Rediscovering Sacred Music from Eighteenth-Century Rome

Sacred works from eighteenth-century Italy remain a largely untapped treasure for modern musicians and scholars. While composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Francesco Durante, Nicola Porpora, and Johann Adolf Hasse are famous for operas and concertos, their vast output for the church has received far less attention. Luca Della Libera’s carefully prepared edition makes a significant contribution to this area by presenting a rich selection of mass settings from the archive of a major Roman institution, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

The volume includes a solemn mass and a Messa breve, e concertata a cinque voci by Alessandro Scarlatti—who served as maestro di capella of the basilica from August 1703 to February 1708—alongside two Messe a quattro voci concertata by Francesco Gasparini. All four works are scored for double choir, reflecting the basilica’s physical layout. In his introduction, Della Libera notes that separate wooden scaffolds (called cori) were constructed for solemn liturgical events. Yet only one of the four pieces—Scarlatti’s solemn mass—makes genuine use of two independent vocal groups. The other three assign the second chorus a doubling role, functioning as a ripieno that never diverges from the first choir. These masses therefore illustrate two contrasting approaches to polychoral writing: one draws on an older ceremonial Venetian tradition, while the other aligns with the emerging concerto grosso style.

Arcangelo Corelli counts among the most eminent musicians associated with Santa Maria Maggiore, his documented presence there spanning roughly forty years. Della Libera grounds this claim in his own archival research, though one wishes for more detail on the connection. More broadly, the repertory in this volume—spanning only about twenty-five years—has the potential to illuminate how polychoral music adapted as new idioms and aesthetics took hold during the century. Do the Corellian passages in Gasparini’s masses, such as the second Kyrie of the second work, represent a cross-pollination between liturgical vocal music and instrumental composers? Does the retention of “Palestrina style” (Palestrina himself once held a post at the basilica) in the Agnus Dei of Gasparini’s first mass indicate deliberate stylistic archaism? Della Libera’s introduction largely avoids such broader historical questions, though it offers admirably detailed documentation of musical practice at Santa Maria Maggiore.

Scarlatti’s Solemn Mass and Messa Breve

Scarlatti’s solemn mass in A major, dated December 1705, is scored for two choirs of five and four voices respectively, paired with two violin parts and basso continuo. A striking example of the missa pastoralis type, it suits the liturgical season in which it was performed. The music is both expansive and richly detailed, unfolding within a conservative harmonic language defined by series of tonic pedal points. Above these sustained notes the upper voices oscillate through the progression 5–3–4–♭3–4–3. This musette-like effect—directly evoking the pastoral genre—along with a strong plagal flavour from the repeated emphasis on ♭3 over the tonic chord, gives the mass its distinctive sonic character.

The second Scarlatti work, a Messa breve, e concertata a cinque voci in E minor probably written between 1706 and 1708, offers a notable contrast. Here the composer replaces massive textural weight with highly ornate part writing, a trait conveyed by the term concertata. The vocal parts demand exceptional skill—melismas in the Gloria include dotted semiquavers at the text “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris,” requiring the basilica’s best singers. This focus on soloistic writing, only occasionally reinforced by the ripieno choir, demonstrates a clear affinity with the concerto grosso, pointing toward a more modern concept of the polychoral mass.

Gasparini’s Diverse Mass Settings

Gasparini’s two works also reflect this newer approach but differ markedly from the relatively uniform character of Scarlatti’s Messa breve. These are more idiosyncratic, exploring a variety of stylistic vocabularies. Though Gasparini never held the post of maestro di capella at Santa Maria Maggiore, his ties to the institution spanned several decades, and he served as music director of the “Salve” ensemble—an affiliate group founded by the Borghese family in the early seventeenth century—from 1699 until his death in 1724.

Based on Della Libera’s research, his two Messe a quattro voci concertata in B-flat and G major date between 1705 and 1708. Both are scored for two four-part choirs and basso continuo. Their stylistic range is refreshingly broad:

• A declamatory treatment of text in the “Et in terra pax” of the B-flat Mass
• Extended pedal points heard in the “Et unam sanctam catholicam” of the B-flat Mass
• A fully modern harmonic language, including augmented chords in the “Qui tollis” (B-flat Mass) and striking moves to the flat side of the tonal spectrum in “Fili unigenite Jesu Christe” (G Major Mass)
• Palestrinian and Corellian touches woven throughout

A minor editing error should be noted: in bars 11 to 13 of the Kyrie of the B-flat mass, the basso part is notated a step too high on the staff.

Context and Performance Questions

The edition offers relatively limited guidance on situating these works in a broader historical context or on historically informed performance. Della Libera’s “Notes on Performance” are somewhat sparse, and his extensive archival data receives little analysis. The introduction tells us that Santa Maria Maggiore’s chapel maintained a permanent ensemble of five sopranos, two contraltos, four tenors, and four basses in the early 1700s; later the sopranos dropped to four, then by 1708–16 to three. For solemn observances, extra musicians could be borrowed from other institutions, but the total number fluctuates in the surviving lists. Is it possible to spot patterns or trends in ensemble size based on this information? The editor does not test any hypotheses. A list Scarlatti himself prepared in 1705 (included as a facsimile) names five sopranos, three contraltos, one tenor, and four basses. Adding those singers to the basilica’s regular forces might yield a chorus of twenty-eight for a solemn mass—ten sopranos, five contraltos, five tenors, and eight basses. Such figures remain speculative, but with more documents from the Santa Maria Maggiore archives firmer conclusions may emerge.

These small reservations do not lessen the edition’s genuine value. It makes available multiple rewarding examples of a historically and artistically significant repertory, and the quality of these mass settings will surely inspire hope that further gems await rediscovery from this and other Italian archives. Modern editions of works like these should stimulate both continued investigation of eighteenth-century repertory and, just as importantly, more performances of the music.