Orazio Benevolo

Program: #25-09 Air Date: Feb 24, 2025

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The grand polychoral mass in 17th century Rome was perfected by this son of a French pastry chef who became the director of the Capella Giulia at St. Peter’s; this recent recording features Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spiritual ensemble.

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from the recording Benevolo: Missa is Deus pro nobis on the Alpha label featuring the ensemble Le Concert Spirituel conducted by Hervé Niquet. It is Alpha CD 400. For more information: https://www.concertspirituel.com/en/home

Hervé Niquet possesses two constant character traits: he is an indefatigable excavator of forgotten music, and he loves polyphony and ‘large forms’. A few years ago, he caused a sensation by exhuming the monumental music of Striggio. To mark the thirtieth anniversary of his ensemble, Le Concert Spirituel, he now tackles a new peak of polyphony: a mass by Orazio Benevolo (1605–72) performed by eight choirs of four singers, accompanied by fifteen continuo players. In concert, the choirs are spread out around the nave, with the audience in the middle. Benevolo was born to a Burgundian confectioner father who had emigrated to Rome. Educated at the choir school of San Luigi dei Francesi, he became one of the greatest geniuses of polychorality, a prolific composer who represented the splendours of French art in Rome. He ended his career as maestro di cappella at the Vatican. This music has been resurrected thanks to the work of the great musicologist Jean Lionnet, who spent many years copying out by hand the music of numerous Italian composers in the Vatican archives, from which it was impossible to borrow documents. As a result of his labours the Missa Si Deus pro nobis has now been recorded, accompanied by vocal and instrumental pieces by Monteverdi, Frescobaldi and Palestrina.

From Early Music review: This is a welcome first recording of this Benevoli Mass, one of the glories of the Roman colossal baroque. Written for four four-voiced choirs, Niquet doubles up each choir with another one, in a manner typical of Roman performance practice in the 17th century. Taking advantage of balconies in the recording venue, the groups are split up at a considerable distance and each has its own conductor to relay Niquet’s beat (there is a video of part of the recording on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6mHJNKOSXs). This again reproduces Roman practice. Less typical of that practice, however, is the strong presence of wind instruments. By the 1660s when this Mass was probably written, cornetts and sackbuts were very rare in Rome; singers predominated, supported by violoni or bass violins and organs, with a few violins. Niquet here uses a choir of cornett and sackbuts as well as one of dulzians, so that the sound world is both wind-heavy and old-fashioned, too early 17th-century Venetian perhaps, to be true to Benevoli. The recording engineers have done sterling work and the effect of being placed as a listener at the centre of all of these groups is very effective, but the winds overpower the singers at times and, particularly, muddy the texts. That said, the orchestration is successful and there are quieter moments and good contrast between textures, though some singing with organ only would have been welcome in the Mass – in the Christe, for example. The long full tutti sections at the end of each movement are enormously powerful and performed with a strong sense of momentum and inevitability. The other works on the CD provide lots of contrast, from the motet Regna Terrae for twelve sopranos, to some excellent instrument-only playing in Palestrina’s Beata es, virgo Maria and in a Frescobaldi canzona. Monteverdi’s Cantate Domino, sung as an Introit, is anomalous and serves only to emphasise the Venetian quality of the sound throughout. Even more anomalous is the plainchant, performed quickly and rhythmically in a medieval manner with drones, rather than the slow festive unornamented way we know was sung in the 17th century. Benevoli’s sixteen-voice Magnificat is included as a communion motet, which is strange, but is a welcome addition nonetheless. Something of an odd mix then, from the purist’s point of view, but an exciting result which certainly gives us a vivid appreciation of Benevoli’s individual voice. The group uses transcriptions made by the late Jean Lionnet, a crucial figure both in researching Roman baroque music and in encouraging its performance by French groups. It is hard to believe that it is twenty years since his untimely passing.

Noel O’Regan

1. Aeterna Christi Munera Et Martyrum Victorias (Procession)
Composed By – Saint Ambrose, 1:33

2. Cantate Domino, SV 293 (Motet)
Composed By – Claudio Monteverdi, 1:44