attack on the staff of Charlie Hebdo, and in the atmosphere of condolence and rumination in which the orchestra, chorus, soloists and the audience and I were immersed I felt that the message of this music came across more strongly than ever. Although the words of Mysterium are taken from various biblical sources, it is not a Catholic cantata. In fact, Rota had originally called it Mysterium Catholicum but then removed the adjective to bring out the “ecumenical” significance of the work, which tells us much about Rota’s attitude to religion: an all-embracing attitude with Humanity at the centre. The end of each part of the cantata is conveyed by children’s voices, and through these voices Rota seems to give us a glimpse of the only path that can be followed: transmitting to young people and to future generations an ideal of brotherhood among nations, irrespective of individual beliefs. The idea that, at this moment in history, music or art in general can succeed in this undertaking alone is pure utopia, but the contribution that we make for it to happen is still the highest and most noble facet of our music making. Giuseppe Grazioli The release on disc of the opera omnia of Nino Rota (1911-1979); amounts to an affirmation that he is one of the great masters of the twentieth century, especially the second half of the century, seeking to convince the reluctant and stir the memory of sleepers; and it is to the initiative of the Orchestra Verdi in Milan that this release is due. The orchestra’s co-founder and director for the last twenty years, Luigi Corbani, a close friend of the present writer, has always maintained that one of his prime missions is to give a proper place of honour to Italian music — unlike some “patriots” who are only patriotic in television interviews and press releases. In this undertaking he is joined by Giuseppe Grazioli, a distinguished conductor who has also become a close friend of mine and who, in the context of modern society, is remarkable not only for his uncommon musical gifts but also for his even more uncommon human qualities, his artistic intransigence, his faithfulness and the profundity of his feelings.
This double album, part of the opera omnia, contains an anthology of short sacred compositions and a monumental work that occupies a position at the summit of twentieth-century choral sacred music, alongside Florent Schmitt’s Psalm 47, Albert Roussel,s Psalm 80, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and a few other compositions, including Zoltan Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus and, higher still, Karol Szymanowski’s Veni Creator Spiritus, with words in Polish. But it is differentiated by an expressive harshness, a severity of content and style that fits in perfectly with the profundity of the contrapuntal texture, making it a truly unique case. The epithet that best describes Mysterium is, I think, “iron-hard”. Those who have not had the privilege that I had of knowing Nino Rota will have greater difficulty than I in understanding the personality of this composer. His bright eyes gave an impression of childlike innocence, yet he was a person of profound wisdom. He was small and moved awkwardly, but his smile had a unique luminosity. One of our first meetings was on 23 September 1970, in Perugia, in the marvelous church of San Pietro. Francesco Siciliani, a close friend of his and very attached to him (and, of course, a person of great spirituality, who recognised and admired spirituality in others) had organised the world premiere of the oratorio La vita di Maria (The Life of Mary) in the Sagra Musicale Umbra, his dearest creation. Basically, oratorio was a form that Rota found congenial, and there they performed that early work by the young composer, together with L’infanzia di San Giovanni Battista (The Childhood of St John the Baptist). The dress rehearsal was on the 23rd, with Rota himself on the podium. Despite his awkwardness, due to his tremendous shyness, he had a charisma that radiated upon the chorus and the orchestra. The first performance took place the next day. Afterwards he invited a group of the people who were present, including myself (but not Siciliani, who loathed the conviviality of so-called “mingling”), to a restaurant. We were already seated when Federico Fellini arrived. Everyone greeted him with applause, to which he responded: “Not unwarranted… but out of place!” Rota was one of the closest friends of my maestro, Vincenzo Vitale, which was another reason for him to regard me with affection; and I still have a very precious present from him, the five richly bound volumes of Gabriele Rossetti’s Il mistero dell’ amor platonico . However, that happened much later, at the end of the seventies, whereas there were two episodes at the beginning of the decade that I still fondly recall. I was sitting in front of him and Vinci Verginelli in the Foro Italico, at a concert of the RAI’s Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma; I don’t remember the exact date, but it must have been before September 1970 because by the time of La vita di Maria I already knew Verginelli. Rota introduced me to the poet and scholar and said to me “Would you like to dine with us? If you’re not scared, that is!” He was referring to the rumours about his homosexuality; an attitude that then sometimes (only sometimes, really) met with social condemnation. He was a strong believer, and that evening, with infinite delicacy, he began to challenge the agnosticism, or even scepticism, that I liked to display. And he was supported by Verginelli, who had a persuasive effect on me because he was a great teacher. The other little anecdote is about something that happened two months after the premiere of La vita di Maria. Rota was in Naples, once again with Vinci Verginelli; he invited me to have lunch with him, and we arranged to meet in front of the Conservatory. We went down through Port’Alba and came to what is now Piazza Dante, where the incongruously placed statue of the poet destroys the architectural harmony of Vanvitelli’s marvellous Foro Carolino. “Have you ever been to the Fetente?,” Rota asked me. And he took me to a very poor, shabby restaurant in a small side street between Foro Carolino and Via Cisterna dell’Olio; and