Bet you didn’t know it was the tercentenary of Pergolesi’s birth this year! His dates are usually given as 1710-36, but the first of this is the registration of his birth in early January, rather than the birth itself, so it’s likely he was born in 1709.<\/p>\n
The Chandos Singers celebrated by performing his Vespers, incorporating a couple of motets, Beatus Vir<\/em> and Lauda Jerusalem<\/em> by Vivaldi. There was a definite distinction in style between the two, though I’d find it hard to define. The Pergolesi seemed to anticipate that galant style, with a lot of simple, short phrases; I found the double-choir (or choir+group of soloists) sections the most interesting.<\/p>\n This made for a long first half – about 1½ hours – and in the second part we turned to another anniversary, that of the Avignon papacy, inaugurated in a Mass in March 1309 whose music we reconstructed. It is rather easy to dismiss music of this era as trivial to perform because for example it does not have a huge range. But it can make unusual demands in areas such as rhythm, no less so than a lot of 20th\/21st century repertoire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bet you didn’t know it was the tercentenary of Pergolesi’s birth this year! His dates are usually given as 1710-36, but the first of this is the registration of his birth in early January, rather than the birth itself, so … Continue reading