Porpora: Vespers for the Feast of the Assumption

Series: Collegium Musicum: Yale University  Publisher: A-R Editions
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Nicola Porpora
Vespers for the Feast of the Assumption
A Reconstruction of the 1744 Service at the Ospedaletto in Venice

Edited by Kurt Markstrom

Y2-021 Porpora: Vespers for the Feast of the Assumption
978-0-89579-818-3 Full Score (2015) 9x12, xxiv + 300 pp.
$360.00
SKU
Y2-021

Performance Parts (Available Separately)

Y2-021R
Rental Parts (2016)
Set of 13 parts: 0000 0000 33221 vocal score, errata
The vespers music composed by Nicola Porpora for the feast of the Assumption (15 August) in 1744, during his first year as maestro at the Ospedale di Santa Maria dei Poveri Derelitti (popularly known as the Ospedaletto), occupies a place of particular importance in his sacred output: it can be reconstructed almost in full from manuscripts of Porpora’s surviving works, and its scoring for an all-female choir consisting of divided sopranos and altos—the typical choral forces employed in the ospedali at this time—makes it a rare specimen of liturgical music composed expressly for the Venetian figliole.
 
This edition recreates the music of this service by bringing together settings by Porpora of the five psalms of the Marian cursus (Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Laetatus sum, Nisi Dominus, and Lauda Jerusalem) and the Magnificat canticle, along with two settings of the Marian antiphon Salve Regina, which would have been sung as an additional devotion following the canonical liturgy.
 
Although the Dixit Dominus and Magnificat, composed during Porpora’s years in Naples, were originally scored for standard mixed choir, it is likely that they were adapted for the 1744 performance in Venice; consequently, they have been adapted for all-female choir and soloists in this edition.
Dixit Dominus
1. Dixit Dominus (chorus)
2. Donec ponam inimicos (chorus)
3. Virgam virtutis tuae (soprano solo, chorus)
4. Tecum principium (soprano and alto duet)
5. Juravit Dominus (chorus)
6. Dominus a dextris tuis (alto solo)
7. Judicabit in nationibus (chorus)
8. De torrente in via (soprano solo)
9. Gloria Patri (alto solo)
10. Sicut erat (chorus)
11. Et in saecula (chorus)
 
Laudate pueri (1745)
1. Laudate pueri (soprano 1 and 2 duet, chorus)
2. A solis ortu (soprano and alto duet)
3. Quis sicut Dominus (alto solo)
4. Suscitans a terra (alto solo)
5. Qui habitare facit (soprano solo)
6. Gloria Patri (chorus)
7. Sicut erat (chorus)
 
Laetatus sum (1744)
1. Laetatus sum (soprano solo, chorus)
2. Quia illic sederunt (soprano solo)
3. Fiat pax (chorus)
4. Gloria Patri (soprano solo, chorus)
5. Sicut erat (soprano solo, chorus)
 
Nisi Dominus (1744)
1. Nisi Dominus (alto solo, chorus)
2. Sicut sagittae (alto solo)
3. Beatus vir (alto solo)
4. Gloria Patri (chorus)
5. Sicut erat (alto solo, chorus)
 
Lauda Jerusalem (1744)
1. Lauda Jerusalem (soprano 1, soprano 2, and alto solos, chorus)
2. Gloria Patri (soprano and alto duet)
3. Sicut erat (soprano 1 and alto 1 solos, chorus)
 
Magnificat (1741)
1. Magnificat anima mea (chorus)
2. Quia fecit (soprano 2 and alto 2 ensemble duet)
3. Et misericordia (chorus)
4. Fecit potentiam (soprano solo)
5. Esurientes (chorus)
6. Sicut locutus est (soprano solo)
7. Gloria Patri (chorus)
 
Salve Regina in F Major (1744; alto solo)
1. Salve Regina
2. Ad te clamamus
3. Ad te suspiramus
4. Eia ergo
5. Illos tuos
6. O clemens
 
Salve Regina in B-flat Major (1744; soprano solo)
1. Salve Regina
2. Ad te clamamus
3. Ad te suspiramus
4. Eia ergo
5. O clemens