it really was called 0 Fetente (The Stinker). When we were seated he asked me, “Would you like some seaweed salad?”That delicacy of Neapolitan cuisine was unknown to me. I hesitated and he said, “Go on. It’s good!” And with spoon and fork he personally placed a serving of it on my plate. If they do not make Nino Rota a saint, then who deserves to be made a saint? This composer from Milan is now known to the general public as an author of film soundtracks, an art in which he achieved such planetary excellence that nobody could compete with him in that field. Yet he should be remembered as a composer of pure music, to which he was strongly attached and which left its mark on his spiritual life. Indeed, he started out as a young prodigy at the age of twelve, as I have said, with an oratorio. He taught composition to many and he was the director of the Conservatory in Bari, where he lived in Torre a Mare, occupying his apartment in Via Delle Coppelle in Rome only for short periods. Rota was and is profoundly unpopular with the so-called culturati because, although there was nothing in contemporary music that was unknown to him, his doctrine of composition led him to reject the dogmas of the avant-garde and remain firmly anchored to tonality; revitalised, but with a profound sense of history. He has a vast oeuvre because he was so attached to music that he could not refrain from composing; and his doctrine was on a par with his genius. I must say something else about his profound culture; he had a philologist’s knowledge of the classical world, and thus of Latin and Greek; and his association with the poet Vinci Verginelli was based on their common passion for those languages. Verginelli wrote the text of La vita di Maria. In 1962 Rota composed another oratorio, Mysterium, for which Verginelli selected texts from the scriptures. It was performed on 19 and 20 October 2012 at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, conducted by Giuseppe Grazioli, and it was then that I first met that artist, who, as I have said, succeeded in winning my affection. Grazioli embarked on one of the initiatives for which the Orchestra Verdi will go down in history: the recording of Rota’s entire works. Among the great conductors, now only Riccardo Muti performs compositions by Rota, and he even includes them in the tours of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, eliciting admiration, he himself tells me, especially from the members of the orchestra. I am in some perplexity about the attribution of Mysterium to the “genre”of oratorio, for which the authors are responsible. Music historians usually understand an “oratorio” as being an action that is not acted out as in musical theatre but projected on an imaginary stage, whereas Mysterium, in which there is no narration but only contemplation of the truth of faith and of the message of the gospels, seems more ascribable to the form of cantata. This distinction is of less importance than aesthetic evaluation of this masterpiece. Subdivided into seven parts and including a children’s choir to which the ecstatic close is entrusted, it opens with the sombre awesomeness of the announcement “In principio erg Verbum,” underlined by orchestral ostinati and figures with a dotted rhythm. The fanfares at “Et ego resuscitabo eum in novissimo die” sound like a quotation from Verdi’s Requiem. The model for Mysterium seems to be Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, one of the Russian composer’s most beautiful works, but Rota diverges from it to include the vocal quartet and to embark on an exploration of rhythm that makes performance of the score difficult. There are sections in which the tempo marking changes in every bar, and there is an abundance of asymmetrical rhythms. With the orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo, Grazioli succeeded in overcoming the perils perfectly, and even more so at La Verdi. The performance recorded at the concert and presented here is truly of very high quality. Orchestration was another of the gifts that Rota possessed, thus the vast orchestra with triple woodwind produces magmatic sonorities contained within the low register and ethereal sounds to which the harp gives a touch of brightness. The final “Veni sancte Spiritus” ends with a very slight dissonance. I repeat: Mysterium, a singularly scholarly but eloquent composition, is at least — at least, I say — on a par with the Symphony of Psalms. As for Florent Schmitt’s Psalm 47 or Albert Roussel’s Psalm 80, which I mentioned earlier as being some of the great examples of twentieth-century sacred music, I must take a moment to recall the supreme Vincenzo Vitale, a teacher of piano and, in an absolute sense, of music, whose pupils some of us have had the privilege of being. It was he who acquainted me with Schmit”s Psalm, having met Schmitt personally in Paris, where he was pursuing advanced studies of piano with Alfred Cortot and of composition with Roussel. Vitale was, like Siciliani, one of Rota’s close friends, and for his sake he even agreed to go to Bari as the ministerial representative for the piano diplomas. Thus I can say that I experienced a double triangulation: Rota-Vitale-Siciliani and Rota-Vitale-Roussel. Rota, Vitale and Siciliani had in common not only the fact that they were great musicians but also their possession of extraordinary classical culture, which was necessary for the writing of Mysterium, a work that springs from the heart but also from the Paraclitus (Veni creator spiritus … mentes tuorum visita … sermone ditans guttura …). I wonder if this would not be a good moment to try to reintroduce some of Siciliani’s sacred compositions. Not even I know them, because he withdrew them from circulation. He was an outstanding artistic director, on whom the destiny of performers and composers could depend, and he did not want his works to be performed as a form of flattery. Also, he said to me, “I went off composing because I found it came too easily.” Who can say whether Rota ever knew Francesco Siciliani’s compositions? He was a formidable reader of scores without even the aid of a piano, capable of memorising them instantly, and I am sure that he would not have shared the opinion that they had come too easily.
