SALERNO. The Sacred December of Salerno Classica is starting, promoted by the Music Management Association, led by the cellist Francesco D’Arcangelo, ranging between different musical genres and prestigious guests, aiming to recover the values of music in a perspective of dynamism, innovation, experience and dialogue, which led the management to obtain funding from the Single Fund for Entertainment for a three-year period. This solemn segment of the festival could not fail to start from the chair of San Matteo, with a prestigious concert, which will be, on Sunday 11 December, at 5 pm, open to all, that of the Lauretana Musical Chapel, or the choir of the Cardinal Bartolucci Foundation directed by Adriano Caroletti, who will propose a program of sacred music dedicated to Christmas and a tribute to Lorenzo Perosi, in the year celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth. The program has the polyphony of the Roman school as its focal point. The Polyphonic Choir of the Domenico Bartolucci Foundation which gathers around the figure of its director and founder Domenico Bartolucci, Perpetual Master of the Sistine Pontifical Musical Chapel and Academician of Santa Cecilia, one of the most authoritative personalities in the interpretation of sacred polyphony, “Inestimable spiritual heritage , artistic and cultural” as Pope Benedict XVI himself defined it, the Polyphony of the Roman school officially opens the December of Salerno Classica. The introit “Puer natus” is undoubtedly one of the best known pieces of the Gregorian repertoire and has become a symbol of the ancient Christmas monodic tradition. Considering the first sentence, we can notice that the real underlinings are reserved for two words: “puer”, at the beginning of the piece, and “datus”, in the second part of the sentence. Of the Princeps Musicae, Pierluigi da Palestrina will propose “Sicut cervus” an archetype of the description of man’s desire for God or, “layfully”, the desire for meaning, for the search for the direction of the journey, thanks to a wonderful text, and the most inspired music.
The text is declaimed by the four voices, sopranos, contraltos, tenors and basses, in a staggered manner according to the technique known as counterpoint typical of classical polyphony. The first piece by Lorenzo Perosi will be the Ave Maria, originally a composition for two equal voices, simple in structure and texture; the variety of accents that develops throughout the piece, now in imitation between the two voices, now homorhythmically, creates an atmosphere of intimate spirituality. There are doubts about the authorship of the texts of Jesu dulcis memoria, a Renaissance page, which seems to belong to San Bernardo de Clairvaux, the same happens with the authorship of the music, which is known to be attributed to the famous Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, his splendid rich harmonic pattern, with some homophonic parts and imitations sometimes being spoken. Lauda Anima mea by Domenico Bartolucci, an Offertory for the Third Sunday of Easter, of essential balance, followed by the Salve Regina by Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger, characterized by a happy amalgam of modern romantic spirit and masterful counterpoint. The first part of the concert will be closed by Tu es Petrus, by Lorenzo Perosi. The apostle Peter was placed by Jesus Christ as the head and foundation of the Church with these explicit words set to music in this passage: “You are Peter and on this stone I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19). The second part of the program will make us fully acquainted with the compositional sign of Domenico Bartolucci, who fits in the wake of the great authors of sacred music, in particular of the Sistine Chapel of which he was Director for many years, or rather the enhancement of the precious treasure that is Gregorian chant and the skilful use of polyphony, faithful to tradition, but also open to new sonorities, through various pieces, the motet Magnum nomen, a Christmas motet on an ancient popular melody, the very sweet Ave Maria, a Marian laude on a seventeenth-century text, again the Christmas sequence Christus est and the Adeste fideles, which we all know. To complete the program, we will listen to “O magnum mysterium” by Tomàs Luis de Victoria, in the second mode transposed to the upper fourth, with frequent cadences to G and D, in a relationship between static and dynamic and sometimes, the polyphony gives space to homorhythm in a way that seems very different from other motets by the same author or from the same period, almost as if the mystical contemplation at times almost wants to become eternal in the static nature of the voices; and another piece by Lorenzo Perosi, Neve non sitouch. In 1935 the composer went to Teramo on the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress. He stayed as a guest of honor in the house of Mons. Domenico Valeri and in the latter’s house he came across a text for a hymn written by his host, entitled “Snow does not touch”, a poetic text of only six verses, but which Don Lorenzo set music, it is said, in a single day and which he elaborated for a four-voice choir; the hymn is dedicated to the Madonnina del Gran Sasso.
Salerno Classica, second edition Sacred December: homage to Perosi