The Leading Classical Music Label Direct To You

Read reviews, listen to the music, and purchase the COMPACT DISC Vivaldi: Gloria, Rv 589 / Beatus Vir, Rv 597

Customer Service Toll Free 866.489.4152

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Narrow your search
with our Music Browser

Classical Music

        Ballet
        Chamber Music
        Choral
        Concertos
        Film Music
        Folk Legends
        Instrumental
        Musicals
        Opera / Operetta
        Orchestral
        Vocal

Jazz

Jazz Contemporary
Jazz Icons

New Age

Wind Band

World

        Ballad
        Bhuddist
        Chinese Music
        Classical (World)
        Early Music (World)
        Folk
        Gamelan
        Gypsy
        Hindustani
        Jazz (World)
        Klezmer
        Sufi
        Vocal (World)
        World

Special Offers:

Free MP3 Downloads

A Special Offer for Valentines

Catalogs

Internship Opportunities

Celebrating Black History

Masters of American Music

53rd Annual Grammy� Award Winners

Clearance

Penguin Guide

200 Essential Recordings

Recently Released

Upcoming Releases

SACD

DVD

        Ballet DVD
        Classical Concert
        Classical Documentary
        Dance Documentary
        Opera DVD

Audio Books

        Anthologies / Collections
        Arts
        Biographies
        Children's Classics
        Classic Fiction
        Great Epics and Tales
        History
        Junior Classic Fiction
        Junior History
        Literature
        Music Biographies
        Music Education
        Non-Fiction
        Philosophy
        Plays - Others
        Plays - Shakespeare
        Poetry
        Religion
        Samplers
        Sports
        Wine Guide

NaxosDirect Podcasts

Video Librarian Reviews

Labels

Naxos Label

        Naxos American Classics
        Naxos Best Of...
        Naxos Box Sets
        Naxos Cinema Classics
        Naxos Classics
        Naxos DVD
        Naxos DVD-Audio
        Naxos International
        Naxos Jazz
        Naxos Limited Edition
        Naxos Milken Archives
        Naxos Night Music
        Naxos Opera
        Naxos Orchestral
        Naxos Special Release
        Naxos Wind Band Classics
        Naxos World

Composers

Conductors

Ensembles

Orchestras

Choirs

Artists

Instruments

Producers

Vivaldi: Gloria, Rv 589 / Beatus Vir, Rv 597

Home

Classical Music

Choral

Vivaldi: Gloria, Rv 589 / Beatus Vir, Rv 597

View large image

$9.99 (COMPACT DISC)

In Stock - Usually ships within 24 hours.

Link to this COMPACT DISC Link to this page

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741) Gloria in D, RV 589 Beatus vir in C, RV 597 Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice the son of a professional violinist. Although...

Read more about this recording

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)

Gloria in D, RV 589

Beatus vir in C, RV 597

Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice the son of a professional violinist.

Although Vivaldi underwent training for the priesthood, it was as a musician that he evidently excelled: he began playing the violin at an early age and it is known that he deputized on occasion for his father who held a post as violinist at St. Mark's. Despite his ordination to the priesthood in 1703, Vivaldi decided to pursue a musical career; his first appointment was that of maestro di violino at the Ospedale della Piet� where he maintained a teaching post on and off for much of his early life. It was here that the young composer produced a great deal of his choral music, although the works featured here were probably not among thern since they are much more elaborate than anything the singers at the Piet� could have coped with.

One of the most striking features of Vivaldi's style is his ability to fashion melodies out of even a cadential fragment, and this facility is nowhere better illustrated than in the opening movement of the Gloria. The first figure, with its distinctive octave leaps, is at once rhythmically vital and harmonically stable and lends itself easily to sequential treatment. Typically for a violinist perhaps, the composer often displays a tendency to leave intricacy to the instruments and to employ the chorus homophonically, as here.

The second choral movement, Et in terra pax, explores this idea further, while extending the harmonic range with a profusion of Neapolitan sixths and some extraordinary modulations. Even more unorthodox is Laudamus te in that the opening ritornello is a slightly uncomfortable seventeen bars long; Vivaldi here allows himself some florid vocal lines for the two soprano soloists and uses chains of suspensions - a favourite device. The short homophonic setting of the words Gratias agimus tibi gives way to a fugue of some dexterity, although it must be said that Vivaldi is at his best when dealing with simpler forms: the following soprano aria with obbligato oboe is a case in point. Here a long melody is gracefully unfolded in the metre of a Siciliano, while the continuo line recalls the octave leaps of the first movement. Sequence is again much in evidence in Domine Fili unigenite, the composer disregarding convention by resolving suspensions in the violin parts by downward leaps of a 7th. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei uses contrasting forces: the alto soloist, accompanied by continuo, has descending scalic lines which are punctuated by chordal interjections from the choir and orchestra. The penitential section continues with both groups singing separate triple-time movements, and the work concludes with a recapitulation of the opening for Quoniam tu solus Sanctus and a final fugal movement.

