On Saturday 27th May 2022, IT&T will be performing Campra’s Requiem and Handel’s Dixit Dominus in SJE Arts. Director Edward Higginbottom explores the artistic inspiration behind the concert…

A Tale of Two Cities? Not Paris and London this time, but Paris and Rome. Some three hundred years ago, these two great cultural hubs were the loci of two very different traditions of music-making. It was not that they lacked things in common, but between them a broad stream separated compositional and performance practices. IT&T’s programme on 27 May takes up the theme of difference and contrast by presenting two works very firmly situated in these different places, though close in time: Campra’s Requiem Mass and Handel’s psalm setting Dixit Dominus, the first written for performance in Paris in 1695, the second in Rome in 1707.

There is plenty to say about the vivid contrasts encountered when pairing these two pieces, contrasts worth engaging with, since through them we get to hear more clearly the stylistic identities of each. But there are other reasons of a more pragmatic nature for the pairing. First, the orchestral scoring for each work requires two independent viola parts. And then the pitch standard appropriate to both works is lower than standard baroque pitch. In the late seventeenth century, Roman performances adopted a pitch all of a tone below modern pitch, A = 392. As also did Paris. Whilst such pitch distinctions make some difference to string sonority, they make a huge difference to the vocal. Handel’s setting of Dixit is well known for its fearsome demands on the sopranos, with plenty of written high B flats. But these now sound as A flats at today’s pitch, much more in keeping with a conventional soprano range. Similarly, in the Campra Requiem, the high tenor part (the Haute Contre) can be accessed by a tenor: no need to wheel in an anachronistic alto. The opportunities in particular to perform Dixit Dominus at ‘the right pitch’ are few and far between. Indeed, it’s almost certain that no-one attending the concert will ever have heard the work @ 392. So, a unique opportunity lies before us.

If that’s what brings Campra and Handel together, what separates them? I have some answers. But first, let’s place these two works in their historical contexts. André

Campra was newly appointed as the director music at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Notre Dame when in 1695 he was required to write the Requiem Mass for Monseigneur François de Harlay, the late Archbishop. The performance took place in the Cathedral in November that year. It was a grand and spectacular event. The work made Campra’s reputation in Paris. Soon afterwards, he engaged rather more in stage music than liturgical, and became a leading figure in the evolution of opéra and opéra-ballet in France. Handel was the younger man, ten years old in 1695, and only just into his twenties in 1707 when he wrote Dixit Dominus for a Roman patron. Either Cardinal Ottoboni or Cardinal Colonna may have offered the commission: the historical record is incomplete on this subject, though on both counts conjecture is well supported. Handel was in Italy for the reason so many ‘new generation’ composers of the time believed essential: to assimilate Italian instrumental and vocal practice. In Dixit we can hear what Handel understood this to be. And it is something very different from the French.

This is not the place for a detailed examination of two remarkable works, interesting though that might be. But it is the opportunity to open the score, and to begin a conversation.

*André Campra (Nicolas Edelinck, 1725, after André Bouys)*

A useful way of seeing how Campra and Handel go about their work is to set side by side their opening movements. Campra begins with the vocal equivalent of an organ Plein Jeu verset: a dense polyphonic movement built on a slow-moving plainchant cantus firmus, the chant of the Mass introit ‘Requiem aeternam . . .’. This first appears in the bass. It later migrates to the tenor and baritone. The counterpoint which surrounds the c.f. is not particularly rigorous: its imitative responses are lightly worn. The objective is not a display of contrapuntal ingenuity, but rather a sonority in which the weaving parts build up an impressive block of sound. A change of pace is introduced at ‘et lux perpetua . . .‘, where the violins break into faster and more decorative patterns, with the instrumental bass adopting a quicker movement also, a continuous run of crotchets. The intention is clear, to evoke, in the brilliance of the writing, the ‘perpetual light’ of the text. The whole section is reprised after a separate movement for the portion of the text ‘Te decet hymnus’. This is still part of the Introit, but Campra seeks, as throughout his mass, to create arresting scene changes. Here we encounter a change of tempo, texture and relation between voices and instruments. A vocal trio is off-set against an instrumental dialogue where each performer has an independent line. At the same time, the musical argument lies quintessentially in the highest voice, lending to this (short) movement an intimate and personal note.

*George Frederic Handel* (James Thornhill, c. 1720)

Meanwhile, Handel begins his Dixit Dominus in a quite different manner. Indeed, it begins like a concerto grosso: the violins are in extravagant dialogue with each other, in concerto style. There is nothing vocal about this. The regular harmonic tread has a Vivaldian swagger. It is not surprising that when the voices enter, they do not imitate the strings. Initially they make a chordal declamatory response. But the Italian vocal tradition encompassed coloratura, a practice much frowned upon by the French who found it ‘unnatural’. However, Handel was in Italy to absorb Italian manners of vocal practice; and in the opening movement of Dixit there are three short displays of extravert coloratura by soprano, alto and tenor. At the halfway point in the movement, Handel turns to the practice which was Campra’s point of departure: a cantus firmus setting. We hear the psalm chant twice, first in the upper voices, in G, and a second time in the lower voices in D. The long notes of the cantus are in marked contrast to the surrounding musical figures, which maintain the shorter durations of the opening measures. In the manner of its treatment and its insertion into the movement, this is a quite different style of writing counterpoint against a given part, one which allows more diversity and more declamatory rhythms. In true concerto style, the movement ends with an instrumental section which is in effect the ‘ritornello’ of the concerto, reprising the opening 17 measures.

On the basis of this comparison, if one sought just a few words to describe the difference of approach between these two composers, it would be to suggest that Campra drew upon a discreet and expressive vocal style, whilst Handel was seduced by brilliant instrumental figurations. The first sought a natural correlation between text and musical utterance. The second was happy with a more abstract quality of declamation. The first allowed the music to unravel naturally. The second imposed a firm structural outline. Juxtaposing the two in the same programme is not an invitation to judge which is better, or right. Rather, it is to celebrate two complementary worlds. In the very decade Handel was writing Dixit, François Couperin was fashioning a style which he believed brought the French and Italian styles together into a ‘perfection of music’. On 27 May, there is the chance to hear clearly what it was that Couperin was seeking to unite; and to enjoy two of the finest vocal settings of the High Baroque.

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