I Fagiolini explore the dazzling multi-choir soundworld of Orazio Benevoli – a crucial figure in 17th-century Italian music.

As maestro of the papal choir and providing four-choir masses for special occasions, Benevoli invigorated the multi-choir style with vocal lines full of cross-rhythms, and voluptuous tutti sections with unexpected dissonances.

Despite its beauty and historical importance, there have been few attempts to record Benevoli’s music. His Missa Tu es Petrus – recorded here for the first time – was based on Palestrina's famous motet and perhaps written for the newly finished basilica of St Peter in Rome. It appears alongside four delightful solo-voice motets by his contemporary Bonifazio Graziani, each of them premiere recordings.

“The 17th century is surely the most interesting musical period to go rooting around in. While the 16th and 18th centuries are generally more stylistically uniform, in the mid-17th century you never know what you’re going to find. Yet digging up another ‘undiscovered masterpiece’ does require quality control. Some music is much better left in libraries, falling out of use for very good reason; Orazio Benevoli’s Missa Tu es Petrus is quite spectacularly not one of those pieces.” – Robert Hollingworth

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Palestrina: Tu es Petrus a 6
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Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus: 1. Kyrie
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Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus: 2. Gloria
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Graziani: Domine, ne in furore tuo
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Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus: 3. Credo
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Graziani: Venite gentes
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Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus: 4. Sanctus
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Benevoli: Missa Tu es Petrus: 5. Agnus Dei
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Graziani: Ad mensam dulcissimi
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Graziani: Justus ut palma

Europadisc Review

Following their award-winning 2011 Decca recording of Alessandro Striggio’s splendid 40-part Missa Ecco sì beato giorno – recently remastered and reissued on the CORO label – I Fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth now embark on a new partnership with CORO (best known as the ‘house label’ for The Sixteen). The first fruits of this come on a disc centred on a polychoral Mass for four choirs: the Missa Tu es Petrus by Orazio Benevoli (1605–1672). Today the tradition of polychoral writing is most strongly associated with Saint Mark’s in Venice and the works of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, but it also thrived in places with large ‘in-the-round’ spaces to fill with sound: Salzburg Cathedral and – upon its completion with Bernini’s mighty bronze baldachin in 1634 – St Peter’s, Rome.

Barely known now except to enthusiasts of 17th-century Italian music, Orazio Benevoli was born into a French family from Lorraine. The young Orazio was a chorister at the French church in Rome, San Luigi dei Francesi, where he was taught music by the choir master Vicenzo Ugolini. By the age of 19 Benevoli was a choir master himself, at Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, before replacing Ugolini at San Luigi’s on the latter’s death in 1638. He briefly served as Kapellmeister to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Vienna, but returned to Rome, where he eventually rose to become – like Ugolini before him – maestro of the Cappella Giulia (the Julian Choir) at St Peter’s itself.

Despite this string of prestigious appointments, Benevoli lived a life of poverty, which meant that his reputation – which might otherwise have been boosted by publication – was relatively stunted. In fact, the most popular attribution to him – the colossal Missa Salisburgensis – has since been dated to ten years after his death, and is now believed to be the work of Heinrich Biber. Based on Palestrina’s famous six-voice motet Tu es Petrus, Benevoli’s Missa Tu es Petrus is one of several mass settings by him with ambitious polychoral scoring that would exploit the huge space (physical and acoustic) of St Peter’s Basilica. Although the scoring may be less ostentatiously lavish than the misattributed Salzburg Mass, the effect of several groups of musicians en bloc or in counterpoint – especially when complemented, as here, by instrumental doublings – is hardly less impressive.

Hollingworth and his musicians preface Benevoli’s Mass with Palestrina’s motet on which it is based. Palestrina had become an exemplar to bolster the musical side of the Counter-Reformation, his clear lines, structural clarity and poise offering models for other composers in the wake of the Council of Trent. To the inbuilt structural and polyphonic clarity of this motet, I Fagiolini add a rhythmic acuity without ever sacrificing richness or blend of tone. As if responding to the motet’s punning text (‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build…’), Benevoli’s Mass adds multi-layered veneers, adornments and jewels, in the form of rhythmic contrasts, complex imitative writing and, above all, pillars of glorious homophonic writing to contrast with the intricacies woven in between. These are most evident in the vast Credo section, which forms the literal centrepiece of both the Mass and this disc, but are also present in the Kyrie and Gloria.

With just one voice per part, and the top- and lowermost voices of choirs 2–4 doubled by distinct instrumental pairs, Hollingworth achieves a welcome clarity which is enhanced by a warm but focussed recording in St Augustine’s, Kilburn. The doubling instruments – played by members of The City Musick – also bring textural variety while enhancing the Mass’s splendour. And, even at moments of maximal imitative complexity, the pure-voiced singers under Hollingworth’s direction maintain a rock-steady underlying pulse, while bringing out all the beauty of Benevoli’s assured vocal writing.

That beauty is further evident in the small-scale, three- to six-voice motets by Benevoli’s contemporary, Bonifazio Graziani, which offer a perfect complement to the Mass. It is here that I Fagiolini’s vocal soloists and continuo players (including Nicholas Mulroy’s distinctive tenor and veteran keyboard player David Roblou) really come into the own, from the relative restraint of Ad mensam dulcissimi to the festal Justus ut palma with its extravagant gestural writing, building steadily from the initial soprano solo to bring the disc to an ecstatic close.

Not least of the pleasures of this exceptionally engrossing disc is its presentation: a striking cover design, exemplary notes (with select music examples) and – rare joy! – a booklet whose text is printed in a clearly legible text size. The entire production should appeal not just to connoisseurs of the opulent polychoral, but to all lovers of quality choral singing, and marks a terrific start to what promises to be an enthralling recording partnership.