Beatus vir is even more structurally cohesive than the Gloria: not only does the opening music reappear for the Gloria Patri, but the phrase 'Beatus vir' becomes a refrain, being interpolated at strategic points in the work, and giving unity to the whole. This phrase is characteristically simple, its static vocal lines accompanied by a descending scale. Much of the interest that this piece holds for the listener relies on the use of double orchestra and choir, a throwback perhaps to the cori spezzati style of earlier Venetian composers, yet at the end of the first movement the two orchestras alternate parallel major and minor tonalities with an almost Schubertian flair and at one point even play two different triads simultaneously: thus the composer manages to be both retrospective and visionary at the same time. After duets for the choral basses and solo sopranos, the choral movement Exortum est in tenebris displays more complex vocal writing than one would expect, with varied note values creating a layered texture. Scalic lines reappear for the ensuing soprano solo, while the choral trio In memoria aeterna combines sequential and fugal elements. In Paratum cor eius Vivaldi uses unison choral writing to illustrate the text, much as Bach was wont to do, while Peccator videbit

alternates fast and slow sections in the Handelian manner to great dramatic effect.

Schola Cantorum

Schola Cantorum is Oxford University's longest-running chamber choir. It was founded in 1960 by the Hungarian dissident Laszlo Heltay, and over the last three decades many of the choir' s former members have become involved in professional music at the highest levels. Former singers include Emma Kirkby and Jane Glover, while Andrew Parrott, Nicholas Cleobury, and Ivor Bolton are among the choir's former conductors. Schola Cantorum's patrons are Sir Michael Tippett and Lord Menuhin, and for specific projects the choir has worked under Leonard Bernstein, Gunstav Leonhardt, Sir Colin Davis, and Sir Neville Marriner as well as Britten, Tippett, and Stravinsky in performances of their own music, since 1990 Schola Cantorum has been conducted by Jeremy Summerly under whom the choir has released many recordings and has toured extensively, both in Britain and abroad.

Jeremy Summerly

Jeremy Summerly studied Music at New College, Oxford from where he graduated with First Class Honours in 1982. For the next seven years he worked for BBC Radio and it was during this time that he founded the Oxford Camerata and undertook postgraduate research at King's College, London. In 1989 he became a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music and in the following year he was appointed conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford. In 1991 he signed a long-term contract with Naxos to record a variety of music with Schola Cantorum of Oxford and the Oxford Camerata.

Northern Chamber Orchestra, Manchester

Formed in 1967, the Northern Chamber Orchestra has established itself as one of England's finest chamber ensembles. Though often augmented to meet the requirements of the concert programme, the orchestra normally contains 24 musicians and performs both in concert and on disc without a conductor. Their repertoire ranges from the baroque era to music of our time, and they have gained a reputation for imaginative programme planning.

Concerts take the orchestra throughout the North of England and it has received four major European bursaries for its achievements in the community.

With a series of recordings for Naxos the orchestra makes its debut on disc.

Nicholas Ward

Nicholas Ward was born in Manchester, the son of parents who met when they became members of the Halle Orchestra. At the age of twelve he formed his own string quartet which remained together for five years until he entered the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Having studied with Yossi Zivoni in Manchester and Andre Gertler in Brussels, he moved in 1977 to London where he joined the Melos Ensemble and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1984 he became co-leader of the City of London Sinfonia and leader of the Northern Chamber Orchestra of which he was subsequently appointed Musical Director.

Disc 1

Gloria in D major, RV 589

(more info)

Performed by: Northern Chamber Orchestra Collegium Musicum 90
Composed by: Antonio Vivaldi
Conducted by: Richard Hickox Kevin Mallon Jeremy Summerly Nicholas Ward
Anna Simboli, soprano
Alena Dantcheva, soprano
Sara Mingardo,
Michael Chance, counter-tenor
Jane Archibald, soprano
Nils Brown, tenor
Deborah York, soprano
Patrizia Biccire,
Emma Kirkby, soprano
Anita Krause, mezzo-soprano
Tessa Bonner, soprano
Rinaldo Alessandrini, harpsichord

Gloria in Excelsis Deo, RV 589 - 2:48
Et in terra pax - 5:19
Laudamus te - 2:27
Gratias agimus tibi - 1:17
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis - 4:02
Domine Fili unigenite - 2:30
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei - 3:48
Qui tollis peccata mundi - 0:59
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris - 2:39
Quoniam tu solus Sanctus - 0:54
Cum Sancto Spiritu - 3:24

Beatus vir in C major, RV 597

(more info)

Performed by: Northern Chamber Orchestra
Composed by: Antonio Vivaldi
Conducted by: Jeremy Summerly Nicholas Ward
Recording date: 3 December 1993 / 14 March 1994

Beatus vir qui timet Dominum - 2:59
Potens in terra - 2:27
Beatus vir - 0:31
Gloria et divitiae - 3:18
Beatus vir - 0:33
Exortum est in tenebris - 2:51
Jucundus homo - 2:49
Beatus vir - 0:31
In memoria aeterna - 4:30
Beatus vir - 0:30
Paratum cor eius - 2:16
Peccator videbit - 4:29
Beatus vir - 0:30
Gloria Patri - 2:59

Reviews

Be the first to review this title

FREE SHIPPING on orders
of 5 items or more!

Earn Naxos Rewards Points by opening an account and buying your favorite music today! Create your account here.

See all of our great site features here.

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Composer(s):
Vivaldi, Antonio

Conductor(s):
Ward, Nicholas

Orchestra(s):
Northern Chamber Orchestra

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099576727
Item Number: 8550767
Release Date: Feb 6, 1995