Messa da requiem

Book excerpt: The present edition is the second volume of three. Collectively, these editions form a critical anthology of requiem masses composed by musicians of St. Mark’s, Venice over a long period extending from the late sixteenth century to the closing years of the nineteenth century. The featured musician of this volume is Ferdinando Bertoni (1725–1813), who was much celebrated during the classical period as a composer of both sacred and secular music and who gained significant exposure as the master of music at St. Mark’s. Most of the music in the edition can be firmly connected to the funeral of the heroic Admiral Angelo Emo (1731–92), which was held in St. Mark’s during 1792. Emo was no ordinary Venetian: he was Venice’s last admiral to lead La Serenissima into battle and a Procuratore de ultra of St. Mark’s, a position placing him in the tier immediately below the ruling doge, Lodovico Manin. The music assembled here for the first time in a modern critical edition is a valuable relic of this temporal juncture in the history, not only of the ducal church, but of Venice broadly. The requiem stands as one of the last outstandingly sumptuous works performed at the ducal church before Venice’s fall from grace in the closing years of the eighteenth century. With its kaleidoscopic mixture of styles, the work may sit comfortably as the showpiece in a concert program, or, authentically, as the musical backbone of an ecclesiastical setting, as it was originally intended.