Vivaldi - Nisi Dominus

Competing for the best

Chiesa di S. Maria della Pietà

In the Netherlands, we had a time where youth choirs made it attractive for people to go to the church for a ceremony. The churches were interested in having good choirs to attract a new audience and the choirs were happy as they had a platform to perform.

In the time of Vivaldi, we had a similar situation in the sense that churches were competing against each other but also against concert halls to bring the best possible music.

And if you had to compete who better to have for writing the music than priest and musician Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Vivaldi mind was certainly with music, perhaps more then with being a priest. During masses, he simply stopped if a musical thought had to be captured. Life is all about setting the right priorities.  

He may have gotten the assignment from the Ospedale della Pieta, where he was working as a violin teacher in 1703, to compose the Nisi Dominus (RV 608). In the Ospedale della Pieta, Vivaldi had excellent singers and very strong instrumentalists, which you can hear in the way the piece is set up.

The part for the viola d ‘amore for the Gloria was written down  treating three of the four upper strings as transposing ‘instruments’—the open strings of the viola d’amore are tuned to D, F and D instead of the E, D and G familiar to a violinist—a procedure that leads to bizarre visual effects.  Fingered as they would be on the violin, however, the notes make perfect harmonic and melodic sense. (Michael Talbot)

“ The Nisi Dominus (Psalm 126) is a long and very ambitious piece whose nine movements vary enormously in their style and scoring. It has two simple continuo arias (´'Vanum est vobis' and 'Beatus vir'), one with string accompaniment in unison with the voice ('Sicut sagittae'), two lively concerto church arias ('Nisi Dominus', and its reprise 'Sicut erat in principio') and one ('Cum dederit') that's written in the slow siciliana style with chromatically ascending lines that Vivaldi often used to convey the idea of rest and sleep. It's third movement ('Surgite') is an accompanied recitative in which Vivaldi juxtaposes rapid ascending figures with slow ones at 'panem doloris'. At the words "Sicut erat in principio" (As it was in the beginning), Vivaldi calls on the old Baroque trick of returning to music heard at the very beginning of the work. The 'Gloria' which instead of being the expected set of joyous exclamations is a marvelously dark and solitary passage that leads us, suitably chastened, to the Alleluia-like Amen.”  (from markfromireland’s site Saterday Chorale)

The part I like most is the fourth movement, an Andante, which begins by relating how the Lord gave his beloved people both sleep and children.

Cum dederit dilectis suis somnum: 

ecce haereditas Domini, filii: merces, fructus ventris.

For he brings rest to those he has chosen
behold an inheritance from the Lord – sons:
a reward, the fruit of the womb.

  

The ‘Cum dederit’ is music of the greatest poise and delicacy, similar in mood to some of the slow movements in The Four Seasons, except more chromatic and suspenseful.

Please listen and sit back.