Orazio Benevoli or Benevolo (19 April 1605 – 17 June 1672) was a Franco-Italian composer of large scaled polychoral sacred choral works (e.g., one work featured forty-eight vocal and instrumental lines) of the Baroque music
Biography
He was born in
Rome to a French baker and confectioner, Robert Venouot or Vénevot,
[Robert Venouot came from Lorraine. See also Alberto Cametti, La scuola dei pueri cantus di S. Luigi dei francesi in Roma e i suoi principali allievi (1591–1623): Gregorio, Domenico e Bartolomeo Allegri, Antonio Cifra, Orazio Benevoli, Fratelli Bocca, Torino, 1915, p. 631.] whose name was Italianized to
Benevolo. Benevoli was a choirboy at San Luigi dei Francesi in
Rome (1617–23). He later assumed posts as
maestro di cappella at Santa Maria in
Trastevere (from 1624), Santo Spirito in Sassia (from 1630), and his old church San Luigi dei Francesi from 1638. Benevoli served as
Kapellmeister in the court of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria from 1644 to 1646. Benevoli returned to
Rome in 1646, where he remained for the rest of his life as choirmaster at both Santa Maria Maggiore and the
Cappella Giulia of St. Peter's Basilica. He was made
Guardiano of the
Holy See's Congregazione di Santa Cecilia in the following three years of 1654, 1665 and 1667.
His pupils included Ercole Bernabei, Antimo Liberati and Paolo Lorenzani. ()
Benevoli composed Masses, motets, Magnificats, and other sacred vocal works. Much of his fame as a composer has rested largely on his supposed composition of the fifty-three part Missa Salisburgensis, which musicologists long believed was written by Benevoli in Salzburg Cathedral in 1628. Nevertheless, external and internal evidence subsequently demonstrated that the Mass is in fact the work of composer Heinrich Ignaz Biber, and that it dates not from 1628 but from 1682.
Works, editions and recordings
Benevoli's sacred compositions frequently make use of four or more choirs. Many of Benevoli's works are massive and in the
Colossal Baroque style. Sixteen masses for 8 to 16 voices survive.
[ Führer zur lateinischen Kirchenmusik Michael Wersin - 2006 Etwa zeitgleich komponierte Orazio Benevolo (1605 bis 1672, ab 1646 Kapellmeister am Petersdom in Rom), von dem insgesamt etwa 16 acht- bis sechzehnstimmige Messzyklen überliefert sind, in Rom seine Missa Azzolina für zwei fünfstimmige]
Little of the music of Benevoli has been performed or recorded in modern times. However, the early music group
I Fagiolini, under the direction of Robert Hollingworth, have released two recordings of Benevoli's multi-choir masses, and a third is in preparation
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Orazio Benevolo - Sacred Music - Missa Azzolina Magnificat Dixit Dominus, Le Concert Spirituel (Niquet). Naxos (1996)
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Missa Tira Corda a 16, Tölzer Knabenchor (Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden) (2010)
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Mass for Four Choirs, I Fagiolini (Coro, 2023 & 2024)
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Missa Si Deus pro nobis a 16, RIAS Kammerchor (2024)
External links
