Giuseppe Verdi - Messa da Requiem

Although Requiem was a religious work, it was presented more in concert halls than in churches. Giuseppe Verdi wrote the famous Requiem in honour of his close friend, Alessandro Manzoni, the great Italian poet, writer, and humanist, who died in 1873. It is a powerful fusion of intense drama and passion, with moments of reverent simplicity. Verdi conducted the first performance at St. Mark's Church in Milan on May 22, 1874, the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. Revolutionary composition Verdi's Requiem has been revolutionary in two respects: First, because while the traditional requiem is a prayer of the living for the dead, Verdi's work was a function as much for the living as for the dead. As Verdi would expect, it's a dramatic, theatrical play. Written for four solo voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass) with full choir and orchestra, it follows the typical Roman Catholic Latin mass for the dead. The "libretto" certainly comes from the dram
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Vivaldi - Introduction

Portrait of Vivaldi holding a violin

Antonio Vivaldi's music is music full of health. The sounds he created hedonistically breathe the smells of the Mediterranean and capture the joy of life, causing constant bursts of spontaneous excitement and aesthetic enjoyment. The hearing of the Italian composer's music reveals a color richness that only a worthy painter could have imagined.

His work, amazing in scope and depth, impresses with the inexhaustible variety of his inspirations, which are obvious even when the composer dares not be freed from the structural commitment of the almighty in the age of tripartite division: allegro, adagio, allegro.

However, this traditional structure did not prevent him from revising the concerto grosso and proposing a new one for the era of the symphonic idiom, from which the personality of the soloist first emerged.

Vivaldi first imagined and applied the concerto with one or more soloists, even defining the most unusual combinations of instruments. If this is not innovation, originality in music, what can it be? Or did a former composer articulate his musical discourse with the descriptive power of his own music?

Long before Antonio Vivaldi challenged our admiration with his wisdom and fruitful imagination, he had provoked the admiration of Johann Sebastian Bach. It is certainly no coincidence that the Great Cantor copied six of Vivaldi's concertos for a keyboard instrument.
 

(George Monemvasitis)



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