Horace Smith, Ozymandias (1818)

Qu’une chose aussi visible qu’est la vanité du monde soit si peu connue, que ce soit une chose étrange et surprenante de dire que c’est une sottise de chercher les grandeurs. Cela est admirable.

Vanity.—How wonderful it is that a thing so evident as the vanity of the world is so little known, that it is a strange and surprising thing to say that it is foolish to seek greatness!

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées (1669)

Living in Rome in the first half of the seventeenth century in a time of political, religious and scientific turmoil, where images of war and disease played on a background of great splendour amid the ruins of Antiquity, it is not surprising that seventeenth-century moralists, philosophers and artists would meditate on the transience and fragility of human life and glory. The music heard this evening reflects those sober, and sobering, meditations. And yet, despite the potentially dark subject matter, this music draws on the full palette of 17th-century musical styles and techniques to move the listener with music of great beauty and power.

In this context, there is a fine irony in the fate of the music from the hand of Giacomo Carissimi. This Roman musician was among the most influential composers working in the first half of the seventeenth century. Shortly before he turned 25, he became maestro di cappella at the Collegio Germanico e Hungarico in Rome and remained in the post until his death. The Collegio Germanico, a Jesuit seminary that trained young men from German-speaking countries for the priesthood, already had a long tradition of musical excellence, going back at least to the time of Victoria in the late 16th century. Over the course of his career, he produced an impressive body of work in a variety of styles; his motets, cantatas and oratorios in Latin were among the defining examples of these new genres. He attracted students from across Europe, many of whom went on to significant careers, including Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Johann Caspar Kerll, and Christoph Bernhard and he was lauded as one of the most celebrated musicians of his day. Following his death, his scores were jealously guarded by the Collegio; a 1674 papal brief forbade anyone from removing Carissimi’s compositions from the college under pain of excommunication. And yet today the autograph scores are no longer at the Collegio. Many were sold as scrap paper when the Society of Jesus was suppressed in 1773, others were pillaged during the Napoleonic invasion. More copies of his music survive outside of Italy than within. The oratorio Vanitas Vanitatum, is a series of meditations, inspired in part by the Book of Ecclesiastes, on the vanity of pleasures and human works such as science, philosophy, power, and even music. Even so, the “Vanitas” refrain is a remarkably ‘catchy’ hook, designed to help the lesson remain with the listener long after the final chord.

Marco Marazzoli was another Roman musician whose fame was celebrated across Europe. Singer, harpist and composer, Marazzoli served various members of the influential Barberini family in a variety of venues for much of his career. Under their patronage, he spent several years in Paris where, among other activities, he composed chamber cantatas for the court of Anne of Austria who is said to have been moved to tears by his work. Elena Invecchiata is a remarkably personal meditation by Helen of Troy as she looks back with surprise and some bitterness on the years of war waged over her beauty, now ravaged by the implacable hand of time.

Yet another celebrated Roman composer connected to personalities associated with the papacy is Luigi Rossi. He was active in Naples, Rome and Paris. At about the time Carissimi began his work in the German college, Rossi was selected as organist at the French national church, S Luigi dei Francesi and later became part of the entourage of Cardinal Antonio Barberini. When the Barbarinis were forced to flee Rome in 1646, he followed them to France where his music was greatly appreciated by, among others, Cardinal Mazarin. His canzonettas and cantatas were widely popular, and he wrote operas for both the papal family and the French royal court. Sospirate Belleze is an apt introduction to the lament of Helen of Troy: it warns those beauties over whom we sigh that time will inevitably take its revenge. The extended cantata, Ergi la mente al sole, combines elements of all of the genres in which he excelled: the solo-voice cantata, the madrigal and the vocal trio. It is paean to the power and light of the sun, whose first light in the morning calls forth worship from the songs of birds and the rustling of the wind… And yet, even the powerful Sun tells us how he is but a pale reflection of the eternal light of God: even the most mighty must yield to the Divine. It is perhaps the only way to overcome the melancholy brought on by contemplation of our own vanity. The exquisite Latin trio, Si Quis Daret Concentum, repeats the moral: there is nothing in the delights of the world to compete with the sweet song of angels or the musical consorts of heaven, and so farewell to the delights of the world. The musical setting, including both ravishing close harmony from the three vocalists and lush, sensuous writing for the instrumental consort, are intended to invite the listener into the sound world of the eternal.

The final, anonymous work on the programme will send us out dancing into the dark night. This modest canzonette spirituale repeats its refrain (‘Bisogna morire’, You must die) repeatedly between verses steeped in the vanity of life and the cruel progress of time. Repeatedly but infectiously: the somber text unfolds over a lilting and catchy Passacaglia bass line, like so much music heard for centuries set to texts covering the entire gamut of human experience: love, faith, betrayal, celebration…. and even death. Life may be short, but that shouldn’t stop us from living it to the fullest!