Works
His contributions to liturgical music in Rome were profound as composer, organist, maestro di capella, writer on music theory and history, and as esaminatori dei maestri for the Academy of St. Cecilia. He was extremely prolific, with some 325 masses, 800 Psalm settings and 235 motets among the 3500 compositions listed by his pupil and biographer, Girolamo Chiti. He prepared a complete year of music for St. Peter’s, with settings for the masses and offices of every Sunday and holy day.
Pitoni’s early works are brilliant examples of his genius in the Roman contrapuntal style of Palestrina. In later years he moved toward more homophonic textures with polychoral elements. His use of stile concertato also included solo sections and concertante instrumental parts. It is said that his immense facility allowed him to compose the parts of a 16-voice mass separately, without use of a score. To modern ears and eyes these compositions may seem dull and even repetitious. However, given typical performance practices in the early 18th century – vocal ornamentation (“divisions”), instrumental participation, antiphonal location for polychoral elements, just intonation, and varied vocal colors – even the homophonic works must have made a strong impression in the highly reverberative church interiors of Rome. At the end of his life he was preparing a mass for twelve choirs, left incomplete at his death. He was buried in the Pitoni family vault in the Basilica of San Marco, where he had served for some 66 years. His best known work is the Dixit Dominus a 16 in 4 choirs.
Read more about this topic: Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.”
—Paul Valéry (1871–1945)
“Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)