C’era una volta nella grotta (Once upon a time in the cave) is not a piece of spiritual music. It is one of those little things that reveal Nino Rota’s great skill with their refined ingenuity. Ave Maria, Psallite nato (Sing psalms to the newborn child), Salmo VI and Salmo 99 (Psalms VI and 99) and Tota Pulchra es appear to be charming conservatory exercises. The remark just made about the piece [C’era una volta nella grotta] from Aladino (Aladdin) also applies, even more strongly to Il presepio (The Crib): the writing for quartet envelops the voice with gentle harmonies and wonderfully individualised timbres, the section marked Un poco piá; mosso provides a delicious imitation of Vivaldi and at the same time an echo of the nativity pastorals in Neapolitan music, echoed in Franco Alfano and Ottorino Respighi.
But the nativity pastorals, characterised by binary metres with a ternary subdivision, take on a very different weight in Il Natale degli innocenti (The Christmas of the Innocents). It is a small, very intense oratorio, for which it would be only too easy to indicate Stravinsky’s Les noces as a stylistic source, but that seems to be an external suggestion, especially with regard to timbre. Rota’s boundless musical culture shines forth in it, together with his knowledge of the classical world and the Greek and Latin languages. It is no coincidence that his associate and the author of the texts was the very cultured Latinist Vinci Verginelli. The “declamation” of the historicus (narrator) has modal inflections and a rhythmic aspect characteristic of the “reciting tone” of liturgical Old Roman chant, and the harmonies succeed in being archaic and at the same time modern. Gloria in altissimis (Glory in the highest) is a gigue with which the angels welcome the Saviour. They dance because the meek understand the joy of the heavens and because the heavens themselves dance at the “scandal of the incarnation”. The visit and adoration of the Magi takes on arcane modulations in the stylistic simplicity of music entrusted to a children’s choir. Stella ista sicut flamma (This star, like a flame ); pays tribute to the Phrygian mode, relating Rota once again to the great masters of twentieth-century modality, Maurice Emmanuel, Ottorino Respighi and Gino Marinuzzi. La fuga in Egitto (The Flight to Egypt); is elaborate and, with its ostinati, dramatic and powerful. Ex Aegypto vocavi filium meum (Out of Egypt I called my Son) is a refined little motet. La strage degli innocenti (The Massacre of the Innocents) links up with the preceding dramatic element; the conclusion, Vox in Rama (A Voice in Ramah), concentrates on the anguish of the symbolic Rachel grieving for the innocents, emphasised by the mysterious cadenza in C major. With its stylistic affinity and artistic loftiness, Il Natale degli innocenti takes a worthy place alongside one of Respighi’s archaic masterpieces, Lauda per la Nativity del Signore (Praise for the Birth of Our Lord). Paolo Isotta More pages devoted to Mysterium and Nino Rota available in Altri canti di Marte, Marsilio Editore Testo / Text Mysterium (Latin) I Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis (GIOVANNI 1, 14) BASSO E CORO BASSO CORO II CORO CONTRALTO CORO CORO (tutti) et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam. III CORO SOPRANO CONTRALTO TENORE E CORO |
| Date | 2016 |
| Publisher